Trailblazing feminine tennis star Billie Jean King beat former males’s champ, Bobby Riggs, in a extremely publicized match, the so-called “Battle of the Sexes,” on this present day in historical past, Sept. 20, 1973.
The made-for-TV sports activities spectacle proved a watershed second within the struggle for girls’s equality in athletics.
King gained the tennis match in straight units (6-4, 6-3, 6-3) earlier than greater than 30,000 spectators on the Houston Astrodome and thousands and thousands extra across the nation and the world on tv.
“Not at some point has handed that somebody has not requested me about that match,” King instructed Fox Information Digital in an emailed remark two years in the past, on the forty ninth anniversary of her win.
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“Fifty million individuals in america and an estimated 90 million individuals worldwide tuned in,” King’s web site signifies concerning the match. It was “some of the watched televised sporting occasions of all time” and “no tennis match earlier than or since has been seen by so many.”
Forward of the primetime broadcast, each athletes hammed it up for the cameras.
On Sept. 20, 1973, tennis star Billie Jean King is carried to the court docket by 4 males for the “Battle of the Sexes,” a made-for-TV spectacle between her and 55-year-old tennis star Bobby Riggs. (Getty Photos)
“King made a Cleopatra-style entrance on a gold litter carried by males dressed as historical slaves,” writes Historical past.com, “whereas Riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by feminine fashions.”
Celebrated sportscaster Howard Cosell referred to as the match, lending an air of grandeur to the festivities.
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King, 29 years outdated on the time, was within the midst of a dominating run.
The California native gained the French Open, the U.S. Open and Wimbledon in 1972.
She defended her Wimbledon title simply two months earlier than the “Battle of the Sexes,” whereas profitable eight different Grand Slam championships in her profession.
Within the “Battle of the Sexes,” Billie Jean King emerged victorious and was surrounded by followers and media after she beat Bobby Riggs on the Astrodome, in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 20, 1973. (Tony Triolo/Sports activities Illustrated through Getty Photos)
Riggs, age 55 throughout the match, had been the world’s top-ranked tennis participant in 1946 and 1947.
He’d made a grand entry into the worldwide limelight, profitable Wimbledon as a 21-year-old beginner in 1939.
Riggs, who died in 1995, was additionally an overt and self-proclaimed male chauvinist who had publicly belittled feminine athletes.
He gave King an enormous sweet lollipop earlier than the match with “Sugar Daddy” written on it.
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His coarse popularity made King’s victory style a lot sweeter for her supporters all over the world.
Along with a lifetime of acclaim, she nabbed a $100,000 payday within the winner-take-all competitors.
Tennis participant Bobby Riggs holds a “Sugar Daddy” signal whereas being carried to the court docket by younger ladies. He performed the tennis match in opposition to Billie Jean King referred to as the “Battle of the Sexes,” on Sept. 20, 1973, on the Houston Astrodome. (Getty Photos)
“This occasion was like none different earlier than,” longtime Sports activities Illustrated photographer Neil Leifer stated within the journal’s July retrospective of the occasion.
“No one had ever held a tennis match in a stadium like this. It was a Hollywood manufacturing.”
Regardless of the overt showmanship, the match served to legitimize the ability of feminine rivals.
It was performed only a yr after the passage of the Training Amendments of 1972, greatest identified for its Title IX, which opened up athletic alternatives for females in faculty.
“It was about social change, rather more than about tennis,” King has usually stated.
Billie Jean King talks to the media on Day 14 at Roland Garros on June 4, 2022, in Paris, France. (Robert Prange/Getty Photos)
She noticed it as a victory for girls athletes in all places.
She has stated, as her personal web site notes, “I believed it could set us again 50 years if I didn’t win that match. It will spoil the ladies’s [tennis] tour and have an effect on all ladies’s vanity. To beat a 55-year-old man was no thrill for me. The joys was exposing numerous new individuals to tennis.”
“It was about social change, rather more than about tennis.”
King in 1971 earned greater than $100,000 in prize cash. She is believed to be the primary feminine athlete to succeed in that milestone.
“Nonetheless, important pay disparities nonetheless existed between women and men athletes and King lobbied laborious for change,” writes Historical past.com.
On Sept. 20, 1973, a crowd of 30,472 and an estimated TV viewers of 40 million — the biggest ever stay viewers for a tennis match in primetime — watched Billie Jean King, 29, defeat Bobby Riggs, 55, in three straight units, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, within the “Battle of the Sexes.” (ANN LIMONGELLO/Disney Common Leisure Content material through Getty Photos)
“In 1973, the U.S. Open grew to become the primary main tennis match at hand out the identical quantity of prize cash to winners of each sexes.”
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King to this present day stays a trailblazer for many individuals all around the globe.
As she wrote in her autobiography, “All In,” printed in 2021, she instructed her mom as a younger little one, “Mother, I’ll do one thing nice with my life — I simply realize it! You watch.”
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That included being the No. 1 tennis participant on this planet.
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In 1973, she based the Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation; in 2006, she grew to become the primary lady to have a significant sports activities venue named in her honor (the USTA Billie Jean King Nationwide Tennis Middle, house of the U.S. Open); and in 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, amongst her different accomplishments.
