Pherenike of Rhodes

Pherenike of Rhodes: The Ancient Greek Mom Who Risked All to Guarantee Her Son's Olympic Glory - The Pappas Post

The determination of the Greek mother is, perhaps, best exemplified in the story of Pherenike, a proud ancient version of the modern-day soccer mom, who watched her children grow into strong athletes— all the way to Olympic glory.

Against all of the rules that barred women from participating in any way, shape or form during the Olympics, she became her son’s trainer and took him all the way to the 94th Olympiad of 404 BC where she donned a male trainer’s tunic and disguised her face to look more manly.

She risked her own life while doing this as women caught at or even near Olympia during the sacred rituals and athletic competitions, were thrown off the top of a hill and into a river to their deaths.

In his boxing match, Peisirodos did his family proud, and won Olympic laurels— the ancient equivalent to a Gold Medal. Pherenike was ecstatic and lost in the excitement of the moment, leapt into the ring to congratulate her son.

Read more of the story of Pherenike of Rhodes here and at Ancient Olympics

Heraean Games: Female Olympics

When Ancient Greece Banned Women From Olympics, They Started Their Own | Atlas Obscura

Much like their modern counterpart, the Olympic Games in ancient Greece wasn't exactly a level playing field for women. It's true that women of all ages were allowed to enjoy the festivities and exhilarating athletic events in cities throughout the Peloponnese states, including Delos and Athens. But the Games in Olympia in the land of Elis—the city where the Olympics originated—retained its traditional, sacred ban of women. Elis decreed that if a married woman (unmarried women could watch) was caught present at the Olympic Games she would be cast down from Mount Typaeum and into the river flowing below, according to Greek geographer and travel writer Pausanias.

During these ancient times, women lived much shorter lives, were excluded from political decision-making and religious rites, and were forced into early marriages after giving birth to several children. Despite the societal inequalities and oppression, women in Greece wanted to play—so they started their own Olympics called the Heraean Games.

“Every fourth year,” Pausanias wrote in 175 A.D., “there is woven for Hera a robe by the Sixteen women, and the same also hold games called Heraea.”

Read More here: Atlas Obscura

Speed Sisters

From the Vancouver Sun:

Director Amber Fares is the first to admit that she knew absolutely nothing about racing before she met the Speed Sisters in late 2009. An Alberta-born filmmaker now living in Ramallah, Palestine, Fares was introduced to the first all-women racing team in the Middle East by a friend at the British consulate in Jerusalem. The consulate hired her documentary film company SocDoc Studios to create a program of video clips called “Speed Sisters.” At the time, there were two or three women racing an old donated BMW that they had souped up to get track-ready.

“We were involved in doing these clips and it wasn’t long before we were like, ‘Wow! This is really interesting. There’s a larger documentary here,’” Fares says. Her relationship with the team went on from there and she has been filming the Speed Sisters regularly for a feature-length documentary since the racing season started in March 2010.

Women Boxers Go Olympic

From ESPN:

Women's boxing is an Olympic sport for the first time, with 36 fighters in three weight classes competing to make history with its first medals. A sport long derided as a sideshow by elitists has been hotly competitive for several years, and the debut Olympic tournament is expected to bring worldwide attention and cachet to boxing, which has slipped into secondary status after decades as a main Olympic event.

Boxing joined the Olympic program in St. Louis in 1904, but was the only Summer Games sport without a female analogue until 2009, when the IOC added a women's competition to the London program. Supporters had argued for the addition for several years.

Matadora: Lupita Lopez

From NPR:

Last Sunday, a 32-year-old bullfighter named Lupita Lopez appeared in Mexico City's Plaza Mexico — the largest bullring in the world — and was inducted into the tiny sorority of matadoras, or professional female bullfighters. Lopez, 32, has wanted to be a bullfighter since she was 11.

Growing up in the city of Merida, on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, Lopez decided she wanted to be a bullfighter when she was 11. During her long apprenticeship, she faced the challenges of a young woman entering the quintessentially male domain of bulls.

Boxing's Most Celebrated: Hattie Leslie

From On Milwaukee:

More than a century ago, when the Police Gazette was the Sports Illustrated of its time, that title belonged to Mrs. Hattie Leslie, the first publicly recognized women's boxing champion, whose reign and life ended at age 23 in a Milwaukee hotel room.

Hattie won her championship in a match against Alice Leary on Sept. 16, 1888. The bout was held covertly in a barn near Buffalo, N.Y., Leslie's hometown, for the American women's title and a purse of $250.

What the New York Times decried as a "disgraceful prize fight" lasted seven rounds, or about one-half hour.about one-half hour. The almost 5-foot-8, 175-pound Leslie had 20 pounds on Leary, and battered her until the latter's corner threw in the towel to end it.

Over the next four years, Mrs. Leslie -- admiringly described in the Gazette as "the "famous Amazon who has made quite a name and gained considerable reputation as a boxer" and "a tall, powerful specimen of humanity" -- had a standing challenge out to defend her title against all comers. But since female boxers were only slightly more plentiful at the time than one-legged clog dancers, Hattie spent most of her time demonstrating her ring skills on the vaudeville circuit instead of in real fights.

Details of the match: Alice Leary vs Hattie Leslie

Website article: Old-Time Female Combatants

Sport: Caster Can Run

From CBS News:

South African running phenomenon Caster Semenya, who blew past her competition at the Berlin world championships last August, has been cleared to compete as a woman - nearly a year after controversial gender tests put her career on hold. Semenya, 19, has not run competitively for 11 months. During that time she underwent a battery of psychological, gynecological and endocrine tests.

Awesome Land: Women of Dirt

From the Seattle Times:

In the final moments of "Awesome Land: Women of Dirt," two of the professional female cyclists championed by this unabashedly enthusiastic sports documentary go tearing down a winding, bumpy trail in a forest for the sheer pleasure of it. Afterward, in the waning afternoon light, they head to a beach where they disappear beneath a gathering wave because, well, it feels good.

Mountain-biking documentaries are hardly rare, yet rarely do they convey the kind of heightened experience of being alive that the women athletes in "Awesome Land" so clearly feel. Many of the cyclists shown engaging in their extreme sport are past and present champions of women's downhill racing and related competitions in dirt jumping and free riding. But, on film at least, they spend little time talking about their personal victories, preferring to celebrate their inclusion in an activity gradually gaining respect in a male-dominated field.

Ballina Jockey Club's Hall Of Fame

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Three inaugural inductees into Ballina Jockey Club's Hall Of Fame will be announced today at the Iris Nielsen Ladies Invitation meeting.

Ballina CEO Sarah Wills said the trio were all former female riders.

The Iris Nielsen, in honour of the late rider who died in a race fall at Lismore in March 1988, continues to grow in stature.

With prizemoney lifted from $27,000 to $50,000, the line-up of riders includes Clare Lindop, the first Australian female jockey to ride in the Melbourne Cup and winner of the Victoria Derby aboard Rebel Raider, New Zealand's Sam Pratt, last season's leading stakes earner in her homeland, and prolific winner Kathy O'Hara.

Betty Wilson

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Australian cricket is mourning the death of Betty Wilson, the country's greatest women's player, aged 88.

Wilson was a household name in post-war Australia and her remarkable on-field deeds matched those of her male contemporaries Keith Miller, Ray Lindwall and Lindsay Hassett.

In 11 Test matches spanning a decade she averaged 57.46 as a batter, with three centuries, and took 68 wickets with her offbreaks, at an average of 11.80.

Wilson, dubbed "the female Bradman", had an immediate impact in her international career, as she made 90 and took 10 wickets for the game in her debut, against New Zealand in 1948.

A decade later she became the first Test cricketer - male or female - to make a century and claim 10 wickets in the game, against England.

Rena "Rusty" Kanokogi

From Associated Press:

Rena "Rusty" Kanokogi, known as the "Mother of Judo" partly for her role in bringing women's judo to the Olympic Games, has died. She was 74.

Her daughter, Jean Kanokogi, said she died Saturday at Lutheran Medical Center in New York following a three-year battle with leukemia.

Rusty Kanokogi competed in judo against men in the 1950s and helped create the first Women's World Judo Championships, which were held in 1980 in New York City.

"Rusty was the Gloria Steinem of judo, and women's judo would not be where it is today without her relentless efforts," Corinne Shigemoto, the U.S. team's coach at the 1996 Olympics, said in a USA Judo statement on Sunday.

Kanokogi coached the U.S. women's judo team at the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea in 1988 — the year the sport was added to the games, according to Colorado Springs, Colo.-based USA Judo. She worked as a judo commentator for NBC during the network's coverage of the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.

Jean Kanokogi said her mother worked hard to provide opportunities for women to compete in judo after she was stripped of a gold medal she won at the 1959 New York State YMCA Judo Championships. Women weren't allowed to compete.

Female Warrior: Rosi Sexton

From Mail Online:

Britain's top fighter - and one who is extremely comfortable in women's clothing - says it is a mental thing. 'I just find it a fascinating insight into human technology,' says Rosi Sexton, currently rated number one woman in the world at bantamweight (125lb) level.

'I do it because I find it is one of the most technical sports in the world.' And Rosi debunks pretty much every stereotype in the book. She is actually Dr Rosi Sexton, 32, a Cambridge graduate with a First-class maths degree, a PhD and a four-year-old son.

Since turning professional in 2002, she has won all except one of her MMA fights, her latest triumph being a first-round thrashing of an American challenger in Florida four months ago.

Ladies, shake hands and come out fighting!

Yes, women's boxing is to make its debut at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

More from IPS News:

Thanks to Clint Eastwood's blockbuster film 'Million Dollar Baby', his heroine Hilary Swank helped raise significantly the profile of women who climb into the boxing ring.

And, when Muhammad Ali's daughter Laila took up her father's cloak, she lit up a whole new generation of boxing fans around the world, especially when she battled the daughter of her father's great adversary, Joe Frazier.

But the sport has grown worldwide following a concerted drive by the International Boxing Association. Fans of women entering the ring note that there are now more than 500,000 licensed women boxers in 120 countries.

Campaigners for women's sport and fitness celebrated the welcome into the Olympic fold as acknowledgment of the justice of their long hard fight for equality, while boxing authorities hailed the decision as "proving" that concerns about competitiveness and health issues have been once and for all discounted.

But, as there is with men's boxing, the medical profession and those against boxing, in general have come out in uproar over the decision by the IOC.

From Frank Warren @ the Sun:

The Olympics are going to be a fantastic occasion for London and the UK, a celebration of competition and friendship for both the athletes and the public.

Women's boxing will be part of it. I appreciate their efforts and good luck to them - but I won't be watching.