Who is the most influential woman in sports history?

Medals sit next to lawsuits on this list. Two of them changed what a scoreboard could read; two changed what a contract could say.

1. 1
   Megan Rapinoe

   Won World Cups and then the equal-pay case against her own federation, settled for $24m in 2022.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Billie Jean King

   Built the women's professional tour from a boycott and a $1 contract, and won the exhibition that made it visible.
   953pts
3. 3
   Nadia Comaneci

   Scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics in 1976, at 14, and redefined what the sport looked like.
   840pts
4. 4
   Babe Didrikson Zaharias

   Won Olympic track golds, then ten major golf titles, and co-founded the LPGA in 1950.
   680pts
5. 5
   Serena Williams

   Won 23 singles majors and moved women's tennis prize money and audience to a scale nobody had reached.
   680pts
6. 6
   Danica Patrick

   The only woman to win an IndyCar race and to lead the Indianapolis 500, and the first to take a NASCAR Cup pole.
   600pts
7. 7
   Simone Biles

   The most decorated gymnast ever, who also made athlete mental health a subject federations had to answer for.
   507pts
8. 8
   Kathrine Switzer

   Ran Boston in 1967 while an official tried to pull her off the course, and helped get the women's marathon into the Olympics.
   400pts
9. 9
   Wilma Rudolph

   Won three golds in Rome in 1960 after childhood polio, and refused a segregated homecoming parade.
   400pts
10. 10
    Venus Williams

    Argued the case that pushed Wimbledon and Roland-Garros into equal prize money in 2007, thirty-four years after the US Open.
    273pts
11. 11
    Martina Navratilova

    Eighteen singles majors, a fitness regime that changed how women trained, and a public coming-out in 1981.
    273pts
12. 12
    Mia Hamm

    The face of the 1999 World Cup win that turned American women's soccer into a mass-audience sport.
    120pts