10 Queens of the Athletic Realm

The Dutch track-and-field star was the first woman to win four gold medals at a single Olympics (1948), and she also set world records in seven events. Olympic rules limited Blankers-Koen to participating in only three individual events at the 1948 Games. She won the 100-metre sprint by a comfortable margin, but in the 80-metre hurdles she had to overcome both a slow start and a bumped hurdle in order to secure a narrow victory. Despite winning gold in her first two events, an emotionally spent Blankers-Koen was not confident going into the 200-metre event. Feeling both pressured to win and reviled for even participating, she burst into tears and told her husband that she wanted to withdraw. She reconsidered, however, and went on to win the final by a decisive margin, despite muddy conditions. In her last event, the 4 × 100 relay, she received the baton in fourth place and caught the lead runner at the finish line. Nicknamed the “Flying Housewife” by the press, Blankers-Koen received a hero’s welcome when she returned to the Netherlands.

Not only did the Romanian gymnast become the first athlete to score a perfect 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event, she also won gold medals for the balance beam, uneven bars, and the all-around individual competition at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. The song used to accompany her floor exercises was retitled “Nadia’s Theme” and became an international hit, winning a Grammy award in 1977.

This American superstar excelled in basketball, track and field, and even golf. At the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, she won two gold medals, but she was deprived of a third in the high jump only because she had used the then-unorthodox Western roll to achieve the highest jump. Later, on the golf links, she won 17 straight amateur championships and became the first American holder of the British Ladies Amateur championship. As a pro, she was the leading money winner on the women’s professional golf circuit from 1948 to 1951.

The Australian swimmer was the first woman swimmer to win gold medals in three consecutive Olympic Games (1956, 1960, 1964). From 1956 to 1964 she broke the women’s world record for the 100-metre freestyle race nine successive times. Her mark of 58.9 seconds, established on February 29, 1964, at North Sydney, was unbroken until January 8, 1972, when Shane Gould, a fellow Australian, achieved 58.5 at Sydney.

The German tennis player dominated women’s tennis like few others in the history of the sport. At age 13, she earned an international ranking, and in 1987, at age 17, she defeated another superstar, Martina Navratilova, en route to a French Open victory. In her career, she won 22 Grand Slams, including 7 Wimbledon championships, and she even captured Olympic gold.

The American soccer player become the first international star of the women’s game, leading the U.S. national team to World Cup championships in 1991 and 1999 and Olympic gold in 1996 and 2004. She also led her collegiate team, the University of North Carolina, to four consecutive national championships. Twice named the Women’s World Player of the Year, her #9 jerseys became top sellers.

The Norwegian-born American was a world champion figure skater who won Olympic gold and went on to achieve success as a professional skater and actress. At age 10 she won the Norwegian national figure-skating championship, and in 1924 she competed in the Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix, France. Coached by Swedish Olympic medalist Gillis Grafström, she transformed a predictable series of colorless exercises into a spectacular and popular exhibition. The first woman figure skater to wear short skirts above the knee, she had great spinning ability, incorporating 19 different spins into her programs. Her medal record consisted of Norwegian national championships from 1922 to 1934, 6 European titles (1931–1936), 10 world titles (1927–36), and 3 gold medals in the Winter Olympic Games of 1928, 1932, and 1936.

The American athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, considered by many to be the greatest female athlete ever, became the first participant in the heptathlon to score more than 7,000 points. In 1998 at Seoul, she won Olympic gold with 7,291 points, the fourth time she set a world record in the event, and in 1992 she became the first athlete to win Olympic gold in the heptathlon in consecutive Olympics.

Where Steffi Graf dominated women’s tennis in the 1980s and 1990s, Navratilova was the dominant player of the 1970s and 1980s. Where to start with Navratilova is difficult, but here’s one tidbit: beginning with the 1983 Wimbledon title, she won six consecutive Grand Slam women’s singles titles, and in 1982 and 1983 she won 176 of 190 matches. During her career, she won a whopping 59 Grand Slam titles: 18 singles, 31 doubles, and 10 mixed doubles. She retired from singles play after the 1994 season having won a total of 167 titles.

The Swedish-born American golfer Annika Sörenstam dominated women’s golf in the 1990s and early 2000s. Sörenstam was the European tour’s Rookie of the Year in 1993 and, with three top-10 finishes on the LPGA tour in 1994, was named that tour’s Rookie of the Year as well. In 1995 she posted her first LPGA tour victory at the U.S. Women’s Open and went on to win Player of the Year honors, a feat she would repeat seven additional times in the following 10 years. In 1998 Sörenstam became the first player on the LPGA tour to finish the season with a scoring average below 70 (69.99). In 2001 she became the first woman to shoot a round of 59 in a professional tournament, and in 2002 she won 11 events–the most in the LPGA in nearly 40 years. The following year she also became the first woman to play in a men’s PGA event since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945.