The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Kerri Wash-Jennings and Misty May-Treanor

You didn't think I was going to close my second "Beauty of Sport" series without a picture of Kerri Walsh-Jennings and Misty May-Treanor together, did you? :-) 

 

Kerri (left) and Misty not only rocked the beach volleyball court at the Olympics, they won three consecutive World Championships titles as well, in 2003, 2005, and 2007.  This particular picture shows them in August 2009.  

While my second "Beauty of Sport" series is over, I want to revisit a couple of female athletes that I did not do enough justice to when I first featured them as part of a larger team in August 2008 before I move on.  So stay tuned. :-)  

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh-Jennings

Kerri Walsh-Jennings just completed a chapter in her life, which happened to be a story of one of the greatest beach volleyball teams of all time.

 

She and her partner, Misty May-Treanor, whom I featured back in March 2007, won three straight Olympic gold medals in women's beach volleyball (2004, 2008, 2012) and won 32 Olympic sets in a row before being defeated in one set by a team from Austria at the London Olympics.  But they still hung on to win the tournament anyway.

Misty May-Treanor is retiring, but Kerri Walsh-Jennings plans to solider on with a new partner, who is to be determined.  But I've already determined that it just won't be the same.   

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Skier Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn is another American skier getting attention on the slopes.

Born Lindsey Kildow (she married her husband Thomas Vonn in 2007), she met Picabo Street as a girl and was inspired by her to become a skier herself. (Street even became her mentor.)  Lindsey Vonn competed in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino but crashed in a downhill run. She was hospitalized overnight and was in pain from a bruised hip, but she managed to return to the Olympic slopes and ski in the downhill final, finishing in eighth place. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, she redeemed herself quite nicely with a gold medal in the women's downhill and the bronze medal in the women's Super G.

Lindsey Vonn's Olympic success in Vancouver came after winning the World Cup in women's skiing three years in a row (2008, 2009, 2010) - becoming only the second American woman to do so, after Tamara McKinney. While she was matching McKinney's accomplishment, Lindsey Vonn also won the gold medal in the downhill and the Super G at the 2009 World Championships in Val d'Isère.

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Swimmer Dana Vollmer

Dana Vollmer is another swimming star who shone for America in the 2012 London Olympics. And though you may not believe it, her swimming career goes back as far as 2001, when she won a bronze medal at the Goodwill Games in Brisbane (in the 4x100-meter medley).  The Goodwill Games are done, but Dana Vollmer is still here. :-)  

 

At the 2012 Olympics, she earned gold medals in the women's 100-meter butterfly, 4x100-meter medley relay, and 4x200-meter freestyle relay swim races.  She also has a gold medal from the 2004 Athens Olympics, won in the 4x200-meter freestyle relay.  This is the only Olympic race Dana Vollmer has won twice, but don't fret - she holds the world record in the 100-meter butterfly. :-)

She also competed in the 2003 Pan American Games (an Olympiad for Western Hemisphere nations, though it never seems to be on American television) in Santo Domingo, where she won gold in the 200-meter freestyle, the 4x200-meter freestyle relay, and the 4x100-meter medley. She's also won medals of varying colors in several championships.

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Italian fencer Valentina Vezzali

One of the drawbacks about being an attractive fencer is that you don't get to capitalize on your looks in competition, thanks to that protective face gear.  But that hasn't stopped the lovely Italian fencing champion Valentina Vezzali from putting her best face forward  outside of competition.

Valentina Vezzali competed in every Olympiad from 1996 through 2012.   A specialist in foil, she's won the Olympic gold medal in women's individual and team foil three times each, for a total of six gold medals.  She and her Italian squad won the team foil gold in Atlanta (1996) and London (2012), and she won the individual foil gold in Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008).  The 2000 Olympics in Sydney mark the only time she's won both individual and foil fencing gold medals in the same Olympiad.

On the side, she won an individual foil silver medal in Atlanta and two bronze medals, one for team foil (Beijing, 2008) and another for individual foil (London, 2012).

So she obviously has a lot to smile about.

Not to mention many reasons to flaunt her beauty. :-D

Valentina Vezzali is married to Italian soccer player Domenico Giugliano, and they have a son, Pietro. She put out her autobiography, provocatively titled "With Uncovered Face," in 2006.   

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Swimmer Dara Torres

Despite having won two Olympic gold medals as part of the U.S.women's 4x100-meter freestyle swimming relay teams in 1984 and 1992, as well as a bronze medal in that same race in 1988 and a silver in 4x100-meter medley relay in that same year (1988), Dara Torres was known more for an infomercial than for any of her Olympic swimming accomplishments.

In the late nineties, Dara Torres appeared in "paid programming" spots for fitness guru Billy Blanks and his "Tae-Bo" workout. I thought they were embarrassing. I thought they amounted to conduct unbecoming an Olympic champion. In short, I hated them. By the turn of the millennium, I was eating crow. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Dara Torres was 33 years old and still a force to be reckoned with. As part of the women's 4x100-meter freestyle and relay teams, she won the gold medal in both races. In the year 2000, wherever Ms. Torres went in America, swimming fans too young to remember her accomplishments from Los Angeles (1984), Seoul (1988) or Barcelona (1992) recognized her as the "Tae-Bo Lady."

I got a second  helping of that old crow meat when, at the age of 41 - an age when most Olympic swimming champions are on the motivational speaking circuit - Ms. Torres won the silver medals in those same relay races at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.  She also won a third silver medal in Beijing in the 50-meter "splash and dash" freestyle race, losing narrowly to Germany's Britta Steffen, who at 16 was young enough to be Ms. Torres' daughter.

As I wrote on my regular blog in August 2008, Dara Torres proved to be an inspiration to fellow aging Generation Xers like myself.  And I never made fun of those Tae-Bo ads again. 

Oh yeah, she barely missed making the 2012 Olympic team.

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Swimmer Rebecca Soni

Growing up in New Jersey, Rebecca Soni devoted herself fiercely to being one of the best breaststroke swimmers in women's sports, and the effort has paid off handsomely.

The daughter of ethnic Hungarian immigrants from Romania first gained notoriety at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where she finished a respectable second in the women's 100-meter breaststroke.  But it was in the 200-meter breaststroke where she distinguished herself; she upset the favorite, Australia's Leisel Jones, to win the gold medal and break Jones's world record with a new time of 2:20.22.  This record would be broken by Canadian Annamay Pierse (with a time of 2:20.12) at a semifinal in the World Aquatics Championships in Rome in July 2009.

At the 2012 Olympics in London, though, Rebecca Soni set a  new 200-meter breaststroke world record in a semifinal with a time of 2:20 on August 1. She broke it the next day in the 200-meter breaststroke final.  Another gold medal in a world record time of 2.19:59!  

And as soon as she was finished doing that, she swam on the women's 4x100-meter medley relay team that included Missy Franklin, Dana Vollmer and  Allison Schmitt, which won the gold medal in a new world record relay time of 3:52.05.  Rebecca Soni put in a time of 1:04.82 in her hectometer - a breaststroke, of course - which put her just ahead of the non-relay 100-meter breaststroke world record of 1:04.84 set at the World Aquatics Championships in Rome in July 2009 by . . . Rebecca Soni. :-D 

Don't you love numbers? 

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: German sprinter Verena Sailer

Verena Sailer began "representin' Deutschland" in international track meets in 2003, and she's also competed for Germany on an Olympic relay team.

The Bavarian beauty has two European Championships gold medals, one from winning the 100-meter dash at the 2010 European Championships in Barcelona and a 4x100-meter relay gold medal from 2012 in Helsinki, but Olympic gold has eluded her. She was part of the German women's 4x100 relay team at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, but despite a respectable time of 43.28 seconds, the German women came in fifth in the final.

Verena Sailer had better luck on the German women's 4x100 relay team that competed at the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin, where she ran the fourth leg. The home-court advantage allowed her and her teammates to win the bronze medal there in a time of 42.87 seconds.

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: April Ross and Jennifer Kessy

Ladies and gentlemen, the new dynamic duo of American beach volleyball!

April Ross (left) and Jennifer Kessy have been playing as a team since 2007.  Ross and Boss (as they're sometimes called) did very well on the beach volleyball circuit in 2008, but no accomplishment that year was more astonishing than their upset victory over Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh-Jennings that September in a tournament in California.  From there they played at the 2009 World Championships in Stavanger, Norway (Norway? Beach volleyball in Norway?) and won the gold medal after defeating a tough Brazilian team.

As noted earlier on this blog, April Ross and Jennifer Kessy lost their re-match against Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh-Jennings in London at the Olympics.  But look for "Ross and Boss" at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016.     

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Beach volleyball player April Ross

Along with partner Jennifer Kessy (pictured earlier), April Ross is poised to set a new standard in beach volleyball. 

She and Jennifer Kessy first achieved notoriety in 2008, during which they won Phuket Open in Thailand, where April Ross was named the Most Outstanding Player, and finished in the top three at other tournaments.  They played the dynamic duo of beach volleyball, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh-Jennings, for the Olympic gold medal in London, but settled for silver.  But with May-Treanor leaving the sport, April Ross could be (is?) part of the next great beach volleyball pair.

April Ross also played professional volleyball in Puerto Rico in the mid-2000s.   

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Soccer player Christie Rampone

Christie Rampone played a lot of sports growing up in New Jersey, including basketball, field hockey and track, but soccer proved to be her best sport.

How good is she at soccer? Well, while she's been playing for various professional regional women's teams, she's been on the national team since 1997.  In that time, she's been to four World Cup championships and four Olympic championships.

And she's never been on a championship series team that placed lower than third.  

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: French track star Marie-José Pérec

In France, they called her "La Gazelle" for her grace on the track.  And if you were ever lucky enough to see Marie-José Pérec run - specifically, at the Olympics - you'd agree.

Born on the French island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies, Marie-José Pérec became a French national treasure in women's athletics when she became the world champion in the women's 400-meter track race in 1991.  She repeated the feat in 1995, and she won the gold medal in the same race at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics in between.

At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Americans got to see firsthand what the fuss was all about.  Pérec won the women's 400-meter and 200-meter races, setting a new Olympic record of 48.25 seconds in the former race.  She became only the second female athlete to win both races in the same Olympiad, after American runner Valerie Brisco-Hooks at the Los Angeles Games in 1984.  Ironically, American track star Michael Johnson shared the stage with Pérec in Atlanta by becoming the first man to win both the 400-meter and 200-meter races in the same Olympiad ever.  To watch two great athletes of each gender simultaneously accomplish a feat achieved by only one person before was a magical experience, and "La Gazelle" provided a good deal of that magic. :-) 

Marie-José Pérec is retired today, and she became a mother in 2010, giving birth to a son. 

Fun fact: Marie-José Pérec trained in Los Angeles to escape unwanted attention from the French media.  Because of her lack of fame in America (and many of America's own track athletes aren't so famous in their own homeland either), Pérec is possibly the only person who ever went to Hollywood to seek anonymity. :-D 

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Soccer player Alex Morgan

After playing soccer for four years in women's regional teams, mostly on the American West Coast, Alexandra Patricia Morgan became famous simply by playing on the U.S. Olympic women's team . . . because the team's superb playing turns its members into stars!    

Alex Morgan was definitely a star of the show in London, where she and her teammates competed at the 2012 Olympics.  The team won the women's soccer Olympic gold medal . . . again.

And that's the only way an American named "Alex" can ever get to play on an Olympic champion soccer team.  ;-)

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Skier Julia Mancuso

Julia Mancuso is a plucky young woman from Reno who has skied in two winter Olympiads and has won several skiing championships.   

She won gold medals in the women's downhill, giant slalom and combined events in the 2002 Junior World Ski Championships and captured the gold medal in the Super G (2003) and combined (2004) ski races in he same championship series.

At the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy, this proud Italian-American won the gold medal in the women's giant slalom, and at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, she won silver in the women's downhill and combined.  These three medals have made Julia Mancuso the most decorated American female Alpine skier in Olympic history.

Here's Julia with one of her prizes from Vancouver. :-)

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Gymnast Nastia Liukin

Born in Russia, made in America. :-)

Anastasia Valeryevna "Nastia" Liukin was born in Moscow to Russian parents, and the family  emigrated to the United States when she was a little girl.  Her father, Valeri Liukin, was a gymnast who won two gold medals as part of the U.S.S.R.  team at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul before becoming a coach in the United States.

Nastia Liukin has won numerous gymnastics championships, having competed in the 2003 and 2007 Pan American Games and won gold medals in both as part of the U.S. gymnastics team.  She won the gold medal on the balance beam at the 2003 Pan Ams and silver in the same event in 2007.  When she competed in Beijing, she was over eighteen - the rare example of a woman competing in "women's" gymnastics.

      

It was in Beijing that she became only the third all-around Olympic champion from the United States in women's gymnastics.  She also picked up three silver medals - in team competition and on the uneven bars and balance beam.

Nastia Liukin failed to make the 2012 team, but her excellence paved the way for the "Fab Five" American women's gymnastics team that dominated at the London Olympics.  

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Beach volleyball player Jennifer Kessy

Jennifer Kessy is part of the future of women's beach volleyball in America.

With the team of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh-Jennings breaking up - and with Walsh-Jennings seeking another partner - Jennifer Kessy and her partner, April Ross (coming soon), are the likely successors to the tradition that began with Misty and Kerri, going forward.

Jennifer Kessy has had numerous partners over the years in a long career.

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Track star Carmelita Jeter

Carmelita Jeter is a track sprinter who has made more than just a name for herself in international competition.

The Los Angeles native is a veteran of many international meets and championships, including  World Athletics Finals in in Stuttgart in 2007 and Thessaloniki in 2009, where she won the women's 100-meter dash.  That's right, both times. 

She went to the London Olympics in 2012, where she earned a medal of each color: bronze for the women's 200-meter dash, silver for the women's100-meter dash, and gold for the women's 4x100-meter relay.  

In winning that gold medal, she and her teammates - Allyson Felix (whom I already featured in August 2008), Bianca Knight, and Tianna Madison - set a new world's record at 40.82 seconds, smashing a record that had stood since 1985.

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Soccer player Angela Hucles

The United States's men's soccer team almost never disappoints in disappointing.  Fortunately, we have a stellar women's soccer team, and Angela Hucles was part of that success in the seven years she was on the team.

Angela Hucles played the midfield position on the team. During her stint, from 2002 to 2009, the team won two World Cups (2003 and 2007) and two Olympic gold medals (2004 and 2008). Angela Hucles was a substitute for an injured Abby Wambach at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but she proved to be more than just a reliever. She scored four goals, including two against Japan in the semifinals, helping the American women win a gold medal.

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: Swimmer Jessica Hardy

Another Jessica - this time, swimmer Jessica Hardy of the United States.

Jessica Hardy endured a bit of bad luck to come back as a champion swimmer and make it as an Olympian.  She made the 2008 U.S. Olympic team but was subsequently dropped when a tainted supplement caused her to fail a drug test.  Banned for a year, she came back in 2009 to set two new world's records in the U.S. Open National Championships.  Three years ago this month, she set the world records in the 50-meter and 100-meter long course breaststrokes, the latter set three years ago today, August 7.  (A previous record Hardy set in in the 100-mater long course breaststroke had been broken by Australia's Leisel Jones.) Hardy holds a third swimming record in the 50-meter short course breaststroke, set in November 2009.

At the 2012 London Olympics, Hardy won a bronze medal as part of women's 4x100-meter freestyle relay team.

Jessica Ennis, Again

Congratulations to Jessica Ennis . . .

. . . the gold medalist in the heptathlon in 2012 London Olympics! :-) 

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: British track and field star Jessica Ennis

The British have a storied history in track and field, and Jessica Ennis is the latest example of this ongoing tradition.

She competes in the series of seven track and field events known as the heptathlon, and she's the British national record holder for this series.  She specializes in the 100-meter hurdles race.

 

A veteran of several European and world championships, she's on her way to make her name as familiar to Americans as to her countrymen, and literally on her home turf.  As this blog entry is "going to press," as it were, Jessica Ennis is leading in the Olympic women's heptathlon at the 2012 London Games.   

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: American swimmer Natalie Coughlin

Natalie Coughlin has won twelve Olympic medals in swimming, a distinction she shares with two other American swimmers, Jenny Thompson and Dara Torres.  This is the largest number of Olympic medals won by an American woman in any sport.

In the process, Ms. Coughlin (pronounced COG-lin) achieved two unprecedented achievements: At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, she became the first American woman to win six medals in a single Olympiad and the first woman ever to win the 100-meter backstroke in two consecutive Olympiads.   

At London in 2012, she won a bronze medal as part of the American 4x100-meter freestyle relay team.

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two: French swimmer Coralie Balmy

France has provided surprisingly tough competition in the swimming events at the 2012 London Olympics, thanks to men's champion Yannick Agnel.  But the French are not devoid of star quality on the women's side. :-)

 

Coralie Balmy, originally from France's West Indian overseas department of Martinique, has already made a name for herself in international competition. In December 2008, she set the world record in the women's 200-meter freestyle at the French National Championships in Angers, and she placed the fourth-fastest time ever in the women's 400-meter freestyle at the 2008 European Aquatics Championships in Eindhoven, the Netherlands earlier that year.

Her races in London include the 400-meter and 800-meter freestyle races.

The Beauty of Sport, Part Two!

For the first time since March 2007, I am presenting female athletes for the entire month.  Why did it take so long to revisit women in sports?   I really don't have an answer for that, but maybe it's because that, apart from the WNBA, female athletes don't get a lot of attention when the Olympics aren't going on.  Of course, 2007 wasn't an Olympic year, though I had a lot of names I was already familiar with to work with.  As for 2008 or 2010 . . . I must have been pre-occupied with something else.  Sorry about that.

Anyway, I'm going to try to include foreign athletes as well as American ones, though the bulk of them will likely be American.  While a lot of current athletes will be included (as opposed to my last "The Beauty of Sport" series, which featured a lot of retired ones), I am going to stay true to my rule of not featuring any females under 18.  So, while I'm paying tribute to the recently retired Nastia Liukin (22 years old as of August 2012), who tried unsuccessfully to make the 2012 U.S. Olympic team, I will refrain from featuring any current gymnasts.

Which raises the obvious question: Why is it called "women's gymnastics," when it's primarily the domain of girls?

And don't look for track star Sanya Richards - who has gotten married and is now Sanya Richards-Ross - in here.  I'm only featuring women I haven't featured before and I featured Sanya Richards-Ross as part of the U.S. women's 4x400-meter track relay team that won the Olympic gold medal in that event at Beijing in 2008.  Maybe I'll feature her in a retrospective post in early September.

And oh yes, despite the fact that it's summer as I begin this series, I'll be including some winter athletes here too. :-)

   

But enough of my yakking.  Let's move on to the swifter, higher, and stronger of the female sex.