India’s national female bike and car racing champion, 25-year-old Alisha Abdullah, oft-quoted in the media, has an overcrowded showcase at her plush home in Chennai. Medals, trophies and certificates of appreciation from when she was as young as eight vying for space. “Not all of them are mine, some of them are dad’s,” she clarifies talking about her racer father RA Abdullah, who she grew up watching on the tarmac.
“There are many awards from the women’s day celebration,” she continues, pointing to pictures with Formula One racer Narain Karthikeyan, Bollywood actor John Abraham and one of her as a child on a go-kart. “I was quite chubby back then,” she smiles.
Starting out with winning the MRF National Go-Karting Championship and the Best Novice Award in the national-level Formula Car Racing in the open class, she shifted gears to formula car racing and came fifth in the JK Tyre National Racing Championship, 2004.
She came third in the same championship on a super bike (those which travel 200 to 300 km per hour) in 2009 that included 15 men. As making a niche for herself in predominantly male bastions became a habit, she finished eighth in the Volkswagen National Polo Cup (India), 2011 and 2012; came 10th in 2010, out of 24 male participants. She has won several national road racing championships along with Rotary’s Young Achiever Award.
The Alisha Abdullah Racing Academy to train female racers across the country is on the cards where the racer plans to create an all-girls bike racing team by 2016. “I have received 60 applications so far. Training is to start in January next year, where 25 will be selected from the shortlisted 50,” she says, adding that the only criterion is knowing how to ride a bike. She proposes to train girls in geared and non-geared bikes.
“There are academies for racing in India but they charge, my academy will be free initially,” she says. But after the shortlisting programme, the girls have to go through a rigorous training programme, she emphasises. The obvious mental block of competing with men has to be worked upon, she adds.
You’re soon lost in a barrage of biking terms like ‘inner corners’, ‘apexes’, ‘power’, ‘knocked’, ‘whooped’ and ‘kicked’, and the racer stresses on the fact that knowing the technique is as important as owning fancy machines. “I know a lot of girls from Delhi who are into superbikes. Like how one buys Jimmy Choo shoes and Louis Vuitton handbags, they buy exhaust systems and bikes. But when it comes to a race track they have no clue how to race,” she says adding that it is one thing to own a bike and another to know them. “Going at 285 km/hr, downshifting to the fourth or second gear, and coming down to that speed is not easy because you’re on two wheels. If there is a small puncture on the bike or a flat tyre you’ll be dead. I saw death in close counters three years back,” she says.
She also rues that fitness is not given as much importance as it deserves in the country, not even by sportspersons. “To be a sportsperson you should first look like one,” says the biker who has been into fitness training for the past eight to nine years, and trains four hours at the gym every day. But she also admits that bike racing is 60 per cent mental training and 40 per cent physical training.
When asked which country has the most favourable ecosystem for the sport, she is frank, “Everywhere! Except India.” Lack of sponsors and exposure for the sport are challenges, she explains. Though Alisha started young, she admits that women racers abroad have an edge as they start even younger and do not face the typical challenges exclusive to India. “I feel great in India but when I compare myself with girls in the world I am nowhere even close to them. In Italy, they race 600cc bikes where you can’t make out the difference between a guy and a girl there,” she says.
“There are five girls called ‘Racing Divas’ from Spain. They win the Dubai 24 hours endurance every year. They beat men. They are 35 years old. They’ve been in the sport for 20-22 years,” she says, speaking about some of the finest female racers she has come across.
Alisha will be competing in her first street circuit race in the Toyota Vios Cup 2014 next month in Thailand that comprises six races. She has finished fifth in the first five races and is hoping to finish fourth in the last one. “The street circuit is different, the bends are sharp. If you don’t take a proper corner, you go into the barriers. In a typical race track, we have lines, here we have barriers. In a race track, you have run off area, here there’s no such thing, you will just run into people here,” she continues.
Overlooking her picture on a shelf is a framed autograph from Andy Green, the British Royal Air Force fighter pilot who currently holds the World Land Speed Record. “From the world’s fastest man to India’s fastest woman — Andy Green” Alisha reads, gleaming.
