I know nothing about Indy-car racing, but...

[electricland]

Apparently this article about Danica Patrick bugged me so much that I'm still thinking about it two days later. Especially this bit:

In newspaper and magazine ads designed to stoke interest in this year's IRL season, Patrick, described in one prominent U.S. newspaper as "part Angelina Jolie, part A.J. Foyt" is pictured wearing black leather under the tagline: "We heard you like to watch."

After last year's Indianapolis 500 drew the lowest television ratings in the event's history, Patrick's fourth-place finish this year sent ABC's ratings soaring 40 per cent higher from last year. In Canada, TSN's audience tripled over 2004.

Patrick's success — Janet Guthrie posted the previous best Indy 500 finish for a woman when she was ninth in 1978 — might even help spark interest in the IRL's remaining 12 races, beginning with its next event on June 11 in Texas.

Yet don't expect Fortune 500 companies to race to stake a claim on the 5-foot-2, 105-pound Patrick, who has also generated headlines for appearing in an FHM magazine photo shoot draped over the grill of a 1957 Chevy wearing a red leather bustier.

Patrick "doesn't want to be the next Anna Kournikova," Bobby Rahal, part owner of Rahal Letterman Racing, said in a recent interview with USA Today. "Danica understands she has to deliver the goods."

(snip)

Patrick needs to get to the winner's circle because it's no longer a novelty for women athletes to compete alongside men.

First of all, let's get our metaphors straight. Anna Kournikova is known for being a very beautiful, very sexy, very downloaded, talented woman tennis player in a field of talented women tennis players, many of whom are better enough at tennis that she has never won a major. If Danica Patrick is the only woman currently racing in Indy races, that's a completely different thing. Everyone knows that Jacques Villeneuve is the Anna Kournikova of auto racing, anyway.

What the powers that be are essentially saying to Ms. Patrick, here, is "Hi. Welcome to the sport. You are not the same as anyone else in this sport, and we are not starting you off on a level playing field. As a pretty woman driver, you -- unlike the men you're competing against -- are a freakshow attraction, and as such we're prepared to grant you entry. Unfortunately, you're not enough of a freak to attract attention unless you are also better than all your competitors. But hey, no pressure."

Am I wrong?

Comments

Danica Patrick

[john-d-owen.livejournal.com]

I'd say the article says more about the hide-bound attitude of the reporter on the Toronto Star than it does about general acceptance within the sport of Ms Patrick. Thanks to the split between IRL and ChampCars, single seater racing in the USA has been losing ground to NASCAR for years now, and certainly IRL have realised the great opportunity that a genuinely competitive woman driver would have in raising the public awareness of the sport. It seems to have succeeded, since viewing figures for the Indy 500 have apparently shot up enormously this year on the back of Patrick having a genuine shot at winning the race. In the end, she came fourth, but made her mark.

The one area where drivers are complaining is over her "unfair advantage" of weight – NASCAR drivers, in particular, were saying if she raced there, she'd have up to 100lbs advantage over some of the frankly, er, 'chunky' Good Ol' Boys. But then small drivers have always had an advantage over large ones, whatever the category they are racing in – even if the weight was equalised, the lesser packaging requirements of a smaller driver gives designers a better chance to optimise a car's weight balance and frontal area (in single-seaters).

Re: Danica Patrick

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Interesting! (See, I warned you I knew nothing about this.) The weight advantage (wubbie, NASCAR) is yet another way, I guess, in which car racing and horse racing are different.

But it seems to me that a 4th-place finish is "genuinely competitive". And if TPTB in IRL are happy with that kind of finish, great. If they're expecting her to win win win in order to bring in the viewers, I have a problem with that. But I hope it's just that the writer is an ass. ;)

Re: Danica Patrick

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

as the resident Indy is my hometown and I was baptised in the 500 experience person on your flist (at least I think I'm the only one, unless you have my brother on your list), yes, they are pandering to the stereotypes when writing the above. Yes, the men are mad because she's lightweight. Suck it up, you freakin' crybabies. You have endless money (many of you) to redesign your car and engine to make it lighter and faster. She is not that much ligher than many male drivers (a lot of whom are not that tall and very wiry - it's a hot, sweaty sport and you have to be in good physical shape to succed at it). They are angry that she's getting media attention and therefore sponsors and ad revenue. She's not the first woman at the 500 by any means, nor is she the first in the sport. But she's thus far the best finisher of the female drivers, and was heavily favored to win the pole position during qualifications, which is no mean feat and carries with it a huge purse. If she hadn'd made a rookie mistake than many men also have made, she'd have won it. The men who are whining should just suck it up, because she won't be the last woman in the sport. (Also, she's been racing go-karts and standard cars since she was something like 12 years old, it's not like she's a fly by night novice at racing.)


Also? Everyone knows that Jacques Villeneuve is the Anna Kournikova of auto racing, anyway.

that made me snort my beverage.

Re: Danica Patrick

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I so totally know nothing about this! So thank you for posting. Now I know slightly more. And it is always good to cause others' beverages to shoot out their noses, so I'm glad I put my appalling ignorance on display, even if I'm feeling slightly silly about it now...

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

Okay, I totally dont care about racing and think anyone who wastes their time with it should be forced to do community service so I'm way uninformed here.

But how is she not starting from a level playing field? How many male non-winning drivers can the average person name? Hell I can't even name but two *winning* drivers and I think they're both dead.

Are they making her drive a special chick car that has a limiter on it so she can't drive as fast as the men? Does she have to go to a special women's pitstop that has a longer line? I mean as far as i can tell, gender should make no difference whatsoever in ones ability to drive a car fast in a circle. It's not like football where you have gigantic men who make normal humans seem like children and where women in general would have a real biological disadvantage playing in the NFL (though I'm sure there are some behemoth mutant women who could measure up to the behemoth mutant men)

so... how is it not fair again?

[electricland.livejournal.com]

No difference in terms of competition, for all the reasons you point out. I'm complaining about the extra pressure and expectations (as implied in the article). Which, fair enough, I'm sure she can handle. I'd prefer that her sex wasn't an issue at all, though.

Men and women compete in the same equestrian events, and basically always have, so it's not an issue. It annoys me to see other fields stuck in the dinosaur age.

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I don't think the pressure to win could really be that much greater one way or t'other. No matter who you are, it's your big shot and you've got a bunch of folks who have invested a bunch of money in you. I guess some people are just rich hobbyists but everyone else has a lot of pressure to win. They just aren't a novelty like a woman is. Who knows the extra exposure might very well be good for her and help her get and keep sponsers

As far as other fields go, do you mean sports or employment in general? Because as I mentioned there are some sports where sexual segregation at the pro level seems reasonable. Although I think it should be an option for women to compete in the NBA NFL NHL NL AL and whatever they have for soccer and golf and any other sport, I bet for most of those sports there won't be a high percentage of women who are up to the challenge. Well, I'm sure there will be for golf and soccer and tennis where the lead stars aren't mutants like they are in the really popular sports.

Still when you do get a really freakishly well suited mutant to your game, I don't see why you'd want to keep them out for being female.

Though truth be told, I'd like to see men kept out of mud wrestling and roller derby

[archaica.livejournal.com]

It does sound rather more like she won't get sponsors because IRL sucks, more than she's a woman or a "freakshow." Why she'd want to race with Robby Gordon, who said she should have been weighed down because she's lighter (conveniently forgetting all the advantages he has because he's twice her size and stronger), is beyond me anyway. As a NASCAR driver, she'd have sponsors out the wazoo and fame. She should make the move.

[john-d-owen.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell from reports over here in Limey-land, Ms Patrick has expressed no particular wish to go play with the rednecks in NASCAR's Never-Never-Land. Her intention seems to be to prove herself in IRL, and try and use that to work a route into F1 (just as this year's 500 winner Dan Wheldon seems intent on doing). She's unusual, in that as an American, she took herself off to the UK in her teens (she's only 23 now) to race in British Formula Ford (the most competitive proving ground for young drivers in the world), and didn't do at all badly. She's a talented driver, and does seem to be generating a lot of interest world-wide.

[lawgeekgurl.livejournal.com]

she likes Indy cars and has plenty of sponsors. Letterman/Rahal racing is no small outfit. Nascar is the poor man's Indy sport, says me. I'll probably be beaten senseless for saying that, but I'm from Indy, and they can bite me. :)