The Trailblazers In surfing, the sport from which skateboarding evolved in the 1960s, a number of women mavericks have had to nudge their way into the lineup, including Australian Layne Beachley, the winningest professional woman surfer in history, with a total of six Association of Surfing Professionals (AS P) world championships (she also holds the most consecutive titles for a man or woman). Layne has brought the National Australia Bank (NAB) into the women’s AS P circuit as a sponsor of the NAB Beachley Classic, which offers the highest total purse of any event on the women’s tour: US $100,000. All the other women’s events offer a US $85,000 purse (the men compete for a US $320,000 purse at each of their events). Having juggled multiple jobs and struggled financially early in her career, Layne established the Aim for the Stars Foundation (www.aimforthestars.com.au) to provide financial support to young women who are striving to reach goals, athletic or otherwise. The foundation provides grants for 12 girls each year. Oh, and did we mention that Beachley has ridden the largest wave by a woman on record? She rode a 40-foot face at Outer Log Cabins on Hawaii’s North Shore. Her success has spurred a growing field of young rippers to embrace surfing, and some of them are eking out a nice living at it. But well before CB and Layne started rattling cages about equal—or at least fair—pay, there was Jacquie Phelan. Quite literally one of the pioneers in the sport of mountain biking—she was among the first to ride a fat-tire steed down the bumpy, rooted trails of the sport’s birthplace, Marin County, California—Jacquie had little trouble winning many of the early mountain bike contests in the 1980s, even beating the men. When she was given the wrong prize envelope at a race in 1993—she’d placed sixth overall in the race and was given the prize money meant for a sixth-place male finisher ($400) rather than the first place female finisher (a whopping $37)—she raised a stink. “I knew that if I cashed it, my name would be mud,” she says. So instead she went public about the inequity and wrote letters to all the sponsors of the event. She pushed for equal prize money for both genders in the National Off-Road Bicycle Association (NORBA), and her influence remains today. The U.S. National Series mountainbiking events, a part of NORBA, are the only ones that give equal prize money to the top three men and the top three women. “But riders’ salaries are what really matter,” says Jacquie, who at 52 is out of the competitive scene but still rides constantly. Marla Streb, another mountain bike maven, agrees. In 1993 at age 28, Marla shelved her career as a cytogeneticist and started racing. She has multiple U.S. National Downhill titles and took the NORBA National Downhill title nine times. She even claimed the World Single Speed Championships twice. An outspoken advocate for the sport and women’s place in it, Marla is one of the founding members of Luna Chix, a professional racing team sponsored by energy food company Clif Bar (which sells the Luna Bar). Looking forward to the day their young, athletic daughter would choose a career, Clif Bar founder and cyclist Gary Erickson and his wife conceived of the team in 2001 as a means to nurture opportunities for women in outdoor sports. The goal of the team is to provide the same level of support, resources, and pay that men’s pro team members receive. When Luna Chix, now in its eighth year, emerged, skeptics said an all-woman pro team on par with men’s would never last. “Many of those critics have since gone out of business and dropped out of sight, and some have even asked about working with or for us, since our team has arguably the highest profile (with probably the most highly paid women) in the country for eight years now,” says Marla. |
