50 Fun Facts About Women in Sports

The 1973 Battle of the Sexes match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs was played in which arena?

The crowd of 30,472 was still the largest ever to watch a tennis match in the United States four decades later, and Riggs was paid $50,000 to wear a Sugar Daddy jacket he ditched after three games.

Which reigning champion did 55-year-old Bobby Riggs rout 6-2, 6-1 in 1973's 'Mother's Day Massacre'?

Court took a $20,000 guarantee for the match, more than she earned for winning that year’s first two majors combined; her loss is what convinced King to accept Riggs’s challenge.

After a Billie Jean King boycott threat, which tournament first offered equal prize money in 1973?

King had won the 1972 title and received $15,000 less than men's champion Ilie Năstase; Wimbledon and the French Open did not follow until 2007.

Title IX, the 1972 law barring sex discrimination in federally funded education, was signed by which president?

At the signing he talked mostly about desegregation busing; the law's 37 opening words were written by Senator Birch Bayh.

In 2002 Congress renamed Title IX in honor of which congresswoman, one of its authors?

Mink, of Hawaii, was the first woman of color elected to Congress; the renaming followed her death that year.

At which 2017 tournament did Serena Williams win her record 23rd major while roughly eight weeks pregnant?

She revealed the pregnancy that April with a Snapchat photo captioned '20 weeks', which she later said she posted by accident.

Serena's 23rd major broke whose Open Era record of 22 singles titles?

Graf's 22nd and last came at the 1999 French Open, after which she retired at 30; Court's all-time 24 includes titles from before the Open Era.

When Wimbledon paid equal prize money in 2007, Venus Williams matched which men's champion's cheque?

Venus had forced the issue with a 2006 essay in The Times accusing Wimbledon of being on the 'wrong side of history'; the French Open matched the change a day after Wimbledon announced it.

How many Olympic medals did Simone Biles have after the Paris Games?

Add her 30 World Championship medals and she has 41 at the two biggest competitions; five skills across vault, beam and floor are named after her.

Biles withdrew at Tokyo 2020 with 'the twisties', a sudden loss of what?

Gymnasts lose track of where they are mid-twist, which is dangerous on skills that end in a blind landing; she returned to win beam bronze on the final day.

The vault named the Biles II is a Yurchenko entry into what, a skill no woman had completed before her?

It was given a provisional 6.6 difficulty value when she debuted it in 2021, making it the most valuable vault in women's gymnastics.

Megan Rapinoe knelt during the anthem before a 2016 NWSL match in solidarity with which athlete?

She said that as a gay American she knew what it meant to look at the flag and not have it protect all her liberties; the Washington Spirit later played the anthem before players took the field to prevent her repeating it.

How many Women's World Cups had the U.S. women's national team won by the end of 2025?

The titles came in 1991, 1999, 2015 and 2019, and the team added a fifth Olympic gold in Paris in 2024 under coach Emma Hayes.

How many attended the 1999 Women's World Cup final at the Rose Bowl, then a record crowd?

The stadium's 90,000 seats sold out; the game went scoreless through extra time before the U.S. beat China 5-4 on penalties.

In the 1999 final shootout, which U.S. goalkeeper saved China's third kick, from Liu Ying?

Replays showed she stepped off her line before the kick, a violation that went uncalled; Brandi Chastain then converted the winner and pulled off her jersey.

In February 2022 the USWNT settled its equal-pay lawsuit against U.S. Soccer for how much?

The deal also required men's and women's players to be paid equally regardless of prize money, the first such arrangement anywhere in the world.

Whose 159th goal in 2013 broke Mia Hamm's international scoring record?

Hamm debuted for the national team at 15, at the 1987 Olympic Festival, and was twice FIFA World Player of the Year.

The first WNBA game, in June 1997, saw the Los Angeles Sparks host which team?

The visitors won 67–57; the league had been approved by the NBA Board of Governors on April 24, 1996 and started with eight teams.

Which franchise won the first four WNBA championships, every title from 1997 to 2000?

The team folded in 2008; the Minnesota Lynx and Seattle Storm have since matched its four titles.

Who was the WNBA's first president, serving from its founding until 2005?

She later became commissioner of the Big East Conference; the league did not have a 'commissioner' title until Engelbert in 2019.

In March 2024 Caitlin Clark became NCAA Division I's all-time leading scorer, passing which LSU legend?

She finished at Iowa with 3,951 points, then went first overall to the Indiana Fever and won Rookie of the Year with 66 of 67 votes.

In 2025 the WNBA added its first expansion team since 2008. Which was it?

Owned by the Warriors and paying a reported $50 million fee, the new club set attendance records in its first season; Toronto and Portland followed in 2026.

Before her golf career, Babe Didrikson won two golds and a silver at the 1932 Olympics in which sport?

She won the 80 m hurdles and javelin and took silver in the high jump; earlier that year she won the AAU team title as the only member of her team.

At which 1945 tournament did Didrikson Zaharias become the only woman to make a regular PGA Tour cut?

She shot 76–76 to qualify; no woman played a PGA Tour event again until Annika Sörenstam at the 2003 Colonial.

George Zaharias, whom Babe married in 1938, was a professional what?

She kept his name for the rest of a career that included 10 LPGA majors before her death from colon cancer at 45.

Who holds the record for most LPGA Tour wins, with 88?

That is more than anyone has won on the men's PGA Tour either; she was also runner-up 93 times and the first LPGA player to earn $1 million.

Which childhood disease left triple 1960 Olympic champion Wilma Rudolph in a leg brace until age 12?

She was the 20th of 22 children and made weekly bus trips to Nashville for treatment; in Rome she became the first American woman to win three track golds at one Games.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee still holds a world record she set at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. In which event?

Her 7,291 points have not been beaten; she also won long jump gold in Seoul, and did it all with severe asthma.

Joyner-Kersee, born in East St. Louis in 1962, was named after which First Lady?

Her brother Al Joyner won Olympic triple jump gold in 1984 and married sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, making the two women sisters-in-law.

Florence Griffith Joyner died in her sleep in 1998 at 38 from what?

The seizure was caused by a congenital brain abnormality; Flo-Jo was as famous for six-inch nails and one-legged racing suits as for her 10.49 and 21.34.

Nadia Comăneci's first perfect 10 at the 1976 Montreal Olympics came on which apparatus?

She earned six more 10s in Montreal and three golds; the score came during the team compulsories on July 18.

How did Comăneci's perfect 10 appear on Montreal's scoreboard, which could not display it?

The scoreboard maker had been told a 10 was impossible; at 14 she remains the youngest Olympic all-around champion, a record the age rules now make unbreakable.

Katie Ledecky won her first Olympic gold at 15 in London in which event?

She won by more than four seconds and has defended that title at every Games since, becoming both its youngest and oldest champion.

How many Olympic gold medals did Katie Ledecky hold after the Paris Games?

Her 14 total Olympic medals are also the most by any American woman, and she holds the long-course world records in the two longest freestyle events.

Lindsey Vonn's 82 World Cup wins were a women's record until January 2023, when which skier passed her?

Vonn retired in 2019, then returned in November 2024 at 40 after a knee replacement stopped the pain that had ended her career.

In which alpine discipline did Vonn become the first American woman to win Olympic gold, in 2010?

She beat rival Julia Mancuso by 0.56 seconds at Whistler in her first event of the Games.

Danica Patrick's only IndyCar win, the first by a woman, came in 2008 in which country?

The Indy Japan 300 at Motegi; a year later she finished third at the Indianapolis 500, still the best result there by a woman.

In 2013 Patrick became the first woman to win the pole position for which race?

She finished eighth, the best result by a woman in that race, after dropping from third in the final three laps.

Under what bib number did Kathrine Switzer run the 1967 Boston Marathon?

She entered as 'K.V. Switzer'; her nonprofit for women runners is named 261 Fearless, and she ran Boston again at 70 in 2017.

Which Boston race official famously charged at Switzer mid-race in 1967 and tried to rip off her number?

Her boyfriend Tom Miller, a hammer thrower, shoved him aside; women were not officially admitted to Boston until 1972.

In 1926 Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across what?

She went from Cap Gris-Nez to Kingsdown in 14 hours 34 minutes and came home to a Manhattan ticker-tape parade of two million people.

In 1956 Althea Gibson became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam tournament. Which one?

She then won Wimbledon and the US Nationals in both 1957 and 1958, received her Wimbledon trophy from Queen Elizabeth II, and got New York's second-ever ticker-tape parade for a Black American after Jesse Owens.

Charlotte Cooper became the first individual female Olympic champion in 1900 in which sport?

Cooper was already a three-time Wimbledon champion; sailor Hélène de Pourtalès had won gold two months earlier as part of a Swiss crew.

Women's boxing made its Olympic debut at which Games?

Three weight classes were contested and Britain's Nicola Adams took the first gold, in the flyweight division.

Who won the first women's WrestleMania main event in 2019 over Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair?

It was Winner Takes All for both the Raw and SmackDown Women's titles; WWE had run its first all-women pay-per-view, Evolution, the previous October.

Which musher won four Iditarods between 1986 and 1990, the first to take four of five straight?

She had to withdraw in 1985 after a moose killed two of her dogs; Alaska now marks Susan Butcher Day on the first Saturday of March.

Before MMA, Ronda Rousey won a 2008 Olympic bronze, the first medal by an American woman in which sport?

She became the UFC's first female signing and its inaugural women's bantamweight champion, and in 2018 the first woman in its Hall of Fame.

Naomi Osaka, the first Asian player ranked world No. 1, has a father from which country?

He taught his daughters tennis after watching the Williams sisters at the 1999 French Open, copying Richard Williams's plan; at Tokyo 2020 she became the first tennis player to light the Olympic cauldron.

Coco Gauff's second major title, the 2025 French Open, came with a final win over which world No. 1?

It was the first French Open singles title for an American since 2015; Gauff had first made headlines at 15 as Wimbledon's youngest qualifier in 2019.

The women's marathon was first run at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Who won it?

Her Boston Marathon time stayed the fastest by an American woman there for 28 years.