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Danica Patrick will not change the world by winning the Indy 500. She will change it by becoming an agent of reform, by using her victory to convince men to start measuring a woman by her skill instead of her bra size.

Patrick has already proven she can win a race. But no, the Japan 300 isn't the Indy 500. If Patrick is already a big, big star, a triumph in one of America's signature sporting events will send her celebrity soaring at the speed of sound.

It will give her a platform not enjoyed by a female athlete since Billie Jean King walked through the Astrodome door and reduced Bobby Riggs to a pathetic unforced error.

Annika Sorenstam did a ton for women without making the cut at the Colonial. Danica Patrick is favored to do a whole lot more Sunday than make the cut.

If she wins the Indy 500, it would be as off-the-charts significant as Lorena Ochoa someday winning the Masters — which isn't going to happen. Danica Patrick in the winner's circle? Now that can happen.

But if Patrick's first post-race move is to jump her barely dressed self into every magazine that hasn't already packaged and sold her killer bod, she will be sending an awful message to young girls and the young boys raised to equate their worth with their sex appeal.

Over the years, as she evolved from just another pretty face to a fiercely competitive champion in a testosterone-fueled domain, Patrick has been too willing to advance the stereotype of the female performer as a sexual plaything. She struck ultra-provocative poses for the men's magazine FHM and allowed a shot of herself in a white bikini — complete with the requisite southward tug on the bikini bottom — in her media guide bio.


Patrick is no dummy. She knows what sells, and what does not. She knows the money guys on Madison Avenue are forever looking for new ways to market sex to the targeted male demographic. She knows there are plenty of advertising executives out there who prefer female drivers to take the kind of pole position found in a strip club.

Patrick is hardly the first woman to experience this epiphany. As an LPGA star, Jan Stephenson was more interested in the pinups than the pins. The LPGA's latest babe of the month, Natalie Gulbis, isn't far behind.

At least Gulbis has won on tour. Anna Kournikova didn't win a single singles tournament on the tennis side, yet remained among the most photographed and Googled athletes in the world.

Patrick needs to break away from this pack. A few years ago, Billie Jean King told me she dialed up Janet Guthrie, the Indy 500 pioneer, and told her answering machine, "Without you, there could not have been a Danica."

King would go on to say that when she watched the tape of her gender-bending victory over Riggs, the washed-up hustler, "Howard Cosell only talked about my looks. He didn't once talk about my accomplishments as an athlete.

"When people talk about how we look, that's what kills us as athletes. Just once, talk only about our accomplishments. That's all we ask."

Only Patrick asks for no such thing. She courts the kind of attention that inspires tabloid headlines the likes of, "She'll Start Your Engine" and "Va-Va-Vroom."

It's not necessary. It really isn't. Patrick can't do anything about her good looks, other than enjoy them. But that doesn't mean she has to devalue her breathless talent as a race car driver by playing along every time a publicity rep asks her to slip into something far more comfortable than her helmet and suit.

All by itself, her GoDaddy.com commercial might've set the women's movement back 10 years. She unzips her top as her hair blows seductively in the wind, this as Super Bowl partygoers gather around a desktop showing her image and then the words, "See Danica Patrick's 'Exposure' . . . Viewer Discretion Advised."

Doesn't Patrick understand that impressionable young women take their cues from the Danicas of the world? When she does one of her come-hither ads or photo shoots, she's telling those young women things they shouldn't be told.

Too much has been accomplished to turn back now. King-over-Riggs. Title IX. Julie Krone taking the Belmont. The U.S. women's soccer team winning America's heart. The high art of female achievement at the Olympics. Sorenstam at the Colonial. Serena and Venus Williams beating Notre Dame and Nebraska in the TV ratings game.

These were among the developments expected to alter the definition of female athletes inside the narrow minds of Jurassic thinkers. Patrick extended the list last month when she became the first woman to win an IndyCar race, seizing the day when the leaders took some late fuel stops. She beat pole-sitter Helio Castroneves by 5.8594 seconds.

"I'm thrilled for her that the monkey is finally off her back," said Michael Andretti, her team owner.

"I'm really glad I don't have to answer that, 'When are you going to win that first race?' question," Patrick would say. "What a relief . . . I imagine we all have those dreams at being the best at something.

"Dreams really do come true."

As a kid Danica started out on the go-kart circuit in Wisconsin. Sunday, she'll be a long way from some town fair in the prairie.

She'll be at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, daring the big boys to beat her in the one event that transcends the sport and grabs the attention of Americans who won't watch one other lap all year.

It will be a hell of a story if Patrick pulls it off, and an inspiration to young female athletes who have little use for the word can't.

Danica's landmark victory in racing's ultimate major is the best available angle to root for. But in the end, Patrick will change the world for the better by keeping the focus on her driving and off her legs.