DOING IT FOR THE GIRLS

Itmay have ‘only’ been in the FIM World Supersport 300 series, but Ana Carrasco’s victory at Portimao was, and will always be, alandmark event. To be the first ever female racer to win a world championship road racing event is some achievement and, let’s be honest, if you sawthe race you’d know she wasn’t handed it! Ana fought tooth and nail all race long, taking the lead on several occasions while battling with the boys, namely in this instance Marc Garcia and Alfonso Coppola, andthe rest of the bonkers SS300 pack.It was actually a blindingly good race, as many of theseries’ outings have been, even though the bikes look appallingly slow on the straights. The Circuit Algarve was aperfect place for the class though, with its ups, downs and tricky curves to conquer.Ana took herwin on the final run to the line, surrounded by a clutch of squabbling boys, and secured her place in racing legend joining many of the sport’s greatest female racers in the history books. Racing in thenew millennium is a far cry from the days of Beryl Swain and her 48 mph average speed lap of the Isle of Man TT on a 50cc racer. There have beenmany girls who’ve given racing ago, to varying degrees of success, overthe intervening decades. Some of them you’ll be very familiar with like BSB’s Jenny Tinmouth, Elena Myers in AMA, Maria Costello at the TT and Maria Herrera who raced in Moto 3, just like Ana didf or awhile before settling on giving thenew 300class a crack. There are also astack who do the Irish Road Racing scene as well. We may be waiting for true success to come out of many of these places, but the ladies are already quite well represented. One of the less wellknown ones thesedays, though not so long ago, was Katja Poensgen who wonthe European Super mono series, and scored points in 250 GPs on an Aprilia. We know a bunch of guys who raced the Super mono class, and they’ve always tipped their cap towards Katja when reminiscing about being stuffed by agirl. There are also a bunch of women doing great stuff in other motorcycle disciplines, like Trials and Enduro. The best thing about A na’ s victory though, is that she will hopefully inspire many more to have ago. There must havebeen alot of young girls watching that race in Portugal with their families who, now Ana has done it, are thinking they could too. Road racing isn’t split up (like many other disciplines are) into gender assigned classes. If they want to play, then they play with boys–just how it shouldbe. We wonder if there’s a little girl out there who watched Ana’s victory, who mayone day make it allthe way to the top? You know what, we sure hope there is…