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Jessica Hawkins wants Formula One to be a sport accessible and welcoming to girls and women everywhere. And she believes a moment similar to when England’s women’s national soccer team won the European Championship in 2022 is on its way.

Alongside her work as a stunt driver (her CV includes the James Bond movie “No Time to Die”), Hawkins, a 29-year-old former W Series racer, is one of the sport’s female pioneers. She is Aston Martin’s F1 driver ambassador and heads up its efforts in the all-female F1 Academy junior series, which focuses on increasing the number of women involved in what remains a male-dominated sport.

And as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, she has been an advocate for increased diversity and inclusion across motorsport.

In September 2023, Hawkins, from Headley in Hampshire, England, became the first woman in nearly five years to test a modern Formula One car when she drove the AMR21 around Hungary’s Hungaroring circuit.

The test drive was a milestone moment but Hawkins, however proud, thinks there are even bigger days to come.

“It got a lot of traction,” she says. “The younger generation would have…

PARIS — India Sardjoe is 18, with a mouth full of braces, and is on the hunt.

“I really like exchanging pins in the Olympic village,” she said Friday, after taking part in the inaugural Olympic breaking competition at La Concorde. Known in the breaking game as B-Girl India, the 2022 world champion had been one of the favorites coming into the competition but finished just off the medal stand, losing the bronze medal match to China’s B-Girl 671, aka, Liu Qingyi.

In the end, Japan’s B-Girl Ami, aka Ami Yuasa, defeated Lithuania’s B-Girl Nicka (Dominika Banevič) for the gold medal.

“I just, I didn’t nearly focus on medals, actually,” Ami said. “For the final, I just wanted to show my … everything. And I think I did that, yeah.”

A large, enthusiastic and occasionally curious crowd, which featured Snoop Dogg in the afternoon session and IOC president Thomas Bach in the evening one, helped break in breaking, a new sport here but which will not be part of the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. There was intrigue in the afternoon when Afghanistan’s Manizha Talash, in her qualifying match against India, unveiled a cape under her jumper that read “Free Afghan Women.” Manash, who was a member of the Refugee Olympic Team, a 37-member contingent of displaced…

In their final meeting before every game, former Baltimore Ravens defensive line coach Anthony Weaver imparted a “winning thought” to his position group. He typically handled the responsibility, but occasionally he let other coaches speak. On the Saturday before the team’s Week 4 contest against the Cleveland Browns last season, Weaver tabbed assistant to the head coach/defensive assistant Megan Rosburg.

Rosburg spent a significant portion of her childhood in Cleveland where her father, Jerry, worked as the Browns’ special teams coordinator. It was a sentimental moment for her. But it was also nerve-wracking given she was in her second year as an NFL coach and had never addressed the D-line room. When she stood up in front of everyone, however, that anxiety translated to raw emotion.

“Every good story needs a villain!” Rosburg shouted.

As the Ravens defensive line dominated the Browns in a 28-3 rout the following day, that message became their rallying cry.

“All the guys on the sideline were repeating her line,” Weaver said recently. “That stuck with us for a while.”

Rosburg, now 31, is one of 12 full-time female coaches in the NFL. Seeing the players galvanize around her message affirmed to Rosburg that they respected her just like any other coach on…

Margaret Abbott, the first American woman to win an Olympic event, died at age 76 without knowing of her pioneering feat.

The 1900 Games in Paris were the first that allowed women to compete, but also so nascent and unorganized that Abbott spent the rest of her life under the impression she’d merely won a local golf tournament. It didn’t help that her prize was a gilded porcelain bowl and not a gold medal.

Paula Welch, now professor emeritus at the University of Florida, unearthed Abbott’s milestone decades later. It was a revelation that even surprised Abbott’s son, Philip Dunne.

“It’s not every day that you learn your mother was an Olympic champion, 80-odd years after the fact,” Dunne wrote in a 1984 Golf Digest article.

There will be no mistaking such epic moments for female competitors at the 2024 Paris Games. If Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, triumphs again, if charismatic sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson breaks away from the pack, if world-record holder Katie Ledecky adds to her collection of seven swimming golds, they’ll relaunch as international media sensations by daybreak.

The transformation underscores just how much women have reshaped the Olympics since the fledgling 1900 competition, when only 22 of the 997 athletes were female….

LAS VEGAS — Seventeen-year-old Maci Joncich sat in the bleachers at Coronado High School’s football stadium in Las Vegas on a spring day in April, her future in football crystalizing.

Joncich had recently become the youngest player to make the U.S. Women’s Flag Football National Team. While she had no doubts about where she was headed as she took a break from class, she reflected on how cloudy her football prospects once looked.

Just four years prior, Joncich’s options for role models in the world of flag football were slim and she was charting unexplored territory.

“The biggest point of discussion was, ‘What comes next with flag football?’” Joncich said. “When I started, there was no flag in college. There were no Olympics. It was a bit of a struggle at first just getting the motivation to keep playing.”

All that has changed because of the expeditious rise of the sport.

There are 11 states where flag football is sanctioned as a girls’ varsity high school sport. Women’s flag football scholarships are offered at 25 NAIA colleges, and five NCAA Division III colleges will follow suit in 2025. There aren’t currently options for boys or men beyond the club level, but there will soon be a professional option, as the American Flag Football League plans to launch…

Harrison Butker issued a response to a dig tennis legend Serena Williams made at the Kansas City Chiefs kicker while she hosted the 2024 ESPY Awards on Thursday. Butker called Williams a “great host” but said she used the event as an “opportunity to disinvite” those with whom she disagrees.

Williams discussed the year in women’s sports onstage with sister Venus Williams and “Abbott Elementary” star Quinta Brunson. Venus told the audience to “go ahead and enjoy women’s sports, like you would any other sports, because they are sports.”

Serena then added, “Except you, Harrison Butker. We don’t need you.”

“At all. Like, ever,” Brunson said.

Butker drew widespread criticism for a commencement speech he gave in May at Benedictine College in which he said a woman’s most important title is “homemaker,” among other controversial comments.

Butker attended Thursday’s ESPY Awards, but the telecast did not show his reaction to Williams’ jab. He later issued a statement addressing the comment.

“I thought Mrs. Williams was a great host and applaud her for using her platform to express her beliefs on a variety of topics,” Butker said in the statement, first reported by NBC News on Friday and confirmed by The Athletic.

“Sports are supposed to be the…

Flavor Flav realizes it’s an unexpected crossover.

The rap icon once had only a vague awareness of water polo, as he’d seen Olympic matches on television. But Flav has a new appreciation for the sport, marveling at the immense stamina required to play it, after recently signing a five-year sponsorship deal to serve as the official hype man for the U.S. women’s and men’s national water polo teams.

“What type of relationship does rap have with water polo? None,” said Flav.

Until now.

How the collaboration came together is well-documented: Maggie Steffens, the U.S. women’s team’s longtime captain, posted a photo of the players on her Instagram in May with a caption outlining challenges the athletes often face, including that players typically work multiple jobs while pursuing their Olympic dreams. She called on her followers to watch and support women’s sports.

Flav, who said his manager initially flagged the post, responded to the call, pledging his support. Thus, an unprecedented partnership was born. He and Steffens appeared together last Monday on “CBS Mornings,” where Flav announced he would give $1,000 to each team member and a Virgin Voyage cruise to the squad.

The 65-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer told The Athletic he plans to attend the Paris…

The annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest is the greatest 10-minute encapsulation of American independence, and Miki Sudo and Patrick Bertoletti left Coney Island on Thursday as the rightful owners of the coveted pink belt and mustard belt.

Sudo rose to legendary glizzy gobbling status earlier in the day, crushing a women’s world-record 51 franks to dominate both the field and her digestive system en route to her 10th pink belt.

Mayoi “Ebimayo” Ebihara — whose nickname translates to “shrimp mayonnaise” — gave Sudo a run for her money in the second half of the women’s competition, finishing with a personal best of 37 total dogs, but Sudo pulled away in the home stretch of a historic performance.

Miki Sudo wins her tenth Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest

@ESPNpic.twitter.com/NVDRrpehfc

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) July 4, 2024

In the men’s round an hour later, Bertoletti housed a personal-best 58 weiners to win the mustard belt, but the focus of the competition was more about who wasn’t there: Joey Chestnut. After 16 career mustard belts, Chestnut did not participate due to a contract he signed to represent a rival hot dog brand.

Chesnut, who ate a world-record 76 HDBs (hot dogs and buns) at the event in 2021, will be competing on Labor Day…

INDIANAPOLIS — Athletes often speak in generalities as a defense mechanism. Rather than go in-depth on a potentially controversial topic, or even address the issue at all, they provide non-answers, using cliches and pre-programmed talking points to stay at a safe distance.

A part of me would like to believe that that’s what Caitlin Clark did Thursday morning when I asked if she was bothered by fans using her name as a weapon in the culture wars dividing the country. The Indiana Fever’s star guard didn’t close the door on the subject; she refused to even open it.

“No,” she declared. “I don’t see it. I don’t see it. That’s not where my focus is. My focus is here and on basketball. That’s where it needs to be, that’s where it has been, and I’m just trying to get better on a daily basis.”

As winter approaches his business empire, Mark Cuban still has a sharp stick in his hands, looking for a defenseless eye to poke.

“When I got into the NBA, half of the fun was just f—ing up the NBA,” Cuban said the other day. “The fines, everything. Everybody did it this way, and I was like, no. No. That’s no fun. And I bought this to have fun, and if you don’t like it, fine me. And it worked out great. Same thing with the pharmaceutical industry and health care. What can be better? Hopefully, we won a championship in 2011, and won, hopefully, a championship in 2024. That’s good. But f—ing up the pharmacy industry? Changed health care? Who was that guy? That’s the real deal. That’s a big check the box.”

Cuban, who sold controlling interest in the Dallas Mavericks late last year to the Adelson and Dumont families, which run the Las Vegas Sands Casino Company, is still around the Mavs. He still owns $1 billion or so worth of the team. It’s just that he’s 65, and he and his wife have three kids, and … life. Going toe to toe with the NBA about its officials and marketing is no longer front of mind. Time makes some things more important; other things less so.

When the Mavericks clinched the Western Conference title over the Minnesota Timberwolves,…