Like a Girl Trivia Quiz

Answer: Althea Gibson

American tennis player, Althea Gibson, was the first black player on the international tennis stage. When she won the French Open (then known as the French Championships) in 1956, she was the first African-American to win a Grand Slam title. She went on to win a total of eleven Grand Slams, both singles and doubles.

These included the Wimbledon and US Open. If this wasn't enough to earn her a place in history, in the 1960's she became the first black woman to play professional golf.

Answer: Marjorie Gestring

Marjorie Gestring was an American springboard diver. In 1936, she took part in the Summer Olympics at Berlin as part of the US contingent. She won gold in the 3-meter springboard diving event making her the youngest person to win an Olympic gold. Gestring was only 13 years old at the time of this achievement. Unfortunately for her, the 1940 Olympics were cancelled due to World War II.

She failed to qualify in the next games which were held in 1948, making the 1936 games her only Olympics run. Her record of being the youngest Olympic gold winner stood for over eighty years.

Answer: Jackie Mitchell

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Jackie Mitchell was first taught to play baseball by her father. Professional baseball player and later Hall of Fame inductee, Dazzy Vance was her neighbour and taught her how to pitch. She was signed up by the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts in 1931. Though Jackie wasn't the first woman to play baseball professionally, she made history when the Chattanooga Lookouts played an exhibition match against the New York Yankees. Only seventeen years old at the time, she struck out baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig back-to-back at the match.

Answer: Carli Lloyd

Carli Lloyd is an American soccer player and Olympic gold medalist. She scored the winning goals for the USA in the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympic games. During the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup, Carli captained the US national side. In the final against Japan, which the US went on to win 5-2, Carli scored a hat-trick - three goals within 16 minutes, a record in soccer World Cup history, both men's and women's games.

This also made her only the second player, and first female player, to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final.

Answer: Wilma Rudolph

Tennessee born Olympic champion, Wilma Rudolph, became a sports icon for her achievements in track and field. She became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic game when she won the 100 and 200 meter individual events and the 4 x 100 meter relay at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.

As a premature baby born into a large and not very well-off family, Wilma faced numerous challenges in childhood. Before she had turned five, she had already endured pneumonia, scarlet fever, and a form of infantile paralysis that led her to wear a leg brace until the age of twelve. This only serves to make her achievements later in life all the more remarkable.

Answer: Mary Kom

Chungneijang Mary Kom Hmangte, more popularly known as Mary Kom, is an Indian boxer from the state of Manipur. Born into a poor family, Mary took to sport as a way to earn a better life. When she first started boxing, she hid this from her family as they would worry that injuring sustained would hamper her chances of getting married. Eventually they found out when her photo was published in a newspaper after one of her local wins.

Mary won her first World Boxing Championship title in 2002. She went to become the first female boxer to win six golds and one silver at the World Boxing Championships. This was equal to then men's record. Unfortunately for Mary, women's boxing did not become an Olympic sport until 2012 - over 10 years after her first World Championship podium finish. Despite the games now having her regular weight class, she managed to fit into one of the higher classes and also secured a bronze medal.

Answer: Gertrude Ederle

Nicknamed the "Queen of the Waves", Gertrude Ederle was an American swimmer. She set her first world record when she was only twelve years old in the 880 yard freestyle race. This was just the beginning. She went on to hold 29 national and world records in the four year period from 1921 to 1925. She also represented the US at the 1924 Summer Olympics where she won a gold in the women's 4×100 meter freestyle relay, again setting a world record with her team. This was followed by two bronze medals in individual events.

On 6th August, 1926, she became the first woman to successfully swim across the English Channel. Her time of 14 hours and 34 minutes was almost two hours quicker than the then men's record of 16 hours, 33 minutes by Enrique Tiraboschi.

Answer: Billie Jean King

American tennis player, Billie Jean King, dominated the tennis scene in the 1960's and 70's. Through the course of her professional career, she won an amazing 39 Grand Slam titles which included 12 singles and the remaining coming from both women's and mixed doubles games. One of her striking achievements was winning the "Battle of the Sexes" match against Bobby Riggs. Riggs, a former World No. 1, had first played against Margaret Court and won in straight sets. King then agreed to play against him in the second such match and defeated Riggs to wide acclaim, though there were a share of critics who attributed it to her being much younger aged 29, than Riggs aged 55, in a sport where youth and fitness play a key role. This match was made into a movie called "Battle of the Sexes" starring Emma Stone and Steve Carrell in the lead roles.

King was an ardent advocate for gender parity in the sport of tennis and constantly pushed for better remuneration for women tennis players. Eventually she became the first woman athlete to earn over US$100,000 in prize money.

Answer: Julie Krone

American Julie Krone has many firsts to her name in the field of horse-racing. In 1987, she became the first woman to win a riding title at a major event. This was followed a few years later by her winning the Belmont Stakes race, which is one of the three Triple Crown races in the US, in 1993.

Her steed for this race was the Colonial Affair and this was the first and only Triple Crown win for both the horse and rider. By the time she retired, Krone had won over 3,500 races! She was the first woman to be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

Answer: Serena Williams

The Williams Sisters, Serena and Venus, have dominated women's tennis for over a decade. Serena turned professional in 1995 and first made international headlines in 1998 when she started reaching the quarterfinals of the major tennis tournaments. She won her first grand slam title at the US Open in 1999. This was just the beginning. By 2019, Serena had won 39 major titles including twice holding all four Grand Slam titles in a year (2002-03 and 2014-15). The media dubbed this achievement as the "Serena Slam", though she was not the first to achieve this. She also won numerous doubles titles during her career, partnering with her sister, Venus.

A few weeks after she won the Australian Open in 2017, she revealed that she had been around seven to eight weeks pregnant during the tournament. She returned to the professional circuit less than a year after giving birth and also reached the finals of Wimbledon in 2018.