L.A. Times Pits Serena Williams Against A Horse For 'Sportsperson Of The Year' [Updated]

To be fair, American Pharoah is not just any horse. He is horse racing's first Triple Crown winner in 37 years. And he won the magazine's readers' poll for the award. Of course, a strong argument can be made for Serena as well — one that goes beyond the obvious points that the award is called the sportsperson of the year and only humans have won it since its inception in 1954.

Williams won 53 of the 56 matches she played this year, including three of the four Grand Slam events, and held the No. 1 spot in the WTA rankings every week.

But we are honoring Serena Williams too for reasons that hang in the grayer, less comfortable ether, where issues such as race and femininity collide with the games. Race was used as a cudgel against Williams at Indian Wells in 2001, and she returned the blow with a 14-year self-exile from the tournament. She returned to Indian Wells in ’15, a conciliator seeking to raise the level of discourse about hard questions, the hardest ones, really. Williams, S.L. Price writes in his cover story in the Dec. 21 issue, “proffered an open hand. Far past the time that anyone expected it, she demonstrated a capacity for change—innovation if you will. She’s groping for answers and realizing she has much to learn. “She’s determined to make a difference.”

She was a difference-maker in other areas, speaking out against bodyshamers in both words and actions, posing for the Annie Leibovitz-shot Pirelli calendar in only a bikini bottom. The cover shot of this issue? Her idea, intended, like the Pirelli shots, to express her own ideal of femininity, strength, power. Her curiosity was ravenous, as she enrolled in an online history of civil rights class at UMass, guest-edited the October issue of Wired and announced her return to Indian Wells in an essay in SI’s sister publication, Time.