She was the best tennis player of her time, and one of the all-time greats. She fought for equal prize money -- and got it. She created an entirely new format for tennis competition -- World Team Tennis -- and it worked. And she creamed Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes," a more important event than the circus-like atmosphere surrounding it foretold. Wrote Neil Amdur of the New York Times after King defeated Riggs, "Most important perhaps for women everywhere, she convinced skeptics that a female athlete can survive pressure-filled situations."
I love Billie Jean and she was a tennis great. But Bobby Riggs was 20 years older than his opponent and had to defend the doubles courts by himself. I watched this "battle" and thought it a joke.
I find the writer to be rather a sports illiterate to list Billie Jean King and not Babe Didrikson Zaharias, an Olympic track & field champion and golf great. In LA in 1932 she won gold in the 80m hurdles and javelin. In 1954, less than a year after undergoing surgery for intestinal cancer, she won the U.S. Open by 12 strokes. Babe has been one of my sports heros for a very long time.