Fox Sports Article On Top Women Athletes Includes A Horse
By Nicole Belle Tuesday May 26, 2009 9:30am
Fox Sports has compiled a list of women that can hold their own against men in the sports world — because everyone knows the real measure of a female athlete is how she competes against dudes. Fox starts their "Girl Power" list with Rachel Alexandra. Perhaps you've heard of her: She's a horse.
Last weekend Rachel Alexandra became the first filly in 85 years to win Preakness Stakes. And if horses can do it, so can humans!
Which female athletes had the good fortune of an equine comparison? Well, there's Katie Hnida, first woman to score in a NCAA football game, but she was entangled in a rape-allegation scandal, Fox notes. There's Michelle Wie, but of course she faced "substantial criticism" when she only qualified for one of 14 PGA events. Legendary athletic phenomenon Babe Didrikson Zaharias is also mentioned, plus that one time she didn't qualify for that one event.
See, it's important to remember that while these women were able to compete against men, they weren't necessarily very good at it.
We've come a long way, baby? Obviously not.
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Faux News. Putting women in their place.
Can the list of top conservative media figures include an actual piece of shit?
wow...is this for real?
A horse? Are these people high?
Fox News has always been full of long faces and horses arses.
It's dumb, although ESPN did something similar with their "Greatest
Athletes Of 20th Century" list, putting Secretariat at #35, which drew protests and debate:
http://www.armchairqb.com/espn_sportscentury....
The biggest difference is that Fox is leading off with the horse and making that a central comparison, based on gender. On the one hand, this is standard commercially-oriented journalism, trying to milk a piece out of current events - on the other, it's dumber than usual even for that - hell, it's awfully idiotic. No editor should have approved this one.
I do remember that one. Mike Royko wrote a good piece about it. I think Mike was a little flabbergasted that Greg LeMond didn't make the list but a horse did.
it's on this basis that i am going to defend them.
hey, it's not like listing animals as athletes is not unprecedented. it's stupid and has no logical basis but there are people, horse racing advocates and those who are in the game, who have said constantly that these horses are indeed athletes. horses are athletes just like greyhounds are athletes, just like the dogs who participate in any event in the great outdoor games are athletes, just like dogs and cats and any other show animal are athletes. so, should we consider the rats and mice and pigs who run races in the local county fair athletes as well?
you know what, i'm an athlete too. i run sim car races on my computer at home. i also play checkers, cards, and bowl occationally. where's my list?
people should be upset that a horse is included in this list, but not because they are trying to gin up faux outrage of comparing female athletes to horses. they should be upset that an animal is included in a list of top female athletes. and of course they would pick this horse. she's the flash in the pan big name of this particular 15 minutes. there was a filly who actually won the kentucky derby and she just died or was put down. where's the press for her?
also, i would make this other point. fox sports is like fox entertainment to fox news. they just share the fox name and don't really have much to do with the news, pardon, "news" division other than all are owned by rupert murdoch.
and i also would like to know where sarah fisher is on this list. sarah has actually won stuff in her professional career cleanly. unlike certain other princesses who seemingly had a victory handed to her under very suspect conditions. where's ashley force, or lynn st. james or cheryl miller for that matter? people, it's a stupid list. and they are highly subjected to the prejudices of the particular author.
In Rachel's defense, she is one heckuva fillie.
... the Bush administration appointed a veterinarian to be in charge of women's health issues?
http://www.msmagazine.com/news/uswirestory.as...
Male Veterinarian Appointed Acting Director of Women's Health
"Symbolic of the importance the Bush Administration places on women's health, a male veterinarian has been appointed by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Lester Crawford as acting director of the Office of Women's Health. Norris E. Alderson, PhD, has spent the majority of his career at the FDA holding various positions in the Center for Veterinary Medicine.
"The Office for Women’s Health, which ensures that the FDA remains gender sensitive and monitors the progress of women’s health initiatives, was most recently headed by Dr. Susan Wood. Wood resigned late last month in protest over the FDA’s refusal to grant over-the-counter status to emergency contraception."
if they'd listed a porn star. seriously. one of the greatest feminist accomplishments of physical prowess and endurance, in the last 100 years, ... was awarded to a horse.
there must be no female executives in the upper echelons of the FOX Sports business offices. not a single one.
and this has to be some kind of subtle social hack by a disgruntled employee.
its gonna be fun watching FOX dodge this particular shit storm.
Next thing you know they'll be saying people will want equal rights for horses. Someone may even want to marry one. What's the world coming to?
Rachel Alexandra beat the horseshoes off the field at the Preakness. Its a shame she didn't run at Churchhill Downs, since she could have maybe taken the triple crown.
If you're seriously getting upset about a Foxsports.com list, you're wasting your time. Foxsports makes stupid, stupid lists like this every day of the week. If anything, its a step forward for equality that they made a stupid list for women after so many stupid lists for men.
Rachel Alexandra made it to the top in her field after being ridden only once. On the other hand the Fox News babes were ridden long, hard and often before they made it to the top of their profession.
glad the sexism and misogyny is limited to conservatives.
As someone who considers themselves a progressive (mostly a lurking one) and a sports fan, I'm finding it hard to see what the big deal is.
A once in a century event involving a female horse is certainly a noteworthy event.
Ms. Hnida's place in sports history as the first female to score in a Division I football game is important, but she's also a pretty central character in the downfall of the Colorado University team under Rick Neuhesiel. To not mention the accusations and subsequent transfer would have been odd on a sports site.
If people want to get their dander up, it should be over Michelle Wie's inclusion on this list. Wie never "qualified" men's tournament. She was overmarketed and overexposed and got a series of sponsors exemptions in order to play lower-level PGA events, usually with disastrous results. Anika Sorenstam is a much better choice as a modern woman golfer competing with men since, while she too got a sponsors exemption, she darn near made the cut.
Wie, who's hype I think did damage to the cause of women in sports, should have been allowed to make the natural progression to the LPGA and play there before jumping into the deep end. Her catastrophic failures in PGA events lent credence to the idea that women cannot compete with men athletically.
Anyone notice that Danica Patrick had a podium finish at the Indy 500 on Sunday? First woman to do that!
it was how she was the bestest fourth place winner of the irl 497.5 a few years ago.
i have more respect for drivers who actually drive to the top than those who got lucky and finished there by the basis of chance.
She did move up from a little further back (she was 8th or 9th) before the last big round of stops. Her last stop was flawless- not so for a lot of the teams in front of her.
She had a solid car, and she was racing Dan Wheldon for 2nd up to the checkered flag, but Castroneves had a great car on Sunday. He just kept pulling further away during the last 10 laps.
women's tits get in the way of their golf swing? Did/does he work for FOX?
FOX is depraved.
Ridiculously stupid? Yes, the whole list was pretty lame and idiotic. However, I had first read about Rachel Alexandra and the filly's so called impact on women's athletics on several feminist blogs. Which I also thought was pretty crazy and dumb, even though it was much more tongue in cheek. Although to be honest, my first thought about the issue was, who gives a shit about horse racing?
Fox news would do this type of thing to put down women-even with a non-political news story like this one! We suffer from this kind of crap with our ISP-which is Comcast, but whose homepage is put out by Fox News. Almost every story has a slant, or bias toward the Fox political line! You can only get the better, more evenhanded MSN news if you pay extra and get the Premium package! The Yahoo homepage is similar!
...named Lee Horsley? I heard him on a radio talk show saying that as a farm boy, he has often had or considered having sex with animals, in particular horses and sheep. Apparently, Faux Noise can't tell the difference, either. And the Academy Award for Misogyny goes to...............Fox News!!
Somewhere Neal Horsley is screaming "Sssss-Weeeet!"
It was a mule.
I apologize for the error and say.....Eewwwwwwwwwww (and perhaps ewe?)
shirley won the nhra top fuel championship three times. that's drag racing's fastest hairiest ride. 1977, 1980, and 1982.
w/ Bonnie Bedelia. Great movie, fabulous woman, Shirley. A pioneer.
Mouton won several WRC rallies (almost got a championship in '82 but her Audi kept breaking) and won, and set a record, at the Pikes Peak Hillclimb. That's rallying's fastest and hairiest ride... and we're talking a series with some SERIOUSLY hairy rides!
Shirley and Michele are truly among the world's greatest drivers of all time. Danica is good. Very good. But she's not at their level yet. She needs an Indy win and/or a bunch more race wins. It would also help if she raced in the top level of open wheelers (F1) rather than the IRL which is, aside from the 500, a 2nd tier series.
And she better watch out, there's some young ladies coming up quick. Beá (Anna Beatriz) is tearing some shit up in the Indy-Lights series right now. That girl is seriously fast!
All of the great drag racers of the '70's had nicknames.
The Fox Sports article was posted under the "Horseracing" section with the following intro: "Rachel Alexandra struck a blow for females everywhere when she became the first filly to win the Preakness since 1924. But she isn't the only female athlete to prove she can hang with the boys." Then it goes into the list, including a very complimentary comment on Shirley Muldowney.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaa?
The presence of female genitals apparently makes women and horses equivalent in the small empty minds at Fox. It's certainly likely to make some women equate men and other animals (say, jackasses), too, so this isn't a gender-friendly path for Fox to tread.
Gimme a break . I think we are getting a little sensitive and silly here ... my humble opinion .
Why would women bitch about being compared to an animal. Right?
Fox Sports was comparing a female horse to male horses.
One could also say that we HAVE come a long way - we are now willing to include a non-human species in our list of "best" performers. Which I think is pretty interesting. We've gone further rather than back.
'Course, that's not the way Fox meant it, but I think it would drive them more nuts if people DELIBERATELY took what they said this way, instead of the mean-spirited way they intended. They really can't stand that.
Does this mean Sports Illustrated is obligated to consider the horse in an upcoming "sexiest athletes" issue?
Calm down everybody. This doesn't strike me as all that big of a deal. Back at the turn-of-the-millenium, ESPN issued a top athletes of the century list that feature Secretariat.
The bickering then was whether a horse even qualifies as an athlete. I don't think anything sexist was meant by it.
To me, this is kind of a non-event.
Granted, the idea of having a horse listed as a top athlete is questionable at best, but given the precedent of Secretariat, it's hardly a sexist issue.
Any Canadian hockey fan knows that is NOT a picture of Hayley Wickenheiser. She wears number 22 for Team Canada. That is most likely Tessa Bonhomme, who wears number 25.
I guess this shows they don't give a horse's ass about womens' sport.
Nicole, what exactly are you implying about the horse?
It didn't really occur to me that this might be sexist. And if that makes me sexist, just remember, I could just as easily say some of you folks are human-supremacists.
than being compared to this horse - she rocks.
Faux Noise is full of stupid, Reslug Horses Asses.
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