That the men take part in the worlds most famous road race is impressive enough but when the regulations allowed females to enter, it made us all look differently upon the girls who would dare and beat the boys at their own game.... Over the years there have been many famous female sidecar passengers, not least Mrs Julia Bingham and Rose Arnold (now Mrs. Roy Hanks).
The first female passenger at the TT (1954 and 1957) was Inge Stoll-Laforge, chairing for Frenchman Jacques Drion. Another early participant was Mrs. Pat Wise who sat comfortably in with Eric Oliver in a road standard outfit in 1958. Poor Marie Lambert lost her life just below Creg-ny-Baa whilst passengering for husband Claude in 1961 I enjoyed being involved with Aga Neumann (1971) who raced with BMW expert Heinz Luthringhauser. (see picture below)
Once the first batch showed the way, the floodgates opened and there was a glut of the opposite sex, girl friends and wives of the driver, with the odd "roamer" who, each year came to the Island to passenger for a different driver. Girlfriends became wives after doing it together (Ged Tennant and Maria Clarke). It is only in the last couple of years that we have had a female driver with male passenger and a wholly female team from America contested the TT but failed to qualify.
MRS BERYL SWAIN The first female rider of a solo machine broke cover in 1962, Mrs. Beryl Swain on a 50 cc Itom, who beat a number of her male counterparts. Since Beryl rode, there have been females taking part in every class, even the F1, and getting impressive results. Names that come immediately to mind are Sandra Barnett, Hilary Musson........ and Maria Costello
plus Cat Jenkins and Terry Salome in the chairs. Over the years I have been pleased to assist some of these girls, either being "advised to help" by Bill Smith who supplied bikes for them,--- or off my own bat when I saw potential, or found I had acquired the nerve to try out my smattering of their language when they needed help and administrative assistance. (Well, that's MY excuse)
One particular rider who sticks in my mind, with great affection, is Margret Lingen from Willich ( near Munchen-Gladbach ) who was a "Tischlermeister" or furniture designer who had unfortunately lost three of her fingers from her left hand to a bandsaw, yet could race a large capacity Ducati with great dexterity. She enjoyed a pair of consecutive visits to the TT and I was more than pleased to help her when Bill Smith passed her on to me ! She is best remembered for her tumble at Quarter Bridge which was less than ladylike ! ( see top of page !! ) The late Leslie Nichol and I, with the help of photographer John Wardough, produced a super article for the TT edition of the Daily Express, an article of which I am very proud. While Margret appreciated my help and P.R. work on her behalf, I was displeased when I tried to repeat the process with another Bill Smith entrant, the Italian Francesca Giordano.
She came to the TT three times, the first year with bikes from Gloucester Kawasaki. She was on her own so I drafted in a group of fans to assist her to get organised. We set up her pit team for the races and did everything to get her qualified. She did well that first year as a rookie and returned for the second of her three visits with the help of Bill Smith Motors. The machines supplied were a Yamaha 600 and a Yamaha 400. This time she learned the course and managed to improve her speeds and knowledge. Then came the third visit when we planned a worthy result...... I had arranged a number of important "personal appearances" to raise sponsorship and support for Francesca, but was very disappointed when she failed to turn up to most of them. As a consequence, her attempts at this third TT were very much less than high profile, compared with those we accomplished with Margret.. Margret qualified well, but Francesca felt the world owed her something without doing anything for it, so our major, and her final, trip to the TT was a waste of money (mainly mine) and she failed to qualify in practice.
I would now like to mention a very underated female rider..... This is Kate Parkinson who has ridden in a number of TTs. I took her for a lap in the car and she related her lines round corners and speeds and gears and I was very impressed with her course knowledge. Kate has had semi-works rides, not least with VIMTO-Honda..
It was with great pleasure that I became involved with Liz Skinner of Bracknell as part of the "Let Her Ride" protest to get her entries in the male-only Manx GP..... She was already a TT rider with much experience of the Mountain Circuit and I had previously done some promotional work with her !! So we went on air and gained much broadsheet publicity, managed to get the entry, then we were beaten to the start by her girl friends who decided to enter as well, on the back of our hard work. We even got Liz to the "Times Women of the Year" finals that year, and while she did not win, was more than pleased to be one of the runners-up, recognised for her efforts on two wheels... We were on the main table with Mary Peters, Fatima Whitbread, Kathy Tayler and Sharon Davies to namedrop but a few, and this gave us a really good end to that particular season. Liz eventually married TT rider Eddie Roberts, now of Pirelli/Metzeler fame, and they have a son Tom. Over the many years I have visited the TT, I have been very happy to have been involved with so many riders, passengers and so on, both male and female, some famous, some not-so-famous....
However we have all been there at the Worlds most famous Road Races and become a huge family, too enormous to be listed individually... BACK TO INDEX PAGE |
