Even in our day and age, one might still think that since extreme sports are, well, EXTREME, ladies would generally prefer to steer away from such hobbies. Reality proves this assumption wrong! Each year, more and more women enlist in various extreme sports such as kitesurfing, windsurfing, surfing, mountain biking, wakeboarding, paragliding, scuba-diving and many, many other different daredevil activities.

And it’s not something new, either! Throughout history women have left their mark on extreme sports and their names have become well known in their fields. If you’re looking for some inspiring stories to get you motivated, continue reading!

Jeanne Genevieve Labrose-Garnerin

Jeanne-Genevieve Labrosse was the wife of André-Jacques Garnerin, the inventor of the parachute.

The young woman was among an enthusiastic crowd who gathered to watch André-Jacques Garnerin fly his hydrogen-powered balloon at Parc Monceau on 22nd October 1797.

An innovator in the world of ballooning, Garnerin causing a sensation when he piloted his gondola safely back down to earth, with the help of a silk parachute of his own design. Jeanne was fascinated by what she had witnessed and signed up to become a pupil of Garnerin, eventually flying with him on 10th November 1798. In 1799 she became the first woman to make a parachute jump from the gondola of a hot air balloon. She and her husband also filed a patent application for the first frameless parachute.
 

Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick 

“Tiny” Broadwick was born in 1893. She was the first woman to leap from an airplane and the first parachutist (ever) to self-deploy a canopy.

Georgia had several harrowing mishaps during her career. She once landed on top of the caboose of a train and got tangled in a windmill and high tension wires. She also had many rough landings in which she broke bones and dislocated her shoulder on several occasions, but she never lost her enthusiasm for jumping.

One day at a Los Angeles air meet she and Charles Broadwick met famed stunt flyer and airplane manufacturer Glenn L. Martin, who had seen her jump. He proposed that she jump from one of his airplanes, a chance she seized without hesitation, making her the first woman to parachute from an airplane on June 21, 1913, over Los Angeles' Griffith park. Describing her feelings later, she said, “I tell you, honey, it was the most wonderful sensation in the world!”.

After she retired from active jumping, she went on to promote skydiving everywhere she went. Georgia made more than 1,100 jumps before retiring in 1923.

Bethany Hamilton 

At age 13, Bethany Hamilton was surfing near her home in Kauai, when she was attacked by a 14-foot tiger shark. In this traumatizing accident, Bethany lost the whole of her left arm, but not her will to surf. She was back on a surfboard only a month after her release from the hospital!

Initially, Bethany used a custom-made board that was longer and slightly thicker than the standard ones, and had a handle for her right arm, making it easier to paddle. She learned to kick more, to make up for the loss of her left arm. After teaching herself to surf with one arm, Bethany entered her first major competition on January 10, 2004.

Today Bethany uses standard competitive performance short-boards. The shark-bitten surfboard that Hamilton was riding during the attack, as well as the bathing suit she was wearing at the time, are on display at the California Surf Museum.

Since then, Hamilton has risen to the top of international surfing, and has won countless competitions and championships.

 

Aneesha Nayak 

“They told me that once I got in the ocean, it would grab me, but it was just the opposite. I grabbed the water instead.” 

Aneesha Nayak started swimming when she was just three years old. At 19, she became one of India's youngest competitive female surfers. She’s a science buff too, winning top prizes for India at the International Science Fair in the US in 2016 and at the International Festival of Engineering Science Technology in 2017. But she says that surfing is the passion that resonates the most in her heart.

“Surfing by itself was very new in India when I started. Fear is usually induced in people about getting into the ocean – it is thought that people who go beyond knee depth never make it back”, she says in an interview with BigRush. “I was told it was not okay for girls or women to walk around in shorts or tight clothing, that I would get tanned and surfing would probably lead me to get injured or scarred. All of this would apparently affect my future, by which they meant getting married. I knew that this wasn’t my future, and my mother – understanding this – also helped me figure out who and what I wanted to be for myself.”

Aneesha was part of a recent documentary called Chicks on Boards based on female surfers from different countries claiming freedom against all odds.

 

Sarah Burke

Sarah Burke was a 4 time winter X-Games gold medalist, world champion halfpipe winner, ESPY award recipient and more. But her biggest contribution came off the skis when she successfully lobbied the international Olympic committee to have the halfpipe event added to the schedule for the 2014 winter Olympics.

As a teenage mogul skier, Sarah Burke would often sneak onto the Snowboard halfpipe at the end of the day. She was considered a pioneer in the sport of superpipe skiing, along with American Kristi Leskinen. The pair were frequent competitors, and often against male skiers.

Burke won first place in the 2001 US Freeskiing Open in the half-pipe event and finished second in slopestyle. She and Leskinen were the only women who competed against men.

In 2004, Burke lobbied ESPN to include a division for women skiers at its Winter X Games. In 2005, ESPN added women's freeskiing to the X-Games.

 

Meagan Ethell 

Meagan Ethell has been a professional wakeboarder since 2012. her track record is very impressive, with 4 world championships and 5 masters championships under her belt. in 2015 and 2018, Meagan was also honored as the best female rider at the wake awards.

She has been named six times for Wakeboarding Magazine Women’s Rider of the Year award, five times World Champion and six times Master's Champion. Meagan has been riding the highs of her career. "This has always been my life," she says about wakeboarding.
 

Ashley Fiolek

Ashley Fiolek is a professional motocross racer. Even though she is deaf, that hasn't stopped her from chasing after her extreme dreams. Ashley went on to win the women's professional national motocross championship and the X-Games SUPER-X gold medal.

Fiolek began racing at age seven and since then has paved a golden path in her career. She was the 2008 WMX Pro National champion after her first professional win at the WMA Pro National Hangtown. In 2008, she was the first female motocross racer to make the cover of TransWorld Motocross magazine. In 2009, she became the first woman to be signed to the American Honda Racing factory team and was nominated for an ESPN ESPY Award.

Motocross is not her only line of recognition. She has been named Deaf Person of the Month by DeafPeople.com, has been featured in a commercial for Red Bull, being the sixth athlete sponsored by Red Bull to appear in a commercial for the energy drink. In 2012, she was featured in an issue of Vogue magazine and presented a TEDxTalk. A truly inspiring woman!

 

Kelly Clark

Kelly Clark joined the US snowboarding team at 18. With her help, the team won a gold medal in the women's halfpipe category at the 2002 winter Olympics!

Kelly has been at the forefront of women’s halfpipe riding since 2001. She took the gold at the 2002 Olympic Games and hasn’t let up since, stepping onto even more podiums than her compatriot Shaun White.

Famous for her amplitude, she always strives to widen her trick inventory. In 2011 she became the first woman to stick a 1080 in competition, and remains one of the only females to put it down consistently. That event also kicked off a winning streak that lasted for 13 major events.

She has also set up the Kelly Clark Foundation in 2010, which helps to fund young athletes in financial need. She’s raised over $42,000 in scholarships for young female shredders to boost their potential.

Her bizarre ritual of singing at the top of the pipe to get her in the zone has raised a few eyebrows over the years, but with three medals from four Olympic games it can’t be doing her any harm!
 

Surely this is only a handful of the many other wonderful and brave women dominating the world of extreme sports! The important thing is to follow what one’s heart desires, and not what the world expects you to mold into. Enjoy the thrill wherever and whomever you are!

 

More about 8 legendary women of extreme sports