Let's hear it for the girls for a change (Top ten sports men or women)

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	Top ten sports men or women
Date:	09/12/06 (2560 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ten truly amazing women

Disadvantages: They should be households names but the boys always get mor attention

It’s that time of year when the BBC whips up our interest in sport for the annual Sports Personality of the Year awards so I’ve been thinking about what constitutes greatness in sporting pursuits. In the 52 years since the BBC started giving out their annual awards, the Sports Personality of the Year has only gone to a woman ten times – and one of them, Jane Torville, had to share it with her partner.

So far the postings in the category ‘Top Ten sportsmen or sportswomen’ have been characterised by a distinct lack of women – in fact, to date I’ve only seen one list include a single woman (Kelly Holmes). In an attempt to redress the balance, I’ve decided that my review will be a Top Ten made up entirely of women. I’m going to choose to interpret the category in this way and I hope you’ll go along with me.

I’m also going to avoid the temptation to give you ten current sports stars, or ten great athletes – instead I’ll try to spread my choices around a bit amongst different sports and different eras. So these ten won’t be the ten best women of all time by any objective criteria – they’ll just be ten great women that I admire.

As they like to say on the talent shows, I’ll be listing them in ‘no particular order’. Here Goes

1. ~ Martina Navratilova - Tennis ~

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1956, Martina defected to the USA in 1975 – it’s amazing how quickly the US immigration people can get you a Green Card when you’ve just won two grand slam titles. She wasn’t always popular – the slightly nasal whiny voice and the lack of interest in the frilly frocks of the era didn’t endear her to the press but she stuck with it and outlasted all her peers. She finally hung up her racket at Wimbledon this year, just a few months short of 50 years old.

Her Grand Slam performance record was incredible; 18 singles titles, 31 women’s doubles titles and 10 mixed doubles titles. She won Wimbledon no less than 9 times – a record that still stands and that it’s hard to imagine any of the current players - male or female - will match. In total she had more than 340 title wins. For me she marked the change from pretty girly tennis to a more aggressive and muscular game. For me she’ll always be the ultimate tennis player.

2. ~ Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson – Wheelchair Athletics ~

Tanni Grey-Thompson is an outstanding athlete, one who has never let spina bifida and life in a wheelchair come between her and the medal tables. She’s raced at every distance from 100m to the marathon, achieved gold medals at four successive Paralympics (from 1992 to 2004) with a particularly outstanding achievement in Atlanta in 1996 when she won gold in 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m. She has held 30 different speed records and won the London Marathon six times. She’s changed the public attitude to wheelchair athletics from a slightly patronising ‘ah look at all those brave people in their chairs, how plucky’ to a real respect for the achievements of true sportsmen and women. I think she’s a real star.

3. ~ Tanya Streeter – Freediving ~

‘Tanya who?’ I’m guessing that may well have been your reaction. Tanya Streeter is a world champion free-diver (divers who use only their lungs and no breathing equipment) who has broken 9 World Records in her career. Remarkable she’s believed to be the only female to ever break a men's world record in any sport. In 2002 her dive of 160m took the men’s no-limit diving record and in 2003 she also broke the men's variable ballast world record with a dive of (122 m). She can hold her breath for more than six minutes and I suspect she’s half woman, half fish.

In 2002, US magazine ‘Sports Illustrated’ named her the World’s Most Perfect Athlete. She’s also phenomenally pretty with totally impractical waist length blonde hair – if I was in and out of the sea all day I think I’d shave my head.

4. ~ Dame Ellen Macarthur – Round the world yachting~

Yes it was the shaven heads thought that brought me to my next great achiever. Let’s not argue about whether sailing is or isn’t a sport – nobody ever said that Formula one wasn’t a sport just because you get a car to drive in so why do so many people suggest that sailing is somehow less valid than running very fast?

Ellen Macarthur is probably best known for breaking the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe. Note that’s not the record for the fastest woman to go round the world, it’s the fastest FULL STOP. No special treatment asked for or given. As someone who’d gets a touch queasy on the Isle of Wight ferry, I’m just overwhelmed by the idea of anyone having such incredible self-reliance and stamina to sail around the world, let alone be the fastest. She’s amazing. Quite how Andrew Flintoff got the BBC award last year is beyond me – what’s the woman got to do? Go round the world the wrong way, twice, with her eyes closed? OK so personality wise she might be in the Nigel Mansell camp but a taciturn manner never stopped him from winning. And for anyone still doubting her brilliance, she also held top place in Top Gear’s ‘Star in a Reasonably Priced Car’ table.

5. ~ Dame Mary Peters - Pentathlete~

These days we’ve got used to women athletes looking like models (well, maybe not the shot putters but you know what I mean). Mary Peters never looked glam – she looked like a Belfast housewife. She was born in Liverpool in 1939 but moved to Northern Ireland when she was 11. She represented Northern Ireland at every Commonwealth Games from 1958 to 1974 but she’s most famous for wining gold in the pentathlon in the 1972 Olympics – the first big sporting event I can remember. I don’t think pentathlon even exists any more but at the time it was hurdles, shot, high jump, long jump and 200m sprint. Mary Peter’s not only won the gold medal, she shattered both the world and Olympic records.

At a time when the only news that ever seemed to come out of Northern Ireland was bad news, Mary became a symbol of hope and pride – not only for her Northern Ireland but for the entire UK; hers was the only athletics gold for the UK at those games.

6. ~ Nadia Comaneci - Gymnast ~

Comaneci was never the cheeky sprite who won our hearts – that distinction went to waif-like Olga Korbut. Nor was she supremely elegant like Nellie Kim. What she was however was the first officially perfect gymnast. Gymnastics is one sport where I challenge anyone to claim that the women are secondary to the men – come on guys, the fellas are just there to make up the numbers. It’s the tumbling teenies in the leotards that captivate the world.

Comaneci was born in Romania in 1961. From what we later learned about life in Romania under Ceaucescu it’s not surprising that she was known for rarely smiling. She started gymnastics at the age of six and began competing when she was just nine years old. Comaneci stole the show at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. At just 14 years old she became the first gymnast ever to receive a perfect score of 10.0. During the games she picked up a further six perfect scores, became the first Romanian ever to win an all-round title at the Olympics and landed five medals including three gold.

In 2005, the website Fox.com invited nominations for the ‘Greatest Athletes in 150 years of Sports histor’ Comanci came 4th in the final voting, beating both Pele and Mohammed Ali and was the highest ranked sportswoman. So you can conclude that it’s not just me who thinks she walked on water.

7. ~ Sharon Davies – Swimmer ~

Yes, that was a corny link through the water comment that brings me onto my favourite swimmer. By the standards of some of my other choices, maybe Sharon Davies doesn’t quite stand in the same league but as the swimmer on the receiving end of one of sports great injustices, I’m popping her in. She won gold for the 200 and 400m individual medleys in the 1978 Commonwealth Games and took the silver medal in the 400m individual medley in the 1980 Olympics. East German Petra Schneider, who won gold has since admitted she was systematically doped by her trainers to such an extent that Petra is now practically Peter. Despite Schneider’s ‘on the record’ confession, Davies has been unsuccessful in her campaign to get her silver upgraded to gold.

When Davies finally retired from competition she had been a British champion twenty times and broken 200 British records and 5 World Masters records (for the over 30). To younger readers she may be more familiar as ‘Amazon’ in ITV’s Gladiators. She combined glamour and gladiatorial skills and made a good living out of modelling and TV presenting.

8. ~ Rachel Heyhoe-Flint – Cricket and Hockey ~

For me, Rachel H-F embodies an old-style ‘Enid Blyton’ era of women’s sport and a dedication to great teamwork. Predominantly a cricketer – in fact England’s most FAMOUS female cricketer (for most famous, you can probably substitute ONLY famous) she also played hockey for England.

She was born in 1939 and played cricket for England from 1960 to 1982, captaining the side from 1966 to 1978 – how many national captains get such a long run? She was unbeaten in six test series, was the first woman ever to score a six in a test match and in 1976 she set a world record score of 179 runs against Australia after batting for over eight hours to force a draw.

She was admitted to the MCC as one of the first ten women members in 1999 with an honorary life membership and became the first woman elected to the full committee of the MCC in 2004.

9. ~ Jayne Torville ~ Ice Dance ~

Can anyone hear the hauntingly irritating tune of Ravel’s Bolero without being transported back to February 14th 1984 in Sarajevo when Jayne Torville and Christopher Dean pulled off the unthinkable – a Winter Olympics Gold medal for Britain? OK, it had all been hyped up in advance and we were half-expecting it but Olympic games have a habit of throwing up the unexpected. Their Bolero performance was one of the most unusual and creative ice dance performances of all time – something so different that it could have all gone horribly wrong if the judges didn’t like it. Fortunately they did – they scored twelve out of the possible eighteen perfect sixes – including sixes from all nine judges for artistic impression. 24 million Brits watched them on the television.

A Channel Four programme of 100 Greatest Sporting Moments put their win in 8th place, just behind Ali and Forman’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’.
After the rules were relaxed to allow professionals to take place in the games, they returned to the 1994 Winter Olympics and picked up bronze. The nation fumed and claimed they’d been robbed but it was still a remarkable performance. And as viewers of ITV’s ‘Dancing on Ice’ will know, she can still pull out a great performance even now.

10. ~ Denise Lewis – Heptathlete ~

I know I’m going to get slaughtered if I don’t include at least one more recent star of British athletics and there are quite a few to choose from. This was a toss up between Paula Radcliffe, Sally Gunnell, Kelly Homes and Denise Lewis and for me, the heptathlete gets it for the ‘all-roundedness’ of the sport and for having the most astonishing six-pack. She may not be the most successful of the set but being great at seven different events over two days takes a kind of stamina that boggles my mind. She won gold at the Sydney Olypics in 2000 as well as Commonwealth golds in 1994 and 1998. More recently she was ‘robbed’ in the final of the 2004 ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ by Jill Halfpenny of Eastenders.

So that’s my lot; my choice of 10 great sportswomen. I hope you agree with some of the choices and I’d welcome your comments. I rather doubt that Zara Philips has a snowball’s chance in Hades in Sunday’s competition but if you can bring yourself to ring in and vote for her, we’re well overdue for a woman winner.

Summary: My top ten for sporting greats