ESPN didn’t break into programming last week when Milka Duno became the third woman to secure a spot in this weekend’s Indianapolis 500. Sports bars didn’t start buzzing. Few newspapers gave it much notice.
Such is the state of women in athletics these days, when Duno can join Sarah Fisher and Danica Patrick in the field for Sunday’s race and barely register on the sporting radar. Merely being there suddenly is about as newsworthy as a pit stop.
And it’s not enough for Patrick, who last month became the first woman to win an IndyCar race with a victory in Japan.
“I really, really like my chances,” Patrick told Sports Illustrated as she prepared for the Indy 500. “And man, how huge would it be if I could win the thing?”
Undoubtedly huge, but with the increased coverage of women in sports also comes increased scrutiny.
We’re not even halfway through the year, and already the fairer sex has filled the sports pages with supersize headlines usually reserved for their male counterparts.
RedEye revisits the best and worst of women’s sports so far in 2008.
SO GOOD:
* Candace Parker (above), Naperville’s favorite basketball star, broke an 11-year-old record Saturday for most points in a WNBA rookie debut. With 34 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists, she darn near had a triple-double. Not bad for a woman who won her second consecutive NCAA title with Tennessee in April.
* Lorena Ochoa, the world’s top-ranked women’s golfer, has won six of the nine LPGA tournaments she has played this year, drawing comparisons to Tiger Woods. The Mexico native was also named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine earlier in May.
SO SAD:
* Marion Jones (above), once the darling of track and field, reported to federal prison in March to serve a 6-month sentence for lying under oath about using performance-enhancing drugs and playing a role in a check fraud scam.
* Tonya Harding went straight to paperback with April’s release of “The Tonya Tapes,” an authorized biography. The figure skater-turned-boxer who has been involved in knee-clubbing, sex-tape and hubcap-assault scandals gives her side of the stories. How tragic is Tonya? Some politicians are now calling the strategy of destroying their main competitor “The Tonya Harding Option.” Ouch.
SO LONG:
* Annika Sorenstam (above) might not be the top women’s golfer in the world anymore, but she’s probably the most famous after racking up $22 million in career prize money. The Swede, still in prime golf territory at 37, shocked the LPGA last week when she announced this will be her final season on the tour.
* Justine Henin became the first woman to retire from tennis as the reigning top player in the world. The Belgian won seven Grand Slam singles titles before abruptly walking away last week. “This is the end of a child’s dream,” Henin said at her news conference. “It is my life as a woman that starts now.”
