May 31, 2005
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Driving for Danica
Tuesday May 31, 2005 4:00AM PT
Dan Wheldon took the final lead and gulped the winner’s milk at the Indy 500 this weekend, but it was a slight 23-year-old who stole the show. Danica Patrick — 5-foot-2, 100 pounds, a rookie, a woman — set several records at the Brickyard, propelled TV ratings through the roof, and spiked 436% yesterday alone (and an astonishing 1,130% over the past week). Racing fans sped to the Web for every kind of search related to the young driver, gunning their engines especially for Patrick pictures, biography, and wallpaper.
Danica Patrick
Patrick may dominate our top racing searches for now, but that could change at any moment. Driver Sarah Fisher, formerly of the Indy Racing League, tailgated into Buzz yesterday with a 272% jump. Apparently, word is out that NASCAR may “take note of the Danica effect.” Also, uh, kinda related to racing, swimmer Amanda Beard rose 112% over the past week. Besides being a record-setting athlete and part-time model, she’s dating NASCAR driver Carl Edwards.
Other female athletes on the rise in search spring from the court and the green. Tennis continues to slam searches over the net with Maria Sharapova (+5%), Lindsay Davenport (+150%), and Mary Pierce (+121%) all up at the Search box thanks to the French Open. Meanwhile, coming in from the LPGA (+20%), Annika Sorenstam (+12%) and Natalie Gulbis (+47%) also spiked. Like Danica Patrick, Gulbis is a young and marketable star. She has a swimsuit line in the works and a reality show set to air on The Golf Channel. Is Danica, too, destined for bathing apparel and reality programming? More importantly, is she a one-race wonder? We’ll keep our eyes on the track to find out…
