Sports Archives - Page 13 of 13

Herma Szabo

Herma Szabo is considered to be one of the most decorated figure skaters of all time, and was the 1924 Olympic champion and a five-time world champion (1922–1926). She is one of four women to have won the World title five times, the others being Sonja Henie, Carol Heiss, and Michelle Kwan.She also won two world titles in pairs with Ludwig Wrede in 1925 and 1927. She is the only skater to hold a simultaneous world titles in pairs and singles.
At the Olympics, she helped modernize women’s figure skating by wearing a skirt cut above the knee, which allowed for more freedom of movement in the legs. Despite this, Sonja Henie is usually credited with being the first to wear short skirts in competition.
She retired in 1927 after losing the World Championships to Henie. The decision was controversial because the judging panel consisted of three Norwegians – who all placed their fellow Norwegian Henie first – a German, and an Austrian – both of whom placed Szabo first. This left Sabo disillusioned with the sport and she never skated again. Henie offered a rematch years later, but Szabo refused. Despite the bitter end to her career, she was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1982.

Mevia

Poet Juvenal recounts a tale of a venatrix (hunter) named Mevia who was known for killing Tuscan boars and holding spears “like a man” in her right hand with her breast uncovered. It is unclear if this was a fictional creation or based on a real woman.

Helene Hathaway Britton

Helene Hathaway Robison Britton was the first woman to own a Major League Baseball franchise. She owned the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team of the National League from 1911 through 1916, having inherited the franchise upon the death of her father, Frank, and uncle, Stanley Robison.
Britton attended National League owner meetings where other owners spent time trying to persuade her to sell the team because she was a woman. She sold the team in 1917.

Vera Menchik

Vera Menchik astounded the chess world by defeating high-level male opponents in the 1920s and ’30s. In 1927, Menchik won the first Women’s World Chess Championship. Routinely winning women’s matches, she started playing in male tournaments, becoming the first woman to do so. She played in more than three dozen men’s tournaments, beating many top players; newspapers around the world covered her matches. She was killed in 1944, during a a Nazi air raid on London, when a bomb hit the home where she lived with her mother and sister. She was only 38.

Astrid Gøssel

Astrid Gøssel was a music educator who worked for many years as a movement educator. Based on her work with children’s sensory-motor and rhythmic-musical development, she developed a pedagogical method she called “the guided and motivated movement game”.
Her practice was based on a holistic view of a “unity between learning, understanding and creative activity”, and between a child’s motor, rhythmic and other musical development. Studying young children’s spontaneous play, Gøssel focused on the importance of play for the young child’s physical and mental development and emphasized that limiting opportunities for play also limits development. She was also inspired by jazz music, its rhythmic expression and improvisation, and studied different forms of movement across various cultures.

Angela Madsen

Angela Madsen was an American Paralympian athlete in both rowing and track and field. In her long career, Madsen moved from race rowing to ocean challenges before switching in 2011 to track and field, winning a bronze medal in the shot put at the 2012 Summer Paralympics. Madsen and her teammate Helen Taylor were the first women to row across the Indian Ocean. She died in June 2020 while attempting a solo row from Los Angeles to Honolulu.

Libby Riddles

Libby Riddles is an American dog musher, who became the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race on March 20, 1985. After finishing 18th and 20th in the 1980 and 1981 Iditarod races, she mad ethe decision to breed her own sled dogs. She later moved to Teller, Alaska where she started breeding and training dogs.
Riddles wrote three books about her experiences and became a professional speaker. In 2007, her Iditarod Trail Race victory was declare a “Hall of Fame Moment” by the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame.

Alice Greenough Orr

Alice Greenough Orr went from being Montana rancher’s daughter to an internationally renowned rodeo performer and organizer. She was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame in Wolf Point, Montana. She is considered “hands down the first rodeo queen.”

“The Oriental Witches”

1960s Japanese national women’s volleyball team, who dominated the 1964 Olympics (the first time volleyball was an Olympic sport)