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1911-1956
Ultimate multisport athlete won three Olympic medals to go with 31 LPGA titles.

Didrickson enjoyed Hall of Fame careers in both track and field and in golf.   Keystone Pictures Inc.

In an era when nice girls didn't sweat, Babe Didrikson Zaharias was an anomaly. For almost 25 years, from the Olympic Games of 1932 to her death, in 1956, Didrikson outboasted and outcompeted any rival to her reign as America's greatest female athlete. However, it wasn't just her two Hall of Fame careers, in track and field and in golf, that cemented Didrikson's place in the pantheon of American sports champions. Beyond her physical talent, Didrikson's intense, competitive spirit and supreme self-confidence set her apart from her contemporaries.

A talented sandlot softball player and all-around athlete while growing up in Beaumont, Texas, Mildred Ella Didrikson first shone on a public stage as an AAU All-America high school basketball player. In 1932 she single-handedly won the AAU team track and field championships, finishing first in five of the eight events she entered.

Didrikson came to national attention later in '32 during Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, winning gold medals and breaking her own world records in both the javelin and the 80-meter hurdles. She was awarded the silver in the high jump despite clearing a world-record height because her jump technique -- in which she cleared the bar headfirst -- was ruled ineligible for the gold.

In those days it was expected that if a woman excelled in sports, she should at least not let her ambitious nature show. Babe, as Didrikson was known because of her Ruthian clouts in softball, was instead an outspoken and relentless self-promoter who reveled in the decidedly unladylike world of sports. This persona helped keep her in the news even when she wasn't winning on the playing field.

She began her second Hall of Fame career on the amateur golf tour, in 1934. She would go on to 35 career victories -- 10 of them majors, including three U.S. Opens (1948, '50 and '54) -- and an unprecedented 17 consecutive tournament titles from April 1946 to August '47. She was one of the founding members of the LPGA in 1950.

Didrikson was still at the top of her game in 1953, when she was diagnosed with rectal cancer and underwent surgery. The next year she was back on the LPGA tour and won the '54 U.S. Open by a record 12 strokes, but by 1955 the cancer reappeared in her spine and she retired from sports permanently. She died on Sept. 27, 1956, at 45, six years after the Associated Press had named her the Greatest Female Athlete of the First Half of the 20th Century.

--Paula Hunt

Athletes were selected by Sports Illustrated For Women, Sports Illustrated and CNN/SI editors, writers and correspondents who considered the athletes' on-field performance and achievements, plus their contributions to women's sports. Because athletic achievement was a key criterion, women whose contributions were made solely in administration and coaching are not included.

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