12 Times Female Athletes Competed Against Men—and Won

On June 8, 1975, boxer Jackie Tonawanda was the first woman to fight in New York's Madison Square Garden. She went up against Larry Rodania—and knocked him out in the second round. After that, she was dubbed "the female Muhammad Ali."

On August 30, 2003, Katie Hnida became the first woman to score points in an NCAA Division 1-A college football game as kicker for the New Mexico Lobos at the University of New Mexico. In a game against Texas State University, Hnida kicked two points in the fourth quarter. Hnida was only the second woman to ever dress in a college football uniform in the U.S. Today, the number of women asked to play in the NCAA remains low, but Hnida helped prove that women can score points alongside the guys.

In 1973, pros Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs faced off in a tennis game that became known as "The Battle of the Sexes." Fifty million people in the U.S. and 90 million worldwide watched 29-year-old King play against 55-year-old Riggs at the Houston Astrodome. At stake? A winner's prize of $100,000. King made a stunning comeback after falling behind during the first set. She won all three sets, winning 6 to 3 in the third set. Female tennis plays are now more accepted, but similar "Battles of the Sexes" have taken place since King bested Riggs, including in 2013 when Chinese tennis pro Li Na beat Novak Djokovic 3-2.

Danica Patrick is not only considered the most successful woman in the history of American car racing, but she is one of the few female race car drivers to ever turn a wheel. Patrick, who has been stock car racing since her youth, won the Indy Japan 300 in 2008, becoming the first and only woman to win an IndyCar Series race. In 2009, Patrick placed third in the Indianapolis 500 and marked the highest finish by a female driver in that race. She's continued to set records: In 2013, she became the first female NASCAR driver to take a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series pole in the 2013 Daytona 500; her eighth place finish is the highest finish for a woman in that race to date.

Wrestler Jeff Jarrett was notorious for degrading women both in and out of the ring. But he got his just desserts in 1999 when he battled female wrestler Chyna in a World Wrestling Federation match titled "No Mercy." The participants were allowed to use household objects hit each other, and Chyna eventually pinned Jarrett for the victory. She became the first woman to hold the WWF Intercontinental Champion title and, more importantly, put Jarrett in his place.

In 2008, 16-year-old pitcher Eri Yoshida was drafted to the Kobe 9 Cruise, becoming the first woman ever drafted by a Japanese professional baseball team. In 2010, Yoshida became the third woman in history and the first Japanese woman to play in the U.S. male professional baseball leagues on Chico Outlaws, part of minor league Golden Baseball League. She was drafted by the mostly-male professional baseball team Tochigi Golden Braves in 2017 and is still known as the "knuckleball princess," a moniker she received in high school.

In 1993, Julie Krone became the first female jockey to win a Triple Crown race after she rode Colonial Affair to victory in the Belmont Stakes. In 2000, Krone became the first woman inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, and three years later she became the first female jockey to win a Breeders' Cup race.

Carissa Moore has won several women's competitions, but her most important victory came in 2007 when she won the Quicksilver King of the Groms event against male competitors. In 2011, Moore was the first female to earn a wild card entry spot into the Men's Triple Crown of Surfing. Moore has since been inducted into the Surfers' Hall of Fame.

On February 7, 2005, English sailor Dame Ellen MacArthur set the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe. She took the record from Francis Joyon, a French sailor, beating him by 1 day, 8 hours, 35 minutes and 49 seconds. MacArthur completed her journey by sleeping only 20 minutes at a time, sailing from around the world in a little over 71 days. She now works at the Ellen MacArthur Trust, a charity foundation that teaches young people how to sail as they recover from cancer.

Jackie Mitchell was only 17 years old when her baseball team, the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts, played an exhibition game against the New York Yankees on April 2, 1931. Mitchell, her team's pitcher, struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in succession with only seven pitches. In the days before the game, Ruth had told the Chattanooga newspaper, "I don't know what's going to happen if they begin to let women in baseball. Of course, they will never make good. Why? Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball every day."

At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Chinese athlete Zhang Shan won the gold medal in Olympic Skeet Shooting. The event was mixed gender and Shan became the only woman to win a medal in the sport between 1972 and 1992. Shan hit 24 targets in the 25-shot final, missing only one. She also made history during the qualifying round, where she shot 96 hits, equaling the world record set by Veronique Girardet-Allard at the Lonato World Shooting Championship in 2005.

Babe Zaharias was the first woman allowed to a compete in the Los Angeles Open in 1945, a PGA event. No other woman competed against men in this same tournament until nearly 50 years later. Zaharias later become the first female celebrity golfer in the U.S. and was well known in the '40s and '50s.