Who is babe zaharias

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While working at Employers Casualty Company in Dallas, she played on the company basketball team, the Golden Cyclones, from to After reading about the Olympics, she vowed she would one day compete in Olympic track and field. She trained daily with her sister, jumping hedges in the neighborhood. During the qualifying trials, she made the cut in five events, but women were only allowed to participate in three.

At the Olympics in Los Angeles, year-old Zaharias received a gold medal for the javelin throw, setting a new world record at feet. The next day she set a new world record breaking her own of Despite these records, Zaharias is best known for her achievements in golf, winning 82 tournaments throughout her career. She took up golf in , though initially faced discrimination and resistance as a woman. That changed as she began her winning streak.

She was considered a professional because of her advertising endorsements. While on vacation in Australia months after their wedding, he lined up a golf exhibition for her. In Didrikson was awarded amateur status as a golfer, which enabled her to play in a wider range of tournaments.

Between and when she turned professional again , she won 17 amateur tournaments in a row. In , she won seventeen gold championships. Berg was the president the first year, after which Didrikson held the position for the rest of her life. She was the only woman on the Babe Didrikson All-American basketball team and played a few games with the House of David baseball team.

It was during these years that she pitched an inning for the St. Louis Cardinals in an exhibition game with the Philadelphia Athletics. She excelled at almost everything she tried: when only 16 she won a prize for a dress that she had made, at the Texas State Fair; she could type 86 words a minute; she could throw a baseball from deep center field to home plate—once a throw of hers was measured at over feet.

She was attracted to this hulk of a man who could drive a golf ball farther than she. On December 23, , they were married. They had no children. Urged by her husband, she applied for reinstatement as an amateur golfer in and was reinstated in January Utilizing her tremendous powers of concentration, her almost unlimited self-confidence and her patience, she began to take up golf seriously.

She would drive as many as 1, balls a day, take lessons for five or six hours, and play until her hands were blistered and bleeding. On one hole she stroked a drive so far that a spectator whispered, "She must be Superman's sister. For the next six years she dominated women's golf. Zaharias had a cancer operation in April , and it was feared she would never be able to return to competition. Three and a half months later, though, she played in competition.

The next year she won the United States Women's Open by twelve strokes. In she had a second cancer operation. She died in Galveston, Texas. But Babe's career and life were cut short by colon cancer at age forty-five.

Babe Zaharias is buried in Beaumont, where a museum and annual golf tournament honor her accomplishments. The money that the museum raises goes to scholarships for women at Lamar University. Babe Didrikson Zaharias Foundation. Cayleff, Susan E. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,