Women's Sports

This has been a season of firsts for the WNBA. For instance, this past Saturday, the WNBA made history with its first outdoor game. Then, last night, the WNBA had its first brawl. The entire incident is of course already up on YouTube, so in case you missed it:



Not pretty, but not the worst thing that could happen either. And I thought Lisa Leslie handled herself with class. She was visibly upset after the game, for all the right reasons.

Here is Dara Torres on the Tonight Show last week (this is my first embedded Hulu clip, so I hope it works for everyone):



[Update: It appears that embedded Hulu clips don't show up for everyone, so please use this link if you're unable to view the clip embedded in this post.]

Great clip, but I am a little tired of the questions about steroids, which of course come up again here, and I think it's unfair that Dara gets hit with so many of them. Indeed, the quest to eliminate performance-enhancing drugs from sports is starting to look more like a witch-hunt to me. Innocent athletes—like Torri Edwards—have already been hurt by it. And the truth hardly anyone acknowledges is, the terminology and the science are too imprecise to always make an accurate judgment about which athletes have been "artificially" enhanced and which have not. Furthermore, the suspicious mindset so common now underestimates what is possible with, for example, intense strength training, which can raise the body's level of the muscle-building hormone testosterone substantially. (And yes, this is true for women just as well as men.)

Dara is a remarkable athlete, a role model for women in general, and an inspiration to women (and men) over 40. Can we leave it at that for now?

Steve Bierley comes off a bit gloom and doom, but he does have some interesting things to say about Venus and Serena Williams, and the state of the WTA Tour in general. In particular:

The Williamses raised the level of play to new heights at the turn of the millennium, yet their athleticism, combined with ever developing racket and string technology, has become counter-productive.

And later on:

...perhaps the more pertinent factor is that the intrinsic physical demands of the baseline power game are, at the highest level, beyond the athletic capabilities of the majority of current women players.

There's no denying that Venus and Serena are the standout athletes on the tour. The rest of the women continue to lag behind, this was made obvious once again last week. And frankly, the physical conditioning that most of the other women undertake now is too lightweight to even begin to make up the difference. Once that is addressed, though, the imbalance will start righting itself (furthermore, injuries will become less of a problem).

Venus and Serena should be thanked for raising the level of play so much. Their remarkable athleticism has made the sport infinitely more exciting. But now it's time for the rest of the tour to catch up.

This is a promo for a Real Sports segment about the fight to save Olympic softball:



I was already aware that softball was gone from the Olympics after 2008, but I didn't know that anti-American sentiment may have been a factor in its elimination. In any case, the loss of Olympic softball is a blow to women's sports, and a particularly hurtful one at that—something Jessica Mendoza's face conveys tellingly here.

The world of women's sports provided plenty of entertainment and drama this holiday weekend. Some highlights:

Venus Williams won her fifth Wimbledon singles title in an all-Williams final, and only a short while later, she teamed up with sister Serena to take the doubles title as well.

While everyone is talking about Michael Phelps, Katie Hoff is quietly preparing for what could be an equally impressive Olympics.

What can you say about 41-year-old Dara Torres? Other than she is simply incredible.

Lisa Leslie got an early start on her birthday celebration (she turns 36 today) with a Sparks win last night over the Phoenix Mercury. Leslie, one of the most dominant athletes of her generation, regardless of gender, also has a new book out, Don't Let The Lipstick Fool You: The Making of a Champion.

Unfortunately, Adriane Blewitt didn't make the Olympic team. But if you're familiar with Adriane's story, you know she's already a winner.

There is something I should have mentioned in yesterday's post but didn't, because I didn't realize it at the time. That being, Aneta Florczyk finished her Dancing on Ice stint on May 17. This means she only had a week to focus her attention on preparing for the World's Strongest Woman competition, which makes her fourth title grab that much more impressive.

This piece at ABCNews.com rightly calls attention to how absurdly thin Angelina Jolie is in Wanted, and then it bothers to ask if that is really a good thing. The answer seems self-evident to me. No, it isn't. True, the image a rail-thin action heroine projects is harmful to young women, which the article seems to concede, but what is more, it makes for a bad movie, perhaps a risible one, too. (It's hard to imagine her arm not snapping if she were to strike someone, and harder still to imagine that the blow would actually inflict damage on the other person.) This isn't a new problem, either. Jolie was a letdown as Lara Croft, for instance—she even complained about the intense physical training and the (very slight) effect it had on her body. Thus I was disinclined to go see Wanted, the type of movie I'd normally rush right out to see, and it appears I was smart to stay home.

I should have noted this earlier. Aneta Florczyk has once again earned the title of World's Strongest Woman, winning her fourth championship this year at the contest held May 24 in Tczew, Poland. During a break in the competition, Aneta entertained the crowd by pressing a man over her head—for reps:



And earlier this year, Aneta competed on the Polish version of Dancing on Ice, where she made it all the way to the semifinals. Aneta seems intent on smashing stereotypes, and she's doing a good job of it. Showing us that a woman can be extremely powerful, far stronger than most men in fact, yet still graceful and alluring in that ineffable way a beautiful woman simply is: