Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner...Author,Considered the Fastest Woman of All Time,Sports Magazine Editor and Contributor

Florence Griffith Joyner 1959-1998 was not alone among athletes in burning herself into public memory. But she was alone in her sport. In 1988 she burst into the spotlight, having transformed herself from the workaday sprinter who had won silver in the 200 meters at the boycott-thinned 1984 Olympics into the fastest woman in history. She ran the 100 in 10.49 seconds in '88, a world record that wasn't even approached for a decade. The sister-in-law of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Flo-Jo won three gold medals at the '88 Games and set a world record of 21.34 in the 200. A decade later, long retired but still a vital personality, she died of a heart seizure. It wasn't simply speed that formed Flo-Jo's legend, but also style. She wore one-legged unitards and lace attachments when other women wore shorts, melding athleticism and glamour like no one else. Sprint coach John Smith recalls watching her run in '88: "That year she had the outfits and the nails and the name, and she was in the best shape of her life. Suddenly, she had everything figured out. It was beautiful to watch.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/11/

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Griffith_Joyner#cite_note-2

http://www.florencegriffithjoyner.com/

Jackie Joyner-Kersee...Philanthropist,Author,Retired American Athlete, Ranked Among the All-Time Greatest Athletes in the Women's Heptathlon as Well as in the Women's Long Jump

Jacqueline "Jackie" Joyner-Kersee was born on March 3, 1962 in East St. Louis, Illinois, and was named after Jackie Kennedy. She won three gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals, in those two events at four different Olympic Games. Sports Illustrated for Women magazine voted Joyner-Kersee the Greatest Female Athlete of the 20th century, just ahead of Babe Didrikson Zaharias.  Joyner-Kersee's childhood was set in the dark ages of women's sport, when athletic girls spent their time racing boys and playing on their teams. The second oldest of Mary and Alfred Joyner's four children, raised in the south-end slums of East St. Louis, Ill., she was first a dancer, then a cheerleader. When she discovered track and field at age nine, she and her friends would carry sand in potato-chip bags they found in a nearby playground and spread it in front of the Joyners' porch, creating a makeshift long jump pit. There were none of the elite travel teams that nurture the athletic careers of talented girls in the '90s. There was, instead, a man named Nino Fennoy, who coached a junior track team called the East St. Louis Railers and who gave Joyner-Kersee the means to learn about herself. (It is telling of Joyner-Kersee's generation that one of the most important moments in her life came at the age of 14, when she beat her older brother, Al, in a race. "He still says he won," says Jackie, "but he didn't.")

Joyner-Kersee was one of the first children of Title IX. She was 10 years old when the groundbreaking legislation was passed in 1972, mandating equal access to sports for men and women across the country. A brilliant athlete, she also became a surrogate parent to the later offspring of Title IX, her career beginning in one era of women's sport and ending in another. "When I was little, a lot of women's sports heroes were gymnasts and figure skaters, and I just could not relate to those sports," says Julie Foudy, Hamm's U.S. soccer teammate and, like Hamm, a teenager during Joyner-Kersee's finest days. "Jackie I could relate to."

In 2007,Joyner-Kersee helped establish Athletes for Hope along with such sports heroes as Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali and Mia Hamm. This organization supports and encourages athletes "to make a difference in the world," according to its website.She Co-wrote her autobiography with Sonja Steptoe,A Kind of Grace: The Autobiography of the World's Greatest Female Athlete,in 1997. Joyner-Kersee joined the board of the USA Track & Field organization in 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Joyner-Kersee

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/1/

http://www.biography.com/people/jackie-joyner-kersee-9358710?page=2

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/235044.A_Kind_of_Grace

http://www.athletesforhope.org/

Peggy Gail Fleming...American Figure Skater,1968 Olympic Champion in Ladies' Singles,Three-Time World Champion,Breast Cancer Survivor,Painter,Visual Artist,Winemaker,Author

Peggy Fleming's gold-medal-winning free-skate program at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, lasted just four minutes, but that was enough time, it turned out, to change everything. By bringing her new and captivating combination of athleticism and artistic expression to an international TV audience -- Grenoble was the first Winter Games to be televised live and in color -- the 19-year-old achieved a remarkable trifecta: She returned glory to a U.S. team that had been wiped out by a 1961 plane crash, turned a once staid sport into the Games' glamour event and set figure skating on a course of growing popularity in the U.S. that now rivals the NFL's.

Most important, perhaps, Fleming established a new standard for artistic elegance on the ice. Delicate and subtle yet unmistakably athletic -- she had played baseball and surfed in her youth -- Fleming flowed seamlessly through her elements, making even the most demanding maneuvers look easy.

In 1998, Peggy celebrated another victory: surviving Breast Cancer. Peggy’s cancer was detected early and she underwent surgery and radiation. She is a grateful survivor who became a spokesperson for Breast Cancer Awareness. After her recovery, she retired from the spotlight and ventured into winemaking, launching Fleming Jenkins Wines with her husband, Dr. Greg Jenkins. Together they ran a tasting room in their hometown of Los Gatos, California. Both retired from winemaking in 2011 to enjoy their own schedule and make time for painting, friends and family.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/19/

http://peggyfleming.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Fleming

Wilma Glodean Rudolph...American Athlete,Author,Activist,Humanitarian,Olympic Champion

Long before becoming the world's fastest female, Wilma Rudolph 1940-1994 beat her greatest odds by learning to walk on her own. As a child, Rudolph (the 17th of 21 children) was afflicted with polio, scarlet fever and double pneumonia and grew up wearing a brace on her right leg. To her doctor's shock, she removed the brace and walked unassisted at age nine. By 13 she was outracing neighborhood kids. By 16 she had qualified for the 1956 Olympics (she won bronze in the 4x100-meter relay). In Rome four years later she became a beloved figure when she won the 100 and 200 meters and in the 4x100. She never shied from a cause. She participated in sit-ins at whites-only restaurants, ran a community center and established the Wilma Rudolph Foundation, which sends schools tutors and books about American heroes, a category that surely includes Rudolph.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/8/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilma_Rudolph

Sheryl Denise Swoopes...Retired American Professional Basketball Player,Head Coach of the Women's Basketball Team of Loyola University Chicago,First Player to be Signed in the WNBA When it was Created

Sheryl Swoopes may best be remembered as the woman who once played one-on-one against Michael Jordan. But her basketball legacy will run far deeper than that. Swoopes, a forward, began hooping it up at age seven with her two older brothers, James and Earl. In 1989, as a high school senior in Brownfield, Texas, she was named the state's female high school player of the year. In 1991, after two years of juco ball, Swoopes moved on to Texas Tech where in her two-year career she led the Red Raiders to a 58-8 record, two Southwest Conference titles and the 1993 NCAA title. She was named 1993 National Player of the Year and NCAA Final Four MVP after setting an NCAA championship game scoring record (for men or women) with 47 points in Tech's 84-82 win over Ohio State.

In 1994, Swoopes landed a spot with the U.S. national team, a squad that won all 52 international games it played in preparation for the 1996 Olympics. In Atlanta, Swoopes averaged 13 points per game and helped the U.S. team win the gold medal. The following year, Swoopes signed with the WNBA's Houston Comets and helped the team to back-to-back-to-back championship wins. In 1999, Swoopes logged the WNBA's first-ever triple-double in a game against Detroit with 14 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists. As if that's not enough to impress basketball historians, Swoopes was the first woman to have a basketball shoe named for her, the Nike Air Swoopes.

They said it: "It didn't matter how good I was. It was always, 'You're a girl. You can't play with the guys.' It's always been motivation for me." --Swoopes

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/87/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheryl_Swoopes

Althea Gibson...American Tennis Player,Professional Golfer,Teacher, First Black Athlete of Either Gender to Cross the Color Line of International Tennis

Althea Gibson 1927-2003 brought grace, dignity and power to the world of tennis in the 1950's. She intimidated opponents with her powerful serve, pinpoint volleys and thundering overhead. But she is best remembered for having the courage to take on major tennis' all-white establishment. Gibson was a pioneer who broke several racial barriers in the sport and paved the way for future stars such as Arthur Ashe, Zina Garrison, and Venus and Serena Williams. The first African-American to win the Wimbledon singles title (she did it twice, in 1957 and 1958), she also won the French Open and U.S. Open singles titles.

Born to a South Carolina sharecropper who moved his family to New York City in 1930, Gibson grew up in Harlem during the great Depression. She shot pool with the local sharks and played basketball with the boys in her neighborhood -- but she was especially adept at paddle ball. During the summer of 1941, a Police Athletic League supervisor watched Gibson win a local tournament and suggested she take up tennis. Gibson began taking lessons, beating all comers and rapidly rising through the ranks of New York's all-Black American Tennis Association (ATA). In 1947, Gibson won the first of her 10 consecutive ATA national championships. She continued to dominate the ATA circuit while remaining shut out of all-white United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) events.

After years of lobbying on the part of ATA officials and contemporaries such as former Wimbledon champion Alice Marble, Gibson made tennis history when she stepped onto Court 14 at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York on August 28, 1950 to compete in women's singles at the U.S. Championship. Gibson became the first African-American -- male or female -- to play in a major USLTA event. She defeated England's Barbara Knapp in straight sets, but lost to former Wimbledon champion Louise Brough in the second round. She made history again at Wimbledon that year, advancing to the quarterfinals.

Over the next five years, Gibson continued to win ATA titles, but her success in USLTA events was somewhat uneven until she returned from an exhibition tour of Asia for the U.S. State Department in 1955. She won 16 of 18 USLTA matches during the 1956 season, including the French Championships on May 20, becoming the first African-American to win a major tennis singles title.

Gibson was nearly 30 when she won her first Wimbledon title in 1957. She returned to a hero's welcome and ticker-tape parade in New York. She won her first U.S. Championship later that year and became the top-ranked female tennis player in the world. After winning her second U.S. title in 1958, Gibson retired from amateur competition. She took up golf and broke another color barrier by becoming the first African-American woman to compete on the LPGA circuit. She won one tournament during a seven-year career.

After retiring from professional competition in 1971, Gibson taught tennis and also served as athletic commissioner for the State of New Jersey from 1975 to '77. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971 and to the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1980.

They said it: "Ain't that a blip, that a Harlem street rebel would go on to become a world tennis champion?" -- Gibson

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/30/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althea_Gibson