For years sports has been a man thing. Women didn’t participate in sports because it was believed that they didn’t have the skills and talent that men did to play sports. However that has changed and women are now playing sports and are great athletes. Title IX, an anti-gender discrimination law passed in 1972, has helped women participate in sports. Despite the passage of Title IX and the success of women athletes since then, there are still questions about women’s place in sports.The feud between NASCAR legend Richard Petty and current NASCAR driver Danica Patrick is this generation's Battle of the Sexes.
NASCAR legend Richard Petty made comments about current NASCAR driver Danica Patrick recently. While attending the Canadian Motorsports Expo, Petty was asked whether Patrick could win a race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and Petty said “If everybody else stayed home,” according to Sporting News. Patrick is use to criticism as she has been criticized since she moved to NASCAR from Indycar. Critics say that Patrick, who won just one race in Indycar, is in NASCAR because of her looks and the fact that she is a woman, and not because of her driving skills. Her car owner Tony Stewart has come to her defense and challenged Petty to race Patrick. Petty has accepted that challenge.
"It's been 25 years since I've been in a race car. But I'll take that challenge, “ Petty said on Fox News on Friday, USA Today reports.
This isn't the first feud between male and female athletes. Bobby Riggs, one of the world best tennis players, decided to challenge the top women players in tennis in 1973. Riggs’s most famous match against a women tennis player was the match with Billie Jean King. Riggs wasn’t a fan of women playing sports. He called King the “women’s libber leader,” and said “women belong in the bedroom and kitchen, in that order,” according to History.com. Riggs match with King become known as the “Battle of the Sexes” and King won the match. With the win King become the first female athlete superstar in the U.S. and the match helped create gender equality in sports. King went on to win six Wimbledon titles and four U.S. Open titles, according to ESPN.
The Patrick-Petty feud is similar to the King-Riggs match. It is based on the notion that women can’t be successful in a sport that has been dominated by men and that women are successful in sports only because of their looks. King proved that women can be just as successful in sports as men are and that they don’t use their looks to achieve their success. Patrick is one of the hottest, sexiest female athletes there is right now and is out to prove that she can be successful in NASCAR despite being a women. It will be interesting if they do race and who wins if they do.