When Bobby Riggs brought his circus to town

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This article was published 20/09/2023 (1059 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A sporting event labelled the Battle of the Sexes was held on Sept. 20, 1973, in the Houston Astrodome. The combatants were 29-year-old Billie Jean King and 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. The prize money in the winner-take-all tennis match was $100,000.

In 1972, King was the No.1 female tennis player in the world while Riggs was a three-time Wimbledon champion who had reached the top-ranking status three times in the 1940s. The self-promoter, who had retired from professional tennis in 1951, claimed he could still beat any of the top woman players.

On Mother’s Day in May 1973, he backed up his big mouth by beating Margaret Court in two straight sets 6-2 and 6-1. The Australian star was 30 at the time and had returned to the game earlier in the year after giving berth to her first child. That summer, Court won the Australian, French and U.S. Open championships and was ranked No. 1 at the end of the season.

In the Astrodome in front of a crowd of more than 30,000, King entered the court on a litter carried by four bare-chested muscle men dressed as ancient slaves. Not to be outdone, Riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by beautiful models. In the battle, King prevailed in three sets, 6-4, 6-3 and 6-3. She trailed 3-2 in the first set after Riggs broke her serve. King usually played an aggressive game, but switched to a defensive style that forced the older man to run from side to side and cover the entire court. An estimated 90 million viewers worldwide watched the match on TV.

Riggs visited Winnipeg on Oct. 22, 1974, for a promotion at Eaton’s that was advertised in the Winnipeg Free Press the previous day. The advertisement head read “Are you woman enough to challenge Bobby Riggs?’ Women were invited to the Eaton’s store on Portage Avenue store and the north court of the Polo Park Shopping Centre to play table tennis against the player called “the undisputed male chauvinist champ of the sports world.” Muriel Roebuck was pictured in the paper the next day as one of the women who accepted the challenge.

Riggs then took his tennis racquet to the Unicity Racquet Club on Taylor Avenue for some exhibition matches. His first match against Nicole Gratton, the wife of Winnipeg Jets forward Jean Guy Gratton, saw Riggs win three games to two. He then played assistant pro Linda Campbell and he and pro Bob Hampton played doubles against Gratton and Campbell.

Riggs also was in the city to promote Max Factor products and he handed lipstick samples to some of the women in attendance, who you can assume were not there to support him. Gillian Giles of Smith Carter Architects, who was taking lessons at Unicity, recently confirmed that the sample she received never made it into her memorabilia collection.

On June 21, 1973, King and 60 other female players had met in London, U.K., to form the Women’s International Tennis Association. King was elected president of the organization, which later shortened its name to the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) because she said she couldn’t remember more than three letters. The goal was equal opportunity for female players. The WTA now represents more than 1,600 players from more than 80 nations. On June 30, the association celebrated its 50th anniversary at the Gloucester Hotel in London where the players had been blocked from leaving the conference room until they agreed to form what King first called a union.

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Correction: In the Sept. 6 column about Gordon Bell High School football, the quarterback of the 1973 championship team was misidentified as Kris Munt. The correct name is Kurt Munt.