Yesterday, NASCAR race car driver Danica Patrick was the first woman to earn a pole position in a NASCAR Sprint Cup (or any other NASCAR Cup-level race for that matter) for the most prestigious race in the country… NASCAR’s Superbowl: the Daytona 500. In doing so, she adds another notch in the belt of women who have successfully competed in a male-dominated sport.
While in the end, Patrick did not win the race – veteran racer Jimmie Johnson took that honor in his No. 48 Chevrolet – she made all of the drivers work for their positions throughout Sunday’s run.
Hats off to Patrick for keeping her eye on the prize after enduring an accident-laden qualifying round on Saturday. One collision involved 12 race cars and in it, 28 fans were injured (Kyle Larsen’s car decided to become a plane and go airborne). In another accident, driver Michael Annett was injured and spent the night in the hospital.
After running the qualifying round that earned her the starting spot for Sunday’s big race, Patrick fell back to ninth after an early caution and pit-stop. But she she took full advantage of the lap lead she had earned, got her #10 Go Daddy car back up with the leaders and stayed there through most of the race. In fact, she set another women’s record by leading twice during the race for a total of five laps on the way to finishing eighth. I wonder if actor James Franco, who gave the call to start engines, saying, “Drivers and Danica… start your engines,” would like to go back in time and rephrase it.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that females are getting both more involved in — and better at — competing in previously male-dominated sports. While I don’t have a big “equality” thing going on about women competing with men, it should be noted that there are a few formerly male-dominated arenas where the female of the species has proven she can successfully compete.
In 2008 Patrick had already become the first woman to win an Indy Car race by beating the boys in the Japan 300. But before she had made her presence known in the NASCAR world, there was Janet Guthrie who, in 1976, became the first woman to drive in a NASCAR Winston Cup race. She was the first woman to race in the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500, and her sixth-place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway in 1977 was the highest Cup finish for a woman at the time.
Call it a connection due to my own past as a competitor in equine sports, but my favorite dominating performance by a woman was in 1993 when the 4’10” Julie Krone won the Belmont Stakes — the most grueling of the Triple Crown horse races (one-and-a-half miles) — by two-and-a-quarter lengths aboard Colonial Affair (foaled in the DMV at Rutledge Farm in Middleburg, VA). Krone beat out eventual Hall of Fame jockeys Jerry Bailey and Mike Smith on “Sea Hero” and “Prairie Bayou” (respectively) during a time when female winning jockeys were still rare. Bailey had won the Run for the Roses earlier in the year and Smith had done the same at the Preakness on “Prairie Bayou” and both had short odds to win the final race. But “Bayou” never finished the race and, in fact, had to tragically be put down after an awful accident that shattered one of his legs in several places. “Hero” didn’t live up to the hype and came in seventh.
In 2000, this talented lady jockey went on to become the first woman inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, ironically joining Bailey, whom she had beaten (Smith was not inducted until 2003) seven years earlier.
Women started competing with men way before Krone made her mark in the horse racing world. And while women simply don’t have the physical attributes to dominate men in some of “their” sports, every now and then, they beat them.
Back in 1926, Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle was the first lady to swim the English Channel and she did it almost two hours faster than any man had ever done it.
Several years later in 1965, Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney broke into the racing world by becoming licensed by the National Hot Rod Association. Known as the “First Lady of Drag Racing,” she won what were a then-unprecedented three NHRA Top Fuel championships.
There is of course, Billy Jean King, who handed male tennis star Bobby Riggs his tennis balls back to him in the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match of 1973 in the Houston Astrodome. King won the sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.
While she didn’t “beat” a man to do it — other than perhaps other applicants for the position — last season Shannon Eastin became first woman to be an official in an NFL regular-season game. There was a small amount of fuss surrounding this in that she did it during a lockout of the NFL‘s regular officials. Some felt that the sideshow that accompanied the move should have been avoided. But professional football is one sport that the fairer sex has not broken in to with the same success as the other male-dominated activities. Sure, female reporters are now allowed in the locker rooms of all of the major American sports. But, other than a few kickers in high school and college football; and Hayley Wickenheiser being a member of a Canadian hockey team, women just can’t really compete against men in a violent contact sport like professional football.
That’s okay. Men and women are so different physically; it makes sense that, in order to successfully beat a man in a sport that he’s used to dominating, the female would accomplish this best with an ally. It could be a 3,200 lbs., pushrod V8, 865 hp (w/out the restrictor plate), lime-green Impala; or a 1,600 lbs., 11 year old, bay Thoroughbred/Warmblood cross (with no classification on its horsepower) equine partner. Whatever it takes.
There again, sometimes for a female to compete with males, the advantage comes from her brain rather than any brawn. That’s okay. Danica Patrick is simply the latest heroine to show that the differences between the species are still in all of the right places.
Hail.
Diane Chesebrough is Editor-in-Chief, writer and photographer for SportsJourney Broadcast Network. Accredited media with the NFL, she has been a feature writer for several national magazines/periodicals. Follower her on Twitter: @DiChesebrough