Showing posts with label Marianne Martin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marianne Martin. Show all posts

29 October 2021

Marianne Martin Finally Gets Her Due--Somewhat

 It's one thing to call a baseball player "the Black Babe Ruth."  One player wore that moniker.  But some called "the Bambino" "the White* Josh Gibson."

Gibson died at age 35, three months before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier.*  Yet he wasn't enshrined in the sport's Hall of Fame until a quarter-century after his passing.

Five years ago,  Rogatien Vachon was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame--more than three decades after he played his last game in the National Hockey League.  When he retired, he was among the sport's top five or ten in several categories for his position.  He spent the bulk of his career with the Los Angeles Kings, where he became the franchise's first superstar. But, as great as he was, he was overshadowed by other goalies like Ken Dryden, who played for the dynastic Montreal Canadiens teams, and Ed Giacomin, who spent his career with the New York Rangers and Detroit Red Wings.

So why am I mentioning them on this blog?

Well, a parallel just played out in the world of cycling.  On 6 November, Marianne Martin will accept her induction to the US Bicycling Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs.  She actually was inducted last year but, due to the pandemic, her ceremony was postponed.  

Her enshrinement comes three decades after she retired from competition and nearly four after her most notable achievement on two wheels.  That her induction was so late in coming is also a sad commentary on the state of competitive cycling.

Marianne Martin and Laurent Fignon, winners of the women's and men's Tour de France, 1984



In 1984, she won the inaugural edition of the women's Tour de France.  The race, 18 days long, ran in tandem with  (though on shorter courses than, with the same climbs and peaks as) the men's version.  Six editions of the women's Tour were held, the last coming in 1989, the year Greg LeMond came back from a near-fatal hunting accident to win the men's Tour for the second time.

LeMond got his induction, well-deserved as it was, five years after his last race.  Martin's honor took a quarter-century longer to come her way.  Still, she doesn't express anger or resentment. "Half my friends don't even know that I was a cyclist.  It's not something I carry out in front of me," says Martin, who is a photographer.  While she says that cycling was something she did, not who she was, it's hard not to compare her post-cycling life and reputation with that of LeMond who, in turn, is less famous than the disgraced Lance Armstrong.

*--The only athletes I respect as much as human beings as I respect Jackie Robinson are Billie Jean King, Muhammad Ali, Colin Kaepernick and Simon Biles. That said, I will not refute (or confirm) the rumors that Jackie wasn't the first Black Major League Baseball player, as others--including Babe himself--were rumored to be Black.  Also, it wouldn't surprise me if some light-skinned Black players moved north (where all of the MLB teams were, and Jim Crow laws weren't) and passed themselves off as white.  

19 December 2018

For Once, The Women Won't Be Thrown Under The Bus

Say what you will about Serena Williams' outburst, her style or anything else:  Women's tennis needs her more than she needs it.  I mean, when she retires--which I predict will happen some time after she breaks the record for Grand Slam singles titles--who will command the same sort of respect and attention she has?

(Now, I don't want her to retire any time soon. But I really want to see her break the record, especially because Margaret Court holds it.)

While the fact that she could break the record within a year speaks volumes of what a great player she's been, it also can't be denied that the state of the tour isn't what it was, say, thirty years ago.

Back then, Martina Navratilova dominated the sport in a way that, possibly, no other athlete dominated his or her sport.  Even though people expected her to win whenever she played, she faced some formidable competition from the likes of Steffi Graf and Chris Evert.  This is not to say that Serena's opponents are pushovers; I just don't think they quite match up to what Martina faced.


If you were to argue that the women's game was better than the men's, few would have disagreed.  That is the reason why most tennis sports and sports historians agree that Martina was the greatest female player of all time, and more than a few she was the greatest tennis player, male or female, who ever graced a court.

Once Williams retires, women's tennis will revert to the state of affairs that existed before Billie Jean King came along.  And broadcasters, sponsors and the general public won't be nearly as interested as they have been, let alone as interested as they were when Navratilova ruled.

Women's cycling, unfortunately, has had a parallel history.  I can recall a "golden age" for American women, which started roughly with Mary Jane ("Miji") Reoch's prime in the early 1970s and lasted for about two decades, at least until Rebecca Twigg's 1995 victory in the World Championships.

During that time, American male cyclists were on the rise, too:  Greg Lemond, after all, won the Tour de France three times in the late 1980s.  But, although he competed against some strong American male racers, the American women were, on the whole, more dominant and garnered at least as much attention.

Also, toward the end of that period, European women were ascendant.  In fact, a women's version of the Tour de France commenced in 1984 as a curtain-raising event for the men's race.  It ran in various forms, and under various names (the men's Tour organizers sued to keep the women from using "Tour" in the name of their race) for a quarter-century.  

It's telling that when American Marianne Martin won the first edition of that race, she and runners-up Heleen Hage and Deborah Shumway stood on the podium with male winners Laurent Fignon, Bernard Hinault and Greg Lemond.  While Fignon won the equivalent of $225,000, Martin was given $1000 and a trophy.

The women's race always had to scramble for sponsorship, even in the best of times.  So, when economic times got tough and sponsors had to cut back on spending, guess what they cut?  As best as I can tell, the men's Tour, as well as the Giro and Vuelta, are still going, even though interest in bike racing overall has declined.

The loss of the women's Tour-equivalent mirrors a situation found all over bike racing, and in sports generally:  When money supplies tighten, women's events are usually sacrificed.  While I don't think the women's tennis tour will disappear, I think we'll see a lot less of it once Serena retires--unless, of course, someone else comes along who's as dominating and compelling as she is.

Fortunately, though, one event is bucking the trend, if in a relatively small way.  The Colorado Classic has featured men's and women's races since it debuted two years ago.  Next year, however, one of them will be eliminated.

It won't be the women's race.





Why?  According to Ken Gart of the RPM Events Group, which organizes the event, the change will allow organizers to set up "one great race instead of two average ones."  Or, as Colorado Governor-Elect Jared Polis said, it could allow the event to turn into "the premier women's race in the Western Hemisphere."

The theory is that by putting all of the resources into one race, longer and more challenging courses could be set up.  Also, as Gart explained, "We love men's cycling...but our ability to impact men's cycling was very minimal."  

One could say he means that the best way to promote women's cycling is to not force it to compete with men's racing.  That might be true, but I think what's more important is that the women's race won't be an adjunct to, or "opening act" for, the men's race, as it was in the women's tour.  

That may well be what women's sports in general needs:  a way to make it interesting and worthwhile in its own right--as women's tennis was in the era of Martina, and women's cycling was in the days of Twigg--and not merely something designed to sink or swim in the trail of men's competition.