Chauvinists still scoring own goals

IT’S nearly half a century since Billie Jean King — then 29 — humiliated the chauvinist braggart Bobby Riggs — then 55 — by winning all three sets in a $100,000 battle-of-the-sexes showdown in Houston. 

A lot has changed since 1973 but the suggestion that Riggs might challenge Katie Taylor, who fights for the WBA lightweight world title tonight, to a ten-round battle-of-the-sexes decider, must remain a matter of speculation. Riggs died in 1995.

Even though sport has been a significant player in how our world has advanced and offered ever greater — but not yet entirely equal — opportunities to women every now and then the past reasserts itself, sometimes in the most bizarre ways. American teenager Emily Nash won a golf competition but was denied her trophy because she is a girl. Riggs’ sexism lives on in the land of Weinstein and Trump.