Betty Cook (1923-1990) was an Honors Graduate from MIT and a world champion offshore powerboat racer and was inducted in to the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1996. [1]
She grew up as Betty Young in Glens Falls, New York, earned a degree in political science from Boston University and then attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she met her future husband, Paul Cook. They moved to California, where they became involved in powerboat racing.
She won 17 races, two world championships (1977 and 1979), and was a three-time American Power Boat Association US champion (1978, 1979, 1981). [2] She was the first woman to win the powerboat world championship (1977) in what had been traditionally a male-only sport. [3]
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Joan Benoit Samuelson is an American marathon runner who was the first women's Olympic Games marathon champion, winning the gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. She held the fastest time for an American woman at the Chicago Marathon for 32 years after winning the race in 1985. Her time at the Boston Marathon was the fastest time by an American woman at that race for 28 years. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 2000.
Amy Yuen Yee Chow is an American former artistic gymnast who competed at the 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics. She is best known for being a member of the Magnificent Seven, which won the United States' first team gold medal in Olympic gymnastics. She is also the first Asian-American woman to win an Olympic medal in gymnastics.
Susan "Sue" Marie Nattrass, is a Canadian trap shooter and medical researcher in osteoporosis. She was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Competing at an elite international level from the 1970s through the 2010s, Nattrass has had multiple appearances, in one or both of trap or double trap, at Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, World Championships, and Pan American Games. Nattrass is a repeat World Champion and repeat medalist at the Commonwealth Games, World Championships, and Pan American Games. She was the flag bearer for Canada at the 2007 Pan American Games and the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Shannon Lee Miller is an American former artistic gymnast. She was the 1993 and 1994 world all-around champion, the 1996 Olympic balance beam champion, the 1995 Pan American Games all-around champion, and a member of the gold medal-winning Magnificent Seven team at the 1996 Olympics.
Richard Ernest Evans, was an American racing driver who won nine NASCAR National Modified Championships, including eight in a row from 1978 to 1985. The International Motorsports Hall of Fame lists this achievement as "one of the supreme accomplishments in motorsports". Evans won virtually every major race for asphalt modifieds, most of them more than once, including winning the Race of Champions three times. Evans was elected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame on June 14, 2011. As one of the Class of 2012, Evans is one of the Hall's first 15 inductees, and is the first Hall of Famer from outside the now NASCAR Cup Series.
Debrah Ann Miceli, better known as Madusa, is an American monster truck driver and former professional wrestler. She is currently working for National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) as a producer. In professional wrestling Miceli is also known by the ring name Alundra Blayze, which she used while in the WWF/WWE. Outside of the WWF, she wrestled under her professional name of Madusa, which was shortened from "Made in the USA". Her early career was spent in the American Wrestling Association, where she once held the AWA World Women's Championship. In 1988, she was the first woman to be awarded Pro Wrestling Illustrated's Rookie of the Year. The following year, she signed a contract with All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling, making her the first foreign wrestler to do so.
Valerie B. Ackerman is an American sports executive, former lawyer, and former basketball player. She is the current commissioner of the Big East Conference. She is best known for being the first president of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), serving from 1996 to 2005. Ackerman was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011.
Ann Meyers Drysdale is an American former basketball player and sportscaster. She was a standout player in high school, college, the Olympic Games, international tournaments, and the professional levels.
Françoise Dürr is a retired French tennis player. She won 50 singles titles and over 60 doubles titles.
Harris Hurley Haywood is a retired American race car driver. Haywood has won multiple events, including five overall victories at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, three at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and two at the 12 Hours of Sebring and was the third driver to complete the informal triple Crown of endurance racing. He is credited with the 1988 Trans-Am title, two IMSA GT Championship titles and 23 wins, three Norelco Cup championships, a SuperCar title and 18 IndyCar starts.
Michael Scott Tully is an American pole vaulter. He represented the United States twice in the Olympics, earning a silver in 1984, and held the American pole vault record from 1984 to 1985.
Michiko "Miki" Suwa Gorman was an American marathon runner of Japanese ancestry. Gorman did not begin running competitively until she was in her mid-30s, but rapidly emerged as one of the elite marathoning women of the mid-1970s. She is the only woman to win both the Boston and New York City marathons twice and is the first of only two woman runners to win both marathons in the same year.
Betty Wade-Murphy, better known by her ring name Joyce Grable, is an American former professional wrestler. She was the long-term tag team partner of Wendi Richter. She held the NWA United States Women's Championship once and the NWA Women's World Tag Team Championship six times—three with Richter and three with her other tag team partner Vicki Williams.
Frances Anne "Francie" Larrieu Smith is an American track and field athlete. She was the flagbearer at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona for the United States of America. Larrieu Smith was the third female American athlete to make five American Olympic teams, behind the six of fencer Jan York-Romary and Track and Field's Willye White. The feat was later equaled by basketball player Teresa Edwards, track and field's Gail Devers, cyclist/speedskater Chris Witty and swimmer Dara Torres. After one of the longest elite careers on record, she retired from that level of competition.
Betty Skelton Frankman Erde was a land speed record holder and aerobatics pilot who set 17 aviation and automobile records. She was known as "The First Lady of Firsts", and helped create opportunities for women in aviation, auto racing, astronautics, and advertising.
Richard Howard Bertram was a champion sailor on powerboats and racing yachts and a leading boat builder and broker. Born in East Orange, New Jersey, Bertram learned to sail at a young age with his parents on the waters of Barnegat Bay. He owned his first boat at age 8, sailed in his first race at age 10 and was skipper of intercollegiate championship boats while attending Cornell University. After college, Bertram continued competing in numerous races throughout the world and was notably referred to by Sports Illustrated as "one of the finest ocean racers anywhere". In 1947, Bertram relocated to Miami, FL, where he opened Richard Bertram & Company, a successful yacht brokerage firm. Among his clients were Aristotle Onassis, the Aga Khan, King Hussein of Jordan and Prince Bertil of Sweden. With his yacht brokerage business successful, Bertram continued racing and set standards in the World Offshore Powerboat circuit. Often, he raced in his own 31' Bertram Lucky Moppie. He founded Bertram Yacht, a Miami-based manufacturer of production pleasure boats, in 1960. Bertram Yacht began the first large production runs of boats with C. Raymond Hunt's revolutionary deep-V hull design. In 1963 Richard Bertram licensed International Marine of Scoresby, Victoria, Australia to manufacture Bertram yachts; however, he left Bertram Yacht in 1964 to focus on his brokerage business, and Bertram Yacht changed ownership several times in the decades after that.
Maren Elizabeth Seidler is a retired American track and field athlete. She dominated the shot put from the mid 1960s through 1980. She won the event at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships eleven times starting in 1967, including nine in a row from 1972 to 1980. She was the American champion indoors nine times, 1968-9, 1972, 1974-5 and 1977 to 1980. She won her event at the United States Olympic Trials four straight times 1968-1980, a feat only equalled by only one woman, Madeline Manning, Edwin Moses is the only man to achieve four. Jackie Joyner Kersee is the only woman who has won more events at the Olympic Trials, split between the long jump and heptathlon. She competed in the Olympics three times, making the final twice. Her 1980 selection was quashed by the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott. Seidler did however receive one of 461 Congressional Gold Medals created especially for the spurned athletes.
Leleith Hodges is a Jamaican former track and field sprinter who competed mainly in the 100 metres. She was one of Jamaica's most prominent female runners of the 1970s.
Sharon Shapiro is an American former gymnast. She won five gold medals at the 1977 Maccabiah Games. In 1978, she was the U.S. National Champion in the vault. She was a two-time National Collegiate All-Around Champion. In 1981, she won the Honda-Broderick Award as the nation's most outstanding collegiate women's gymnast.