By Xtra Motoring/Sandy Myhre
The number of sports where women can compete equally with men can probably be counted on one hand.
Equestrian comes to mind. Darts and petanque might qualify too and (strangely enough given the few women who compete) so does motor racing and rallying, just ask Danica Patrick or Michelle Mouton or, closer to home, Christina Orr and Emma Gilmour.
However one doesn't normally think of motor bike racing as being 'equal'. Having to man-handle (forgive the expression) a lusty bike around tricky corners and thrust it menacingly down a long stretch of bitumen takes a fair bit of strength let alone, um, balls.
Yet it can be done and Karel Pavich is a prime example of women bikers being more equal than most. She is the current 250GP champion – the first woman in New Zealand to win a solo national road-racing title and to use a cliché probably too-often dragged out at moments like this, it was a hard-fought battle. Yet in Karel's case it surely was.
"At the 4th round of the championship I binned it doing something really stupid at Levels Raceway and thought I'd lost my chance, but we fixed the bike and the next day I not only won but broke the lap record three times.
"Being able to get up again after that and win was certainly a turning point for me both personally and for the championship".
After a win in the first race at the final round she was equal on points with John Beck. A first and second place secured the championship and she thinks from that moment on, the men realised she was clear about her intentions.
At the end of January, Karel Pavich goes to Australia, to the daunting and tricky Phillip Island circuit in southern Victoria, to give post-classic racing a go for the first time. She will race a Yamaha TZ350 in single events and as a member of the New Zealand team contesting the International Challenge between the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia in the Forgotten Era Class.
The thing about classic racing is no-one's too sure who will turn up – it could be Joe Bloggs from Motueka bringing along the AJS 7R he's had stored in the garage for fifty years or, it could be the rich and famous like Wayne Gardner who returned to racing for the first time since 1990 at last year's Classic event.
Even the great Giacomo Agostini has raced there and so has the late Barry Sheene. One thing is certain however. Karel Pavich is the only woman among the 23-strong kiwi contingent and possibly the only woman in leathers on the track but in that sense, being something of a classic herself, it's not an entirely new experience.
This brings up the matter of how she's received and perceived. In her own country she gets support from clubs, from fellow racers, from organizers. In fact in 1990 she was a nominee for the New Zealand Sportswoman of the Year. She's a finalist for the Nelson 2006 Sportswoman of the year and a contender for Nelsonian of the Year.
But mention Australia and she bristles.
"You get treated differently by the men there, it's much more of a chauvinist society" she declares.
Then there's America where in 1991 she spent several months in Seattle (Washington) to progress the race career. She teamed up with another woman, Ann Martin, to contest some six-hour endurance events. They won the 600cc class in one event and were fourth in another, the only ladies' team to enter.
"Some of the men there were awfully chauvinist and I didn't get treated very well" she mutters with a shudder down her spine.
She doesn't take kindly to being treated as an oddity and, given her track record, there shouldn't be an anomaly in sight. After all, no-one would suggest Wayne Gardner's a bit of a girl.
In any event, Karel's decision to go road racing likely stems more from a competitive streak than a desire to be different. At school in Hamilton she was always into something sporty like athletics, netball and soccer. At the age of 15 she fell in love with her first motorcycle, as you do, and her lifetime so far has been dominated by the two-wheel machines.
Just under 20 years ago she established Cloud 9 Racing (her name for the team, she reckoned she was on cloud nine when she was racing) and everything else took second place as she towed her race bike around the country on a pretty pink and purple trailer with nimbus clouds painted over the top, designed to match her 900cc road bike.
To a woman's eye, that wouldn't be strange at all but blokes might baulk at clouds. Karel didn't care, she was racing and her results were good enough to secure a sponsored ride with Honda.
She teamed up with a mechanic called Lester Ferdinand and finished sixth in the New Zealand 600cc championship then ended up marrying Lester, in that order. She raced a Suzuki to fifth in the 250 production championship (her highest race place was a second) then had her first wins from winter club races.
After that, she moved up to a Formula 2 TZ250 Grand Prix bike, but by 1995 she decided to give competition a rest and move across the Tasman. She kept her handle on the throttle, so to speak, by resuming racing in 2001. She competed at Eastern Creek and the place where she scored her first wins in Australia, Phillip Island.
A couple of years ago she moved back to New Zealand, to Nelson, and straight away moved back into bike racing. Her national title showed she had lost none of her touch and she's hoping her knowledge of Phillip Island might give her the edge in a couple of weeks' time.
Her ability aside, there's a personal reason for wanting to do well there. Last year she missed out on a possible wildcard entry to ride a Grand Prix bike in the 250 GP World Championship round at Phillip Island, one of only two kiwis considered. Her non-selection saw the woman scorned, her hackles are raised. There is unfinished business in Victoria.
There might also be incomplete business in other places in Australia too. A few speed records are up for grabs at Lake Gairdner in the South Australian Outback and Karel Pavich wants to race there. The event is sanctioned by the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association which runs the famous Bonneville Speedweek in the USA, and the very place where Burt Munro was made legendary.
Karel is prepared to be one of only a few women to contest the Lake Gairdner event and will ride against men and machines as much as the time-clock and there are no separate records for women in land speed racing. She will compete on an equal footing. But of course, that's hardly a novel experience; it's what she does and has always done so.
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