White-knuckled family members on the sidelines. Enough hospital visits to put you on a first-name basis with the staff. Yet another baffled stranger exclaiming, “But you’re a girl!” Welcome to the world of women’s motocross.
It’s a world Jessica Patterson and Tania Satchwell know well; they’ve been tearing up the track since “women” and “motocross” were only linked by the words “can’t do.”
“We started out racing on Thursdays and Fridays, not knowing how long our race is going to be—amateur racing, no spectators, nothing going on,” said Satchwell, a spirited 25-year-old New Zealand native who has won seven New Zealand and one U.S. national women’s motocross championships.
Patterson, the soft-spoken 22-year-old current national champion, said she remembers getting minimal respect and a lot of strange looks when she started out in what has long been considered a testosterone-fueled “guy’s sport.”
But over the few years, Satchwell and Patterson have shown that the need for speed knows no gender barriers.
The women are now racing with “the big guys,” as Satchwell puts it, establishing their own fan base and their own place within the sport.
“I’ve seen it go from nothing to be something where people actually come to the races to see us,” she said. “It’s grown huge, and we get a lot more support from our sponsors and stuff like that because, you know, we’re on TV, we’re in magazines.”
The level of respect from the male riders has improved markedly, too, Patterson added.
“As women’s motocross gets bigger, they see that we’re not just girls,” she said. “They see us do everything they do and better, so they’re giving us more support.”
Not that Patterson and Satchwell aren’t grateful for the male trailblazers in the motocross world; if not for them, they never would have discovered the sport themselves.
Patterson was just 7 years old when she her passion for racing first surfaced. After seeing her dad—a former racer himself—practicing on their home track, she begged him for a bike. After a family friend, the motocross legend Ricky Carmichael, took her to her first real race, she never looked back, and her many championship titles have earned her enough sponsorships to support a full-time career in motocross.
For her part, Satchwell has her two brothers to thank for getting her interested in racing. Growing up on a farm in New Zealand, there were plenty of hand-me-down bikes lying around to practice on. And when her brothers started racing, she tagged along, helmet in hand.
After dominating the women’s competitions at home, she came to the United States, where she won the championship title in 2001. She said she knew America was “the place to be” if you really want to make it in motocross, so she’s been a full-time resident of Colorado since she turned 21.
When it comes to a sport where broken bones and nasty spills are de rigueur, some of the riders’ loved ones were less than thrilled when they decided to take their racing to a professional level—and being the only daughters in their families didn’t help.
Both Patterson’s and Satchwell’s mothers were slow to warm to the idea of women’s motocross, and Satchwell suspects that at least in her mom’s case, the day she retires will be cause for celebration.
“She came out to America when we raced in New York back in ’99,” Satchwell recalled, “and she sat in the car the whole time. She didn’t even watch me race because she was a nervous wreck.”
“I just tell her to deal with it,” she added, and both girls cracked up.
Dangers aside, the girls say their friends and family members are extremely proud of their achievements in women’s motocross—both as athletes and as inspirational figures to young girls thinking of giving racing a try.
The sport still has a ways to go before men and women are recognized as equals, but the Patterson and Satchwell both agree that when it comes down to it, women’s motocross is just like everything else in life: if you love it, don’t let anything or anyone hold you back.
“It’s so cool to see little girls out there who want to race,” Satchwell said. “I would just tell them to do whatever they like to do, you know? Just do it because you love doing it. Just go have fun.”
by Robin Hindry
Article courtesy of GoGirlWorld.org
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