Top 10 female athletes in sporting history

WOMEN’S sport is growing year on year on year.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Australia, where the instant success of the AFLW highlights just how far we have come.

But women in sport is nothing new, and those now reaping the benefits of professional competition owe much to the trailblazers who went before them.

This is BettingSite.com.au’s list of the 10 greatest and most influential female athletes of all time, arranged from earliest to most recent.

We kick things off with a true American pioneer whose skill-set was as vast and diverse as her trophy collection.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Mildred ‘Babe’ Didrikson was the Donald Bradman of women’s sport in the early 20th century.

A dab hand at every athletic pursuit she took up, the Texan was already an All-American amateur basketballer when she won gold in the hurdles and the javelin at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

She also took home a silver in the high jump.

In 1935, at 25 years of age, Babe took up golf – the sport for which she is now best remembered.

Didrikson won four LPGA major titles as an amateur before turning professional in 1947, after which she added three more US Women’s Opens, two Titleholders Championships and a fourth Women’s Western Open crown.

Babe created history when she qualified for the 1945 Los Angeles Open on the men’s PGA Tour and made the halfway cut – a feat as yet unmatched by any modern-day female golfer.

Quite remarkably, she won the last of her major titles – the 1954 US Women’s Open – only a month after undergoing surgery for colon cancer, sporting a colostomy bag and all.

That illness cut short Babe’s incredible career and ended her life in 1956, aged 45.

Margaret Court

Like so many of Australia’s sporting greats, Margaret Court is not everybody’s cup of tea.

But if you put her personal beliefs to one side, there is no disputing her matchless prowess with a racquet.

The Albury native holds more Grand Slam tennis titles than any player, male or female, in the history of the sport.

That achievement is remarkable on a number of levels.

Having won 13 Grand Slam singles titles before the open era commenced in 1968, she then won another 11 majors in the space of five years.

That included almost a year out of the game in 1972 for the birth of her first child.

Then there is her peerless record in both women’s and mixed doubles: 12 Australian Opens, eight French Opens, seven Wimbledons and some 13 US Opens.

To this day, Court is the only player to win the singles, doubles and mixed titles at all four Grand Slam meets at least twice – once before the open era, once after.

Florence Griffith Joyner

There is plenty of competition for the title of America’s greatest female track and field athlete.

Most publications plump for Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the champion heptathlete and long jumper who won a brace of gold medals at Seoul 1988 and another at Barcelona 1992.

But it is hard to look past a woman whose world records have now gone unmatched in three decades.

Having won a silver at Los Angeles 1984, Florence Griffith Joyner made the 1988 Olympic Games her own with gold in the 100m, the 200m and the 4x100m relay.

She had already posted a WR 100m time of 10.49 seconds in US Olympic trials when she smashed out a 21.34 in the 200m final in Korea.

Doping claims abounded, yet Olympic drug testers have since confirmed that Griffith was put under special scrutiny throughout 1988 and showed not the slightest trace of illicit activity.

A flashy character whose style and charm were as much admired as her athletic prowess, ‘Flo-Jo’ was mourned worldwide when she died in 1998 after suffering a seizure in her sleep.

Birgit Fischer

What good is a top 10 list without one or two names out of left field?

Canoeing is hardly the most high-profile sport on the planet, but no woman has ever done it better than Birgit Fischer.

What is most impressive about the German paddler is her sheer longevity in the sport.

Fischer’s career spanned seven Olympiads, from 1980 to 2004, although she competed in only six of those due to East Germany’s boycott of the ’84 Games.

Victories at both Moscow and Athens mean she is simultaneously the youngest (18) and oldest (42) canoeing champ in Olympic history.

She starred in three separate disciplines, winning the K-1 500m twice, the K-2 twice and the K-4 four times to finish with eight Olympic gold medals as well as four silvers.

That puts Fischer second in the all-time standings for female athletes, behind only the Soviet Union’s Larisa Latynina – a nine-time gold winner in gymnastics.

Mia Hamm

This lady is the reason women’s soccer has blossomed so spectacularly in the United States.

Mariel Margaret Hamm-Garciaparra, better known as Mia Hamm, was her sport’s first true superstar.

Unfortunately, so much of her stunning career was played out in the blank spaces that preceded the founding of the Women’s United Soccer Association in 2000.

Yet her legacy on the international stage is impossible to ignore.

Not only did Hamm lead the US women’s soccer team to FIFA World Cup glory in 1991 and 1999, she also won Olympic gold on home soil at Atlanta 1996 and again at Athens 2004.

Only Abby Wambach has bettered her 158 international goals, while a tally of 275 caps ranks third in the all-time stakes.

A two-time FIFA World Player of the Year, Hamm is widely regarded as one of the most influential American athletes of the past 25 years.

Annika Sorenstam

When Tiger Woods burst onto the scene with his landmark victory in the 1997 US Masters, Annika Sorenstam was already the queen of the professional golf circuit.

The Swede is far and away the most successful female player of modern times, having won more than 90 career titles between 1992 and 2008.

A record 72 of those came on the LPGA Tour, including 10 majors – comfortably the most of any player in the ‘third era’ of women’s pro golf.

She was named Player of the Year eight times and collected the Vare Trophy – awarded for the lowest scoring average of the season – on six occasions.

Sorenstam still holds the all-time record for lowest scoring average in a LPGA season: a measly 68.6969 in 2004.

The year before, she channelled the spirit of Babe Zaharias to became the first woman since 1945 to compete against the men at a PGA Tour event.

Lauren Jackson

Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes, Diana Taurasi – there are so many brilliant female ballers out there.

But Lauren Jackson might well be the most successful Australian export since Fosters Lager.

Another Albury girl, she has won just about every title and accolade there is to win in women’s basketball.

Her 11 years at the Seattle Storm returned two WNBA championships, three MVP crowns and seven All-Star guernseys, among a host of other individual awards.

Inclusion in the WNBA All-Decade and Top 15 teams is hard proof of Jackson’s enormous impact on women’s ball in the US.

She was also a long-serving star in the Australian WNBL, winning five titles and four Grand Final MVP awards with the Canberra Capitals.

Yet Jackson may be best remembered at home as the leader of the Aussie Opals team that won silver at the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics.

Serena Williams

Do we even need to say anything about this one?

Nobody has ever stepped out of an elder sibling’s shadows with such aggression and aplomb as Serena Williams did when she won the 1999 US Open.

That effort was remarkable not only because she beat sister Venus to a Grand Slam singles titles, but because she had to defeat Kim Clijsters, Conchita Martinez, Monica Seles, Lindsay Davenport and Martina Hingis to get it done.

Her appetite for success has not diminished since.

After Serena’s win over big sister at the 2017 Australian Open, only Margaret Court has more Grand Slam singles titles.

Whenever Williams decides to call it quits, there is no doubt she will do so as the greatest female tennis player of the open era.

Marta

It is rare that a female athlete is held in the same regard as her male equivalents.

But if you ask a Brazilian football fan about Marta Vieira da Silva, they will gush as though they are talking about Ronaldinho, Zico, or Pele.

The Alagoana from Dois Riachos has followed in the footsteps of Mia Hamm and Birgit Prinz to become the greatest female footballer on the planet.

Thing is, she might be better than both of them combined.

Marta’s pace, technique and goalscoring ability are a class apart, to the point where some observers reckon she could hold her own against the men.

She finished top three in the FIFA World Player of the Year count every year from 2004 to 2014, winning the award five times in a row from 2006 and 2010.

The only thing missing from the mantlepiece is a World Cup winner’s medal, but there is time yet for that to change.

Katie Ledecky

The youngest entry on our list is also sure to be the most controversial.

That is because, at the time of writing, Katie Ledecky has not yet celebrated her 20th birthday.

Let us break down her swimming career to date.

At the ripe old age of 15, she stunned the world by winning gold in the 800m freestyle at the 2012 London Olympics.

Four years later and still a teenager, she left Rio de Janeiro with four gold medals and a silver in the 4x100m relay.

In between came nine titles at the World Championships, including a clean sweep in the 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m and 4x200m freestyle events at Kazan 2015.

Make no mistake: Michael Phelps’ record of 23 Olympic gold medals is in serious danger.