Shirley Muldowney Biography
Shirley Muldowney is an American auto racer who was born in Burlington, Vermont. Muldowney is also known professionally as “Cha Cha” and the “First Lady of Drag Racing” She was the first woman to receive a license from the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) to drive a Top Fuel dragster.
She won the NHRA Top Fuel championship in 1977, 1980, and 1982, becoming the first person to win two as well as three Top Fuel titles. She has won a total of 18 NHRA national events.
10 Quick Facts About Shirley Muldowney
- Name: Shirley Muldowney
- Age: 80 years old
- Birthday: 19 June
- Zodiac Sign: Gemini
- Height: 5 feet 7 inches
- Nationality: American
- Occupation: Auto racer
- Marital Status: To be updated
- Salary: To be updated
- Net worth: $1 million dollars
Shirley Muldowney Age
Muldowney is 80 years old as of 2020, she was born on 19 June 1978, in Burlington, Vermont, United States of America. She celebrates her birthday on June 19 every year and her birth sign is Gemini.
Shirley Muldowney Height
Muldowney stands at a height of 5 feet 7 inches and also weighs 71 kg. She also appears to be quite tall in stature in her photos. She has blond hair and hazel eyes color.
Shirley Muldowney Education
Muldowney dropped out of high school when she was 16 years old and married Jack Muldowney, a drag racer and mechanic, in 1956. When she married, Muldowney did not even know how to drive a car.
Shirley Muldowney Family, Parents and Siblings
Muldowney was born and raised by her parents Belgium Benedict Roque (Father) and Mae Roque (Mother) in Burlington, Vermont, United States of America. She belongs to the American nationality and white ethnicity.
Shirley Muldowney Husband: Is she married?
Shirley Muldowney was married to auto racer Jack Muldowney from 1956 until 1972. She later got married to Rahn Tobler from 1988 until 2006. She has one child a son known as John Muldowney.
Shirley Muldowney Son John Muldowney
John Muldowney, the son of drag racing icon Shirley Muldowney, died of a blood clot on April 28, 2017, at the age of 59 in Springfield, Mo. John Muldowney was the only child of Shirley Muldowney and her first husband Jack.
Shirley Muldowney Kids
Muldowney operates a charitable organization, Shirley’s Kids, which helps children in need in cities where drag racing is part of the community.
Shirley Muldowney Net Worth
Muldowney has an estimated net worth of $1 million dollars as of 2020. This includes her Assets, Money, and Income. Her primary source of income is her career as an auto racer. Through her various sources of income, Muldowney has been able to accumulate a good fortune but prefers to lead a modest lifestyle.
Shirley Muldowney Measurements and Facts
Here are some interesting facts and body measurements you should know about Muldowney.
Shirley Muldowney Bio and Wiki
- Full Names: Shirley Muldowney
- Popular As: Cha Cha
- Gender: Female
- Occupation / Profession: auto racer
- Nationality: American
- Race / Ethnicity: White
- Religion: Not Known
- Sexual Orientation: Straight
Shirley Muldowney Birthday
- Age / How Old?: 80 Years old
- Zodiac Sign: Gemini
- Date of Birth: June 19, 1978
- Place of Birth: Burlington, Vermont, United States of America
- Birthday: June 19th
Shirley Muldowney Body Measurements
- Body Measurements: Not Available
- Height / How Tall?: 1.70 meters
- Weight: 71 kgs
- Eye Color: Hazel
- Hair Color: Blond
Shirley Muldowney Family and Relationship
- Father (Dad): Belgium Benedict Roque
- Mother: Mae Roque
- Siblings (Brothers and Sisters): Not Known
- Marital Status: Single
- Husband/Spouse: Rahn Tobler (m. 1988–2006), Jack Muldowney (m. 1956–1972)
- Children: Sons ( John Muldowney)
Shirley Muldowney Networth and Salary
- Net Worth: $ 1 million (2020)
- Salary: Under Review
- Source of Income: Auto Racing
Shirley Muldowney House and Cars
- Place of living: To be Updated
- Cars: Car Brand to be Updated
Shirley Muldowney Drag Racing
Muldowney was the first woman of drag racing, a certifiably macho sport that entails placing a driver inside a specially constructed 20-plus-foot four-wheeled cage with an engine underneath.
Speeds can reach 250 miles an hour. Within the National Hot Rod Association’s Top Fuel classification in which Muldowney achieved most of her wins, the car’s engine is powered by nitromethane and is geared to burn out after a quarter-mile strip, the distance of a match. Her male competitors liked to assert the woman driver had an unfair advantage because of her weight, which hovered just above 100 pounds.
Buying and maintaining such vehicles is both expensive and risky, but more dangerous is the physical hazards that drag racing presents, and Muldowney came close to becoming a martyr for the sport in 1984 when she endured a horrible accident out on the track. When the tube in one of her front tires snapped, it sent her into a tailspin, breaking several bones throughout her body. Undaunted, she returned to the sport two years later.
Shirley Muldowney and Connie Kalitta
In 1971, Muldowney met Connie Kalitta, a racer and race-car builder. It was the start of a tempestuous seven-year relationship which culminated in Muldowney winning the 1977 National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel championship after her last competitor of the day couldn’t start his car; by then she had switched over to the more risky Top Fuel division.
By 1983, Muldowney had won three National Hot Rod Association championships and 17 other national competitions. That same year, Heart Like a Wheel, a film biography of her life through 1977, debuted. Actress Bonnie Bedelia received an Academy Award nomination for her performance; Beau Bridges played Connie Kalitta. Her rivals on the Top Fuel circuit were Richard Tharp and Don “Big Daddy” Garlits, a veteran who broke the 200-mile-per-hour barrier in the 1960s.
In 1958, Muldowney made her debut on the dragstrip of the Fonda Speedway. She obtained her NHRA pro license in 1965. She competed in the 1969 and 1970 U.S. Nationals in a twin-engine dragster in Top Gas. With Top Gas losing popularity, Muldowney switched to Funny Car, buying her first car from Connie Kalitta.
Shirley Muldowney Dragster
Muldowney competed in the 1969 and 1970 U.S. Nationals in a twin-engine dragster in Top Gas. She won her first major event, the International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) Southern Nationals in 1971. She won three NHRA Top Fuel Dragsters world Championships in 1977, 1980, and 1982.
Shirley Muldowney Heart Like A Wheel
In 1983, a film about Muldowney titled ‘Heart Like a Wheel’ and the film was a biopic based on her life and career as a racer. Muldowney founded Shirley’s Kid foundation, which is focused on helping children in need in cities where drag racing competitions are held.
Shirley Muldowney Don Garlits
Muldowney answered almost 5,000 get-well letters and was touched that archrival Don Garlits offered sympathy as well as financial help.
Shirley Muldowney’s Tales From The Track
Muldowney’s recent activities include the dictation of her memoirs, Shirley Muldowney’s Tales from the Track, which Bill Stephens transcribed as well as which Sports Publishing L.L.C. published in 2005.
Shirley Muldowney Career
Shirley Muldowney began her career as a racer in the 1950s in Schenectady, New York. In 1958, she made her debut on the dragstrip of the Fonda Speedway. In 1965, she obtained her NHRA pro license.
In 1984, she had a crash that crushed her hands, pelvis, and legs and this made her undergo over six different surgeries and she was on therapy for 18 months. This crash made her inactive in the racing world, but she made a comeback in the late 1980s before she then retired in 2003.
Shirley Muldowney Movie
The 1983 biopic Heart Like a Wheel, about Muldowney’s life and career, starred Bonnie Bedelia. Muldowney would rather have had Jamie Lee Curtis play her; she called Bedelia “a snot,” and stated, “When she was promoting the movie on TV shows, she would tell interviewers she didn’t even like racing.
She got out of race car sic like she was getting up from the dinner table.” Muldowney had mixed feelings about the film itself, stating, “No, the movie did not capture my life very well at all, but more importantly, I thought the movie was very, very good for the sport.”
Shirley Muldowney Crash
In 1984, she had a crash that crushed her hands, pelvis, and legs and this made her undergo over six different surgeries and she was on therapy for 18 months. This crash made her inactive in the racing world, but she made a comeback in the late 1980s before she then retired in 2003.
Shirley Muldowney Cancer Issue
In March 2016, Muldowney was diagnosed with cancer. She was later diagnosed with histoplasmosis, a curable and non-malignant fungal infection that can mimic cancer.
Shirley Muldowney Death
Muldowney’s most terrifying brush with death came at the Sanair Speedway near Montreal, Canada, in the summer of 1984. As she completed a run, her front tire tube snapped, locked the wheels, and sent both car and driver into a spinout and tumble. The crash resulted in shattered bones in her legs, a fractured pelvis, two broken hands, and three broken fingers. She had been in a roll cage, saving her from death by ejection, but the car had rolled 600 feet and it took doctors six hours with wire brushes to clean the dirt and grease out of her skin before they could operate.
Muldowney remained in Montreal for two months, then returned home to suburban Detroit, where she was then living. Her system could not tolerate most painkillers, even morphine, and after several tries, doctors were finally able to prescribe something that could alleviate her misery.
More pain and challenge came with the long process of rehabilitation, and she needed five more operations, including a skin graft. Tobler, now her boyfriend as well as her mechanic, became her round-the-clock nurse too.
Only six months after the crash, Muldowney had already come to grips with her career and what had happened in Montreal—and decided she wanted to race again. By early 1986, she was back on the Top Fuel circuit, and at a press conference before her first meet, the initial question from reporters was “Why?” Sports Illustrated reported that Muldowney answered simply, “A lot of reasons. I missed my friends, I missed my job, I missed the lifestyle, I needed the money, it was what I did best.”
She admitted one of the most difficult consequences of the crash was having to give away 60 pairs of high heels, a particular passion of hers, but impractical now since one leg was slightly shorter than the other.
Shirley Muldowney Books
- Tales from the Track.
- Tales from a Top Fuel Dragster: A Collection of the Greatest Drag Racing Stories Ever Told.
Shirley Muldowney Awards and Achievements
- In 1975, she was voted the first woman member of the ten-person Auto Racing All-American team by the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association.
- In 1976, she was named Drag News Top Fuel Driver of the Year and voted to the Auto Racing All-American Team for the second time.
- In 1977, she won the NHRA Winston world points championship, becoming the first woman to claim drag racing’s most prestigious title. Recipient of the “Outstanding Achievement Award” from the United States House of Representatives on October 14, 1977. Named Drag News Top Fuel Driver of the Year for the second straight season. Named Car Craft Magazine Person of the Year during the annual Car Craft Awards Banquet, Indianapolis, Indiana. First Top Fuel driver to win three NHRA national events back-to-back.
- 1980 Won NHRA Winston world points championship for the second time.
- 1981 Won AHRA world championship. Voted to Auto Racing All-American team for the fifth time. Voted Car Craft Magazine All-Star Team, Top Fuel Driver of the Year, for the second year in a row.
- 1982 Won NHRA Winston points championship, becoming the first person to claim drag racing’s most prestigious title three times. Voted to Auto Racing All-American Team for the fifth time.
- In 1990, she was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.
- In 2001, she was ranked number 5 on the National Hot Rod Association’s 50th Anniversary list of its Top 50 Drivers, 1951-2000.
- In 2004, she was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
- In 2005, she was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.
- In 2008, ESPN ranked her 21st on its list of the Top 25 Drivers of All Time, citing her record as the first woman to win a major racing championship.
Frequently Asked Questions About Shirley Muldowney
Who is Shirley Muldowney?
Muldowney, also known professionally as “Cha Cha” and the “First Lady of Drag Racing”, is an American auto racer. She was the first woman to receive a license from the National Hot Rod Association to drive a Top Fuel dragster.
How did Shirley Muldowney get the nickname cha cha?
Shirley Muldowney dropped the use of the nickname “Cha-Cha,” after the year 1973. She once said, “There is no room for bimboism in drag racing”… Muldowney took her name from her first husband, Jack Muldowney. She married her crew chief, Rahn Tobler, in the year 1988.
How old is Shirley Muldowney?
Shirley is an American national born on 14 January 1986, in Bronx LA.
How tall is Shirley Muldowney?
Muldowney stands at a height of 1.70 m.
Is Shirley Muldowney married?
No. over the course of her life, Shirley has been married to some of the most celebrated stars, including Rahn Tobler (m. 1988–2006), Jack Muldowney (m. 1956–1972). She is currently single.
How much is Shirley Muldowney worth?
Shirley has an approximate net worth of $1 million. This amount has been accrued from her leading roles in the sports industry.
Where does Shirley Muldowney live?
Because of security reasons, Muldowney has not shared his precise location of residence. We will immediately update this information if we get the location and images of her house.
Is Shirley dead or alive?
Muldowney is alive and in good health. There have been no reports of her being sick or having any health-related issues.
When did Shirley Muldowney retire?
Muldowney continued to race, mostly without major sponsorship, throughout the 1990s in IHRA competition and match-racing events. She returned to the NHRA towards the end of her career, running select events until her retirement at the end of 2003.
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