Fans greeted her with lewd signs, drivers threatened a boycott and journalists peppered her with hard-hitting questions like whether she wore makeup or if she worried her purse would get in the way of the steering wheel.
This was the reception Janet Guthrie received when she first arrived at Indianapolis Motor Speedway 43 years ago. Her ability to endure and become the first woman to qualify and compete in the Indianapolis 500 opened the door for so many others, including Lyn St. James, Danica Patrick and Pippa Man, who will be competing in her seventh Indy 500 on Sunday.
"The truth is until I got there, I had no idea that hostility toward women in men's fields ran that deep," Guthrie, 81, told Newsday in a phone interview last week. "I had been working and playing in men's fields my whole life and never encountered it."
