Women In Sports

"I think one word we can agree Bob is, uh? Epic, classic. Thriller, block-buster. I think all the clichés were made real. I mean? You woke up this morning, saying you felt nervous about this game. Now, I know why."

"The biggest moment, this. Of her soccer life. Ali Krieger, who recovered from that life-threating illness five years ago. Can she win it for the USA, here? And she does! And the USA are into the last four! It's been a near miracle, this! In Dresden!"

"Daiane, whose own goal started all the talking points today after seventy-four seconds. Seems a long, long time ago now. It was into this goal, now Brazil need her to put one in legitimately for them. Yes! Brilliant save from Solo, brilliant save! And that one is legal, and now that means, that if the United States put in the last two penalties, they will go into the semi-finals. That is a moment of magic from Hope Solo!"

"Just incredible! Look at Hope Solo celebrate! There is an American party going on, all around the terraces! Surely the whistle's going to go any second, and it will be a penalty shootout. Abby Wambach in the one hundred and twenty-second minute. Well that does match the drama of the men's World Cup last year, and the Landon Donovan goal which saved the USA against Algeria, doesn't it? Well, well, well! And the goal was scored in the time added on for the largely bogus injury, we think, to Érika. Is there some kind of poetic justice in that? It's not finished yet, though. Still the referee plays on, and here's Marta again! Solo beats it away; it will be a corner. How much more of this can there possibly be? It is over! It will be a penalty shoot-out! An incredible finish, one of the great climaxes to any World Cup match! Brazil are denied at the death! A ten-woman USA save it! Wow, we need to get our breath back. So let's go back to Bob Ley for a moment."

"Marta again, she'll keep the ball in the corner now, much to the annoyance of the crowd. The decision was goal kick. I think this referee knows that she made a very, very big call over that penalty. Morgan, and still it goes on here. Tobin Heath. Boxx. Carli Lloyd! Oh, uh. Couldn't keep it down. Chants of 'USA' ringing around the arena here in Dresden, and it do, does look like it's going to be to no avail. And it will go down as the USA's worst performance ever in the Women's World Cup. Cristiane can buy some time down by the corner, here. Eat away vital seconds. Now, USA have it. And they've just got to get everybody forward now. No sense defending anymore, Lloyd's got to get this pass off. To Rapinoe, and everybody's going to bum forward now. Rapinoe gets a cross in, it's towards Wambach! Oh, can you believe this? Abby Wambach has saved the USA's life in this World Cup!"

"Cristiane with a chance to put Brazil at level. Hope Solo saved it! A hero again! What is it with Hope Solo and Brazil? Now what's the referee doing here? Is? The penalty? Is it going to have to be retaken? Because they're claiming Solo moved before the ball was kicked. Now this is very controversial, and Solo has got a yellow card for that as well. This is highly contentious! Now look at this again, does she move off the line? No, no, no, no! That is an astonishing decision in my view."

"Women’s increased participation and success in sports has been propelled to remarkable heights by women’s exercise of, and reliance on, constitutional guarantees of liberty and gender equality, including the right to reproductive autonomy. Continued access to, and reliance on, those rights will empower the next generation of girls and women to continue to excel in athletics and beyond, strengthening their communities and this nation. If women were to be deprived of these constitutional guarantees, the consequences for women’s athletics—and for society as whole—would be devastating."

"Access to safe and legal reproductive healthcare— whether women actually use the services, or rely on the knowledge that they are there—can be critical to a woman athlete’s ability to physically and emotionally recover from a sexual assault."

"Permission is for pansies, we dont need anyones permission to be who we are, and we dont need permission to be who we wanna be."

"I just want to thank you for letting me be a little small part of your life and for many of you guys, a part of your puberty."

"Now I just want you guys to remember that not everything is as it seems and that fear is an enemy that affects all of us in some way but when you are willing to remember that permission is for pansies, to summon your swagger, and to forget the failure, you can win your match against fear anytime."

"If you wanna have that confident persona, the one that you guys taught me, you gotta forget the failure."

"My intention was to show up for you guys the fans, and to play the role, to play the role of who I really wish I could be outside of the ring, a strong confident women who is unnafraid of failing, unnafraid of being sexy, who knows who she is and to be quite honest to know she is a badass whether anyone else believes it or not."

"I didnt asked the guy who said "Torrie Wilson doesnt belong in the WWE Hall of Fame" if he thought it was okay if I still came anyway. And I didn't ask the guy that was up there booing me telling me I suck if he deemed me worthy of lacing up my wrestling boots and giving it a try the next night. Because neither would've said yes but neither one was the one stepping in this ring.""

"Fear only has one enemy and that is a confident persona."

"The thing is, all of us think that fear is just a thing you choose to overcome but its not, all of us face it in some way you dont have to be on a stage whether is parenting, running a business, speaking out on something you believe in, it can scare us all."

"For two weeks I get distressed and for two weeks I eat, process cheese, chocolate moose, cherry pie whatever my grandma had in her refrigerator. And then were back in school standing outside all by myself and here comes "Mr Suave", really tried to work myself off like ok dont be that weird shy girl like play it cool and right when he gets next to me he says, ¡whats up fatto, what happened to you? and then he chases me around the playground yelling fatto, fatto. Alright the walk home from school that day was the most mordfiying walk I ever had on my life, felt like such a loser and I cry my eyes out, I got home locked myself in my room all day long and all I kept thinking was oh my god! Im such a loser like I dont wanna be that girl, I dont wanna be that shy, weird fatto, like I dont wanna be that girl, and I made a vow right there that Terry was gonna eat his damn words."

"When I turned 15 or 16 I realized that I did not have to eat meat, so I stopped. I went Vegan the same year I got in to bike racing: 1999. I was living in San Francisco and started racing on the track and lived with a bunch of vegans. To be honest, I never really liked eating animal products. It was just always in stuff I would eat. Y'know: burritos have cheese, pizza has cheese. But once I was surrounded by people who showed me that there were options, I stopped eating animal products right away. I was really motivated to start taking responsibility for what I put in my body."

"My lifestyle is pretty minimal. Just doing my part to make the planet a better place."

"You can work out in a pool and sweat, but you don't smell. In the water you are weightless. You are ageless. It feels exhilarating to get wet. And you know the water is a very sexy medium. Why do you think people always get in a hot tub?"

"Just make the point we come from the water. It's the most natural medium in the world. It's the only sport you can do from your first bath to your last without hurting yourself."

"I'll bet if I compare notes with Junie Allyson and Debbie Reynolds and anyone else who's had more than one marriage, the fact is that you fall in love and it's so wonderful to think about something other than yourself and whether the script's right for you and who's going to be your leading man, that you don't really ask yourself questions about the fellow. He's just wonderful looking and he dances well and you have a wonderful time and it's fun to go out, and all of a sudden you're in a lifelong marriage."

"Since I'm old, instead of taking the booing, I want to tell you, I'm doing the very best I can. I mean, If you're a real fan, you know that I'm not just like my job is not to sign autographs, right? My job is to drive a car and to tell the crew chief what's going on. I don't appreciate the booing... It hurts my feelings. I'm a fucking person; you know what I mean? I'm a person, too. I have feelings. When you boo me, it hurts my feelings. Please just be supportive fans. I'll do everything I can. When I came from over here, my car was over there. I can only do so much. I have to get in the car. So please understand that."

"He is exaggerating, for sure—130 mph approaches the high end for the likes of Sampras."

"I started [following a vegan diet] for health reasons. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and I wanted to maintain my performance on the court. Once I started I fell in love with the concept of fueling your body in the best way possible. Not only does it help me on the court, but I feel like I’m doing the right thing for me. … I literally couldn’t play tennis anymore, so it really changed my life. Because it was starting to take away what I loved, I had to make some changes, I had to change my life. Thankfully, I was able to find something that helped me get back to doing what I loved. … It changed the pace that I live at. It changed everything."

"They always have big mouths. They always talk a lot. It's happened before, so it's gonna happen again. I don't really worry about that."

"Being black only helps them. Many times they get sponsors because they are black. And they have had a lot of advantages because they can always say, 'It's racism.' They can always come back and say, 'Because we are this color, things happen."

"Steffi has had some results in the past, but it's a faster, more athletic game now than when she played.... She is old now. Her time has passed."

"She's here with her girlfriend. She's half a man."

"Her breezy optimism as she took on some of the world's top players endeared her to her compatriots: for just as India was beginning to emerge as a world power, here was a young woman displaying a brazen determination to shake off the shackles of the underdog. Off-court, too, her confidence was striking. Confounding stereotypes of demure and retiring Indian femininity, she delighted in brash displays of adolescent attitude."

"She had become headline news in her homeland since her return from Melbourne, where in January [2005] she had reached the third round of the Australian Open, the first time that an Indian woman had progressed so far in a grand slam event."

"On 12 February 2005 thousands of people started gathering at dawn for the final of the Hyderabad Open [to watch Sania in the final] and, by 10 in the morning, so dense were the crowds outside that it was difficult to get into the Fateh Maidan complex. There for the match were film stars from south India as well as local government officials; corporate VIPs from Mumbai, labourers from nearby towns and families who had travelled hundreds of miles from Delhi."

"The fastest rising star in women's tennis is adored by millions in her home country. But the Muslim teenager has been denounced by extremist clerics for dressing in a 'corrupting' way. Now she needs bodyguards to provide constant protection."

"When she first started out on the pro circuit at the age of 18, the length of her skirts prompted some religious mullah to issue a fatwa, which was a bit of a handicap to her chosen profession given that fashion in women's tennis apparel has moved on, not to mention up, since Suzanne Lenglen's knickers were covered by several petticoats and a skirt which picked up chalk from the baseline."

"A High Court lawyer filed a case for her arrest (without bail) and a three-year jail sentence... [case] under something called the "Prevention Of Insult To The National Honour Act", citing "disrespect" to the national flag. India's predilection for red tape, taught to them by the Imperial British, but since refined to gargantuan levels, means that by the time the case gets to court she will probably be a grandmother, but it's a bit of worry nonetheless. When Sania, who is Shia Muslim, first bared her thighs on a tennis court, people took to the streets to burn effigies of her, although this in itself is such a common event in India that it more or less doubles the smog levels."

"A couple of weeks ago, the 21-year-old was photographed with her feet up while watching a colleague playing in an international exhibition match in Perth, and the proximity of her toes to a nearby Indian flag raised temperatures in her home state to vindaloo levels."

"She is the highest ranked female tennis player ever from India, with a career high ranking of 27 in singles and 7 in doubles. She knows from her early experiences about the hardships that tennis players from India have to endure in order to become a successful professional. She had a long cherished vision for Tennis in India. The Vision - "To pave a way for Indian Tennis by training and promoting urban and rural talent and to enable our players to make a significant mark in the world of international tennis.""

"She and Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik tied the nuptial knot on Monday (April 12) as the two families advanced the high-profile marriage by three days after a tumultuous build up to the wedding. The build up to their marriage was controversial due to Shoaib's first marriage with local girl Ayesha."

"She was conferred with the prestigious Padma Shri award for her contribution to tennis on the eve [25 January 2006] of the Republic Day."

"She is the pride of Hyderabad and hoped she would soon become No 1 player from her fifth position. The government would extend all support to provide her best training and other facilities."

"Indian doubles tennis ace Sania Mirza recently achieved a career-best rank of number five in the world when the new Women’s Tennis Association doubles chart was released after the Wimbledon Championships concluded in July 2014."

"You can either agree with me, or be wrong."

"The media is only concerned with trying to sell themselves through concocted sensationalism. I try to avoid them and rarely read their concocted stories."

"Yes, I'm a practising Muslim, but I don't understand why only I'm asked about my religion. Everyone's got a religion out there. I wonder why no one else is asked about it."

"The most difficult element is perhaps the lack of privacy in my life."

"I don't think I have made any deliberate or conscious attempt to represent the new generation. I am what I am."

"The facilities at that point in India were not up to international standards and the lack of tennis culture did make things more difficult."

"As I came to the lime light, the media asked me many questions. A lot many moral policing... 'Wear this, wear that, why a T-shirt?' Everybody has the right to form their opinions, and I have the right to ignore them."

"When a woman wants to do something on her own way, she is criticized, dubbed as a rebel. I (too) was stated an arrogant. However, I stuck to my guns and today I am at this place. We have to fight in order to move forward in this men's world."

"I think being a woman celebrity is the hardest thing in India.... People will ask many things, what you wear, how you speak, when you will have a baby and other things."