Sunset for a groundbreaker

It will end, she hopes, where it all began for her. In May. In Indianapolis. In the biggest single-day sporting event in America, at the most iconic racing facility on the planet.

Danica Mania was born on a late May afternoon in 2005, and, if Danica Patrick can qualify for the 2018 Indianapolis 500, it will slip quietly off the stage on a late May afternoon six months hence. Its expiration is long past, of course; Danica Mania died some time ago, when the big-money sponsors finally gave up on her as a NASCAR driver. Her career soon followed, dying a couple of months ago when she lost her final sponsor, the decidedly non-big-money Nature's Bakery.

And so yesterday Patrick made the announcement everyone knew was coming, which is that, at 35, she is done with racing. She'll attempt to qualify for the Daytona 500 in February, and then take one more shot at the Big 500 in May.

It's a neatly symmetrical exit for her, because her star never blazed hotter than at Indy in May. In seven starts, she finished in the top 10 six times, and in the top five twice. That, of course, includes the 2005 race, when she finished fourth as a rookie and was leading with 10 laps to run.

Danica Mania was born that day on the wings of an unearthly roar when she took the lead, a roar unlike any even those of us who'd been around for a few 500s had ever quite heard. That the Mania did her as much harm as good will, of course, be debated forever. But not here in Blobville.

Here, it's always been an article of faith that IndyCar did Patrick a disservice by making her the face of the sport long before she had the resume to warrant it.  Not only did it lend her a sense of entitlement that at times was distasteful, it obscured her accomplishments by exaggerating her deficiencies.

More accomplished drivers, the narrative went, never got the sponsorship and marketing opportunities Patrick did. Which was true. But it was also true she was more accomplished than some drivers who escaped similar judgment simply because they were male.

No one, after all, lands in the top ten six times in seven starts in the 500 if they can't wheel a race car. And if she failed utterly in stock cars, she was only one in a long line of IndyCar drivers who couldn't make that jump.

Dario Franchitti, a three-time Indy 500 winner, couldn't do it, and he drove for Chip Ganassi. Sam Hornish Jr., another Indy winner and a former IndyCar champ, has never been able to do it, either, and he drove for Roger Penske. And Juan Pablo Montoya, two-time Indy winner and another Ganassi driver, never managed more than sporadic success in a stock car.

So Danica wasn't alone. And if her success on the track never matched her fame off it, she did more than enough to establish herself as, if not a pioneer, a groundbreaker.

She was the first, and still only, woman ever to lead both the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500. She was the first, and still only, woman ever to win an IndyCar race. And she was the first, and still only, woman ever to win the pole at Daytona.

Someday, you'll be able to remove the "only" from all of that. But when it happens, her name will again come up.

She belongs, after all, to posterity now. And that she well deserves.