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She’z Racing at Suzuka — When a Plan Comes Together

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We are pleased to have Shelina Moreda writing Asphalt & Rubber’s newest column, “She’z Racing at Suzuka”, which will follow her and Melissa Paris’ venture into racing at the Suzuka 4-Hour endurance race later this month.

The American Duo are making the first all-female race team at the Suzuka 4-Hour, and will be campaigning a Honda CBR600RR with the Synergy Force Moriwaki Club team. We hope that you will enjoy the unique perspective that Shelina will be sharing with us. Race day is July 25th. -JB

If you know me, you know I like new adventures in racing. I want to do as much racing, in as many awesome places as possible, and hopefully find out where my niche is and find a home racing somewhere eventually, but I still hope I get to continue traveling for racing always.

Racing in Japan is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. It’s something that came up about a year and a half ago, and I made it known that I really wanted to do it. We had a strong lead last year, but it couldn’t happen for some valid reasons.

Nobody gave up on it though, we kept pushing for it, and this year, to my surprise and awe, the well known and respected Team Moriwaki expressed a strong interest in putting together a team for the four-hour endurance at Suzuka. Everyone put it in high-gear to get the team together and to figure out all the details that go along with such a high-level event like this, with such a high-level team.

It’s been somewhat top secret, and the excitement, at least for me, has been pretty hard to contain. We’ve all been working diligently behind the scenes, and it seems we were all holding out breaths at this twinkling far-off dream of ours, watching it become a reality, until our test this week, where everything came together, and we all pinched ourselves and realized it’s real. Midori Moriwaki, Melissa Paris and I have spent some time laughing about this this week.

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News

Women Enjoy Motorcycles & Other Obvious Conclusions

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Months ago, while bouldering with my friend Erica, I asked her if she ever wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle; she did a little shoulder dance, scrunched her face and exclaimed: “@#$& yeah, I’ve always wanted to dress up in leathers and be a badass chick on a bike.”

I laughed at the time, thinking her sentiments sounded more performative than substantive, but a recently released report on research conducted by Kelton and commissioned by Harley-Davidson suggests that motorcycling could indeed be a critical lifestyle palliative (or amphetamine?) for women.

Boring statistics first: women now make up 12% of the riding population in the United States — up 30% over the previous decade.

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Lifestyle

Girl’z MotoCamp – For Ladies Only

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Motorcycles are a good time out. If you are reading Asphalt & Rubber, then you already know this simple truth. So with such a basic offering, why do we struggle to bring more people into this sport?

We have already seen the FIM’s recent efforts to encourage and foster female road racers at the international level, but what are we doing at the domestic level?

How are we encouraging this sport and this industry to the other 50% of the American population, especially when we don’t have a robust female community that uses two-wheels for their urban commute?

Well recently one such answer to that question came in the form of the girls-only Girl’z MotoCamp put on by our friend Shelina Moreda.

An FIM and AMA Pro Racing rider, Moreda is no stranger to racing in a man’s world, and she is well aware of the limited number of entry points for ladies into motorcycling  — you may have seen that she recently penned a story on A&R about teaching at the FIM girls camp in Spain, just a few months ago.

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Racing

FIM Organizing More Road Racing Camps for Women

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Attention female readers, if you can spare €500 ($683 USD), and can manage to pay your way to Spain’s Almeria circuit, the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM), together with its Women’s Commission (CFM), wants to provide you training for road racing motorcycles.

In partnership with BMW Motorrad and Bike Promotion, there will be a series of training camps will run from February 17th through the 19th  — with 3 total days of instruction, training, track sessions and workshops. Hotel accommodations, meals, tires, fuel, etc included. Participants will ride BMW’s S 1000 RR during the event.

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Lifestyle

The Women’s Motorcycle Exhibition

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The Riverside Art Museum is hosting “The Women’s Motorcycle Exhibition,” an exhibit featuring the photography of Lanakila MacNaughton until March 16th.  The Portland-based photographer is also motorcyclist and wanted to capture a female-centric perspective on the colorful and wild side of motorcycling that is either underrepresented or misrepresented in this male-dominant culture.

Lanakila’s portraits show women embodying roles that are typically reserved for male motorcyclists, including images where a male takes on the role of pillion passenger in an obvious gender reversal. Another interesting set of images depicts a desert road scene where two barely dressed ladies (save for the stickers on their breasts) ride missionary (a la Kanye’s “Bound 2” music video).

We were excited by the potential for this exhibit to further the conversation around reimagining the role of women in motorcycling. Although the number of women riders in the U.S. is increasing, in marketing and in product development women are still considered a niche demographic.

There is not much space in the culture for women to stand on their own without being coddled or catered to by patronizing marketing gimmicks or feeling ogled by every dude on the road. Simply developing bikes with lower seat heights and apparel with pink and purple flower schemes is not going far enough to really opening the doors of the industry guys’ club.

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MotoGP

Regarding the Jorge Lorenzo’s Barcelona ‘Crib’ Video

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For those MotoGP who live a rich life on the internet, you probably already know what I am referring to in this story’s headline, but for those of you who prefer to live your lives in the real world, I will give a quick primer to this off-season MotoGP story. Late last week, Monster Energy’s “Dirt Shark” video series featured Jorge Lorenzo’s home in Barcelona, Spain on its website and Monster’s YouTube channel.

The “Dirt Shark” show is a bit more “MTV Cribs” than it is “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” in its approach. It only focuses on Monster’s sponsored athletes, and aims to glamorize their homes and lifestyles — along with an obligatory shot of their Monster-chocked refrigerator. However, the video on Lorenzo’s house appeared briefly on Monster Energy’s YouTube channel, as well as on DirtShark.com, before it was taken down.

It was removed because of harsh criticism in Spain for its showing, though it’s not clear if Lorenzo asked for it to be removed, or it Monster buckled to the public pressure — it’s probably a little bit of both, and frankly doesn’t really matter.

It didn’t take long though for low-quality web-rips of the video to circulate through social media sites though, and beyond Lorenzo’s stunning vistas, immensely large gym (where he says he works out three to four hours a day), the video is littered with young women tanning by Lorenzo’s pool, lounging in his hot tubs, and dancing in his miniature discotheque (so awkward).

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Opinion/Editorial

Going Viral: Motorcycling’s Lady Trope Problem

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About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post that compared two sets of photos that had been done by Portland, Oregon Ducati dealership MotoCorsa. The first set was called “seDUCATIve” and featured a model name Kylie and the Ducati 1199 Panigale — you can imagine what those photos looked like.

MotoCorsa did something interesting with its second set of photos though, which were titled “MANigale”. Featuring male mechanics from the dealership, these good-humored lads recreated Kylie’s poses with the Panigale, complete with heels, tube tops, and booty shorts. It was good fun, and since I have a personal vendetta with the “girl on a bike” trope of motorcycle marketing, it made for good commentary as well.

The seDUCATIve vs. MANigale article was a fairly popular story on Asphalt & Rubber, it had its couple days of fame, and that was that — or so I thought. For the past month now, the MANigale story has been hitting various more mainstream outlets worldwide — much to my surprise, but also delight.

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Racing

At the First FIM Women’s Road Racing Training Camp

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Today’s guest post is written by our good friend Shelina Moreda (Facebook & Twitter), an FIM eRoadracing rider for Team Parker Brammo, an AMA Pro Harley Davidson Vance & Hines rider with Team Spyke’s H-D / She’z Racing, and the first female to have raced a motorcycle at the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Having just got back from the FIM Women’s Road Racing Training Camp in Albacete, Spain, we asked Shelina to share with us her experience teaching at the girls training camp, what she learned in attendance, and how the sport of motorcycle racing is being invaded by these talented ladies. -Jensen

The first ever FIM Women’s Road Racing Training Camp in Albacete, Spain was better than any of us could have hoped for. The camp sold out, with 24 girls from 10 different countries in attendance.

The Women in Motorcycling Commission organized this camp as one part of their larger goal of promoting women in all motorsports, and I was honored to be asked to instruct at this camp.

My fellow teachers include Mr. Ismael Bonilla from Spain – former Grand Prix rider in the 250cc class from 1996 until 2001, as well as guest instructor Melissa Paris, of AMA Pro Daytona SportBike road racing fame — an athlete many female riders look up to.

The goal of the camp was to give female riders from all over the world the opportunity to train with high-spec motorcycles and professional coaches on a major racing circuit, and to give them the tools to make them better riders. The FIM hit it out of the ballpark.

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News

Indonesian City Plans to Ban Women Straddling Motorcycles

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Fresh off the international presses, the Indonesian town of Lhokseumawe (population 170,000) aims to pass a regulation that would forbid women from straddling a motorcycle while a passenger on a male-riden motorbike. The town’s mayor, Suaidi Yahya, says the regulation aims to save people’s “morals and behaviors” — unsurprisingly, Lhokseumawe resides in the only region of Indonesia that follows Sharia law.

The regulation will now mean that women need to sit side-saddle when a passenger on a motorcycle, though it would seem that the regulation doesn’t apply if another women is driving the motorcycle. According to Mayor Suaidi, women can still sit straddled on the motorcycle when they are riding alone, assuming they are appropriately dressed.

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News

Marissa Miller Poses for Harley-Davidson – Future Ambassador to Woman Motorcyclists?

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Here’s an interesting one for you marketing mavens. Harley-Davidson has tapped Marissa Miller to help promote its Nightster series of motorcycle, which isn’t really news. After all this isn’t the first time that a blonde beauty and a motorcycle have been paired in marketing photoshoot, and it also isn’t the first time that Miller has posed for the Milwaukee brand: she was also the company’s spokesperson for Harley’s “Military Appreciation Month” campaign.

The real interesting aspect of this campaign is the fact that Miller comes from a family of motorcyclists, and is a Harley-Davidson rider herself. While some chalk this up to clever publicity statements, it could be a sign there’s some blood still pumping in the Milwaukee marketing department afterall. What better way is there to get women to enter a male dominated industry than with an uber-feminine sex symbol who still manages to maintain all that sex appeal while riding on one of the most recognizable symbols of our industry? Photos from the shoot, and a behind the scenes video after the jump.

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News

Video: Women Riders of the FIM

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Usually when you see a video of lovely lady standing next to a motorcycle at an FIM sanctioned event, she’s holding an umbrella. Well the FIM is hoping to change that perception a bit, and is serving up this video with its resident supermodels ladies of motorcycling talking about what they do best. Featuring Leslie Porterfield (FIM World LSR Holder), Livia Lancelot (FIM Women’s Motocross World Champion) and Laia Sanz (FIM Women’s Trial World Champion), the video is a part of the new FIM campaign called “Women Ride” that hopes to encourage more femme fatal in our two-wheeled sport. Video after the jump.

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