Athletic Women Blog

Bowling isn't a sport I follow much, but this week it is on my mind, like so many others, thanks to Kelly Kulick and her win Sunday at the PBA Tournament of Champions. A sport that has been dominated by men as much as any other now has its first female champion. Billie Jean King gives voice to the significance of the event: "Kelly Kulick's win today at the PBA Tour's Tournament of Champions is not only historic, it serves as a motivational and inspirational event for girls and women competing at all levels all around the world."

For female athletes, old and young alike, this is a glimpse of the not-so-distant future in sports: women routinely competing against men, often victoriously.

Kulick talks about her big win with CBS's Harry Smith:

Watching the Australian Open this past week has reminded me just how annoying it is that tennis, a sport which has in recent memory generally been fair to female athletes, still makes a fundamental distinction between men's and women's play that blatantly patronizes female athletes. Why do men typically play five-set matches but women always three?

In truth, I don't like five-set matches, at least not for routine tournament play. I'd prefer a system in which all matches are three-set, except maybe the final. But whatever the system, have it the same for men and women both.

Rant over, now an aside. This morning I watched Serena Williams defeat Samantha Stosur, avenging her loss from when they last met. Great tennis players they are, but I think an arm-wrestling match might be even more entertaining—these two athletes have some guns!

In a recent interview, challenger Marloes Coenen makes clear that she is prepared to do whatever it takes to beat 145-pound champion Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos in their January 30 fight on Showtime: "I will not step aside for anyone, and I will definitely not step aside for Cyborg. If she will come out banging, I will do the same."

And if that's not enough to whet your appetite, this promo, which includes a complete recap of Coenen's fight with Roxanne Modaferri, should do the trick:

Another look—this time thanks to Visa—at some of the world's best female athletes preparing for the 2010 Winter Olympics, three members of "Team Visa":

Julia Mancuso



Lindsey Jacobellis



Angela Ruggiero




Something else Visa wants you to know:

mention that if they use their Visa card between now and February 28th, 2010, they have the opportunity to be able to show their children their favorite role models in person… after they win a free trip to the Olympics for life!

Official Rules

Thanks to Under Armour, we get to see just how hard ski racer Lindsey Vonn is working to prepare herself for the 2010 Olympics. Here she is a role model for not only her hard work but her insight. Vonn gets it—she understands that you must build your body for your sport, and that starts in the gym, most often with strength training:

In an interview full of revelations not altogether surprising, yet nonetheless disturbing, world-champion hurdler Jana Rawlinson (nee Pittman) tells Woman's Day that in a span of only 14 months she got breast implants and then had them removed. It is a classic example of what is perhaps best called the ugly paradox. Snippets from her interview throw into relief this paradox:

"When I looked in the mirror I just saw muscled arms, broad shoulders and big, strong legs," she says. "These are assets I need to run well, but they didn’t make me feel like an attractive woman.

"There are a couple of girls – who I won’t name – in world athletics who are Olympic champions, but they look like men – and I don’t want to be like that. I feel masculine enough as it is. That’s what pushed me into getting the first surgery for the enhancement."

While female athletes (and women generally) feel out of place in athletic bodies there can be little hope of raising the status of women in sport: it's hard to be a superior athlete without an athletic body. Thus by needlessly holding herself back the female athlete gives comfort to those who view her and her sport as inferior (always DIII to men's DI). I sometimes see talk of troubled trends in women's sports (persistent problems, in truth), yet here is the too often ignored root of it all. Progress will remain arduous until this last, most inimical hurdle is cleared.

I'm glad that Rawlinson decided to have the implants removed. I only hope that the deeper lesson doesn't endure unlearned:

Jana’s breasts went to a DD when she was expecting her son Cornelis, 3, and while she was breastfeeding. "Then I felt like a different person, soft and womanly, and I absolutely fell in love with my big boobs."