'Everybody better get ready': Women racers gear up for Lords of Dirt (2024)

Mary Hoyt had never tried flat-track motorcycle racing when she decided she would be racing in the very first Lords of Dirt event.

She grew up ripping across her family’s land in southern Ohio on a dirt bike, and she needed a reason to get back on. So she gathered a few other women to form a women’s class, and, nervous on her borrowed bike, she raced.

“I think we maybe maxed out at 10 miles an hour, we were going so slow,” Hoyt recalled. “But after that I was just like, ‘This is pretty awesome.’”

Now years later, Hoyt will be one of several women competing in the women’s class at Lords of Dirt on Sunday, in a race for what might be the largest women’s class purse in the country.

Since 2021, Lords of Dirt has taken over the last day of the Western Montana Fair, regaling fair-goers with flat-track motorcycle races. Thanks to Hoyt, the event has had a women’s class since 2021, which started small but has grown to more than 10 racers last year.

That growth is exciting for the racers who have been here since the start, like Hoyt. More racers in the women’s class means more friendly competition, she said.

The key word is friendly. After her first race, what kept Hoyt, 32, coming back to flat-track racing was how welcoming the community is. Hoyt doesn’t come from a flat-track racing family like many other racers do, so her fellow racers have become her racing support-system.

“It’s just fun, everyone’s become my family and without the women I have in the women’s class, it probably wouldn’t be as fun,” Hoyt said.

One of those women is Mallory McGill, 24, who has been racing since she was 4 years old. She can still recall seeing older girls at the track as a kid and wanting to grow up to race like them.

Twenty years later, she still feels like the women racers around her are inspiring. Because women in the sport are still uncommon, McGill said she never expected to find girl friends she could ride her motorcycle with.

“Having those girls to share this with makes it that much more of an experience and that much more meaningful, and it’s brought me so many good friendships that I’m so thankful for,” McGill said.

She has her eye on Build.Train.Race, a national all-women program that trains motorcycle racers and supports them as they race professionally. For her, racing on BTR’s all-women professional team is a dream. It’s also a sign of women’s growing place in the sport, she said.

“I think women in motorsports — it’s happening. We’re in the midst of it, it’s coming, and everybody better get ready,” McGill said.

Kimberly Scheffer, 36, said she was glad to see more women taking up the sport. Scheffer raced for the first time in 2022 at Lords of Dirt, and has been riding ever since— although she had to take a year-long break after getting injured in a wreck during a race.

“It’s definitely a sport that’s — as most sports tend to be — very male-dominated, and so I think it’s pretty cool to see a sport that over the last couple years has grown so much for women,” Scheffer said.

The $2,000 purse will hopefully help promote Lords of Dirt’s women’s class and appeal to women racers, lead race organizer Ryan Montgomery said. Although he’s not certain, he’s looked at purses for women’s classes across the country and believes it’s the biggest in the nation.

“We just want to introduce young little girls and teenagers and people who have ridden a bike before and haven’t ridden a bike before to just even it out and make it more inclusive than just a bunch of guys — shirtless guys,” Montgomery said.

The purse is sponsored by Betty’s Divine and Divine Trash Vintage. Aimee McQuilkin, the boutique’s owner, said supporting the race was in line with the store’s core philosophy.

“It aligns so much with our ethos at Betty’s Divine, and that’s about being bold, about taking up space,” McQuilken said. “And this is all in reference to women, to non-binary (people), to people being in spaces where maybe they’re not usually seen or welcome participating in.”

Although the flat-track community is welcoming and eager to get more people on bikes, Montgomery said the perception of the sport as a male-dominated culture has been difficult to shake.

Montgomery said he knows there are people who would enjoy the sport just as much as men do, so it’s been important for him to encourage women and girls to participate.

“Racing in general and motorcycles in general, especially motorcycle racing, can be a very male-dominated culture, and there’s really no reason that it has to be,” Montgomery said. “It really is a sport that’s open to everyone.”