Photo by Tracy Waters

here are some public figures that have done so much, so indelibly etched their mark on the public mind that you don't even have to give their full name. They are the famous of the famous. Such a person is three-time NHRA and single-time AHRA Top Fuel World Champ Shirley Muldowney.

In boxing, "Tyson" can only mean Mike Tyson. In pop music, you don't need Presley to clarify who "Elvis" is. In drag racing, "Shirley" says it all. There has an Academy Award-nominated film about her, there have been thousands of magazine and newspaper articles and most likely there'll be a book. And that's very likely given the fact that this year's NHRA POWERade World Finals will be her last race as a driver.

I was talking to some race friends at a local beer joint one evening, and it struck me how really amazing her fame is. Don Garlits' name came up as it always does as did John Force's, and every guy in the place knew who they were. Shirley's name came up and the same thing happened, but with one important difference. Every woman in the joint knew who she was too, but the same could not be said for Garlits or Force.

She's a performer who made a difference, and it is that difference that makes me feel that she is the single most important person drag racing ever produced.

There is no arguing that what Garlits, NHRA founder Wally Parks and maybe it's greatest good-will ambassador (not to mention one of it's greatest racers) Force have done is worthy of everlasting drag racing fame. They put drag racing into the popular consciousness and earned it the respect of the pro sporting community, certainly the automotive end. But as I said, Shirley was different.

She was a woman. And when I write that, I think in the back of my mind that all things being equal, she would be happy as hell if the guy-girl thing never got brought up in the first place. She probably felt, "look, all I want to do is race and win just like everyone else," but being the first famed female nitro driver doomed that sentiment. The incredible novelty of an attractive young gal driving a 210-mph nitro Funny Car in 1971 (her first full year as a pro) was too good for the press to pass up. The fans couldn't get enough of it. A woman driving one of those beasts in a red-neck, macho sport like drag racing?! This I gotta see. Before she knew it she probably felt like she'd been swept up by a tornado. The starmaker machine in full gear, run amok.

And so she became the one gal against all those guys. The vanguard of a move that made her a point-person in sports history. Most people do not accept change easily. They are initially conservative. Let's keep things as they were. Here, in this case, a woman comes along, who not only has guts, but shows she has ability, lots of it. In 1971, she won an IHRA Southern Invitational Funny Car title and later that year ran the first six by a woman with a 6.84. She was on her way, like it or not.

In her 32-year pro career (actually her overall drag racing career dates back to the late 1950s), she accomplished the unthinkable, and this feat goes above and beyond the confines of drag racing. She is the only woman that I know of who not only beat men, but dominated them. In any sport.