Danica earns place among historic female sports figures (cont.)

Mission accomplished: Danica Patrick took the lead on the 198th lap in the 200-lap race.

T.J. Patrick, a glazier by trade, invested in his young daughter and it finally paid off in America's most extreme form of racing.

"This is the best day of my life," T.J. said. "I've dreamt about it. I'm so proud of her. For all the grief she has gotten over it, she proved she can win races and she is going to win a lot more."

Danica's husband, Paul Hospenthal, is a professional physical therapist who works with athletes in MLB, professional tennis and golf.

"Female aside, she's just a hard competitor," Hospenthal said. "She never asked to be the female in the male sport; she just wants to work hard. With any race car driver, coming to the lead and winning like this and showing a little patience is fantastic."

At times, that patience was tested. For the first 49 races of her career, she was constantly hounded by the questions, "When are you going to win a race?" or "Are you ever going to win a race?" She became the first woman to lead the Indianapolis 500 in 2005 and was in front with seven laps to go before fading to a fourth-place finish that year.

But in her 50th start, Patrick finally answered those questions and lived up to her billing off the track.

"I'm so happy for her, so proud of her," said team owner Michael Andretti. "It's always been a matter of when, not if when she was going to win. I'm so proud of her the way she did it. She stuck to her numbers and her speed. I love this girl. I'm so happy for her the monkey is off her back.

"There will be more of this to come."

She is now a person of sociological significance. She represents the same hope to female race drivers that Jackie Robinson represented to African-Americans when he broke the color-barrier in Major League Baseball.

And while Shirley Muldowney, Ashley Force and Melanie Troxel are race-winners in drag racing, their battles are usually one-on-one against another competitor and the clock. Patrick's victory came on a 1½-mile oval against 17 other drivers as the IndyCar Series was split for the final time with the Champ Car Series teams participating in Sunday's Long Beach Grand Prix.

"It was a matter of everything coming together," Patrick said. "I knew this is how it would feel."

There was Patrick, standing on the top rung of the podium, just a few inches above America's dancing king, two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Castroneves who finished second by 5.8594 seconds.

And while Janet Guthrie was the real pioneer by becoming the first female ever to race in the Indianapolis 500 in 1977, there would be others that would follow including Lyn St. James, Sarah Fisher and even Milka Duno.

But Patrick is the first to actually win an IndyCar race, posing next to a trophy that was nearly as big as she is at 5-feet.

It's the size of that victory, however, that is immeasurable to the IndyCar Series and the sporting world.

Move over Maureen Connelly (first woman to win the tennis Grand Slam), Billy Jean King, Julie Krone (first jockey to win a Triple Crown race) and Pat Summitt because Patrick has just joined the Mount Rushmore of female sporting accomplishments.