Interview: Jemma Wilson on women in motorcycling

Jemma Wilson is one of the most accomplished off-road riders in Australia. She retired in 2018 with four Australian championships, eight Queensland championships, and five International Six Days Enduro Women’s Trophy wins with Tayla Jones and Jess Gardiner. She also has countless podiums in numerous competitions, and competed in the EnduroGP World Championship for five years.

Since retiring, Jemma has entered the world of coaching and events, giving female riders, young and old, the chance to hone their skills and meet like-minded people. And she does all of this while still working as a high school teacher.

Off-road motorcycling is historically a male-dominated sport, but female participation is growing rapidly, and Jemma is working hard to give women every opportunity in the sport she loves.

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Jemma Wilson: I grew up in the bush and it was just the Sunday thing to do. I have an older brother, a dad, and friends that ride. We had a rule that we weren’t allowed to ride until we were twelve. So my dad actually got me a bike when I was like 11 and a half, and it sat in the shed for six months. I’d go down and kickstart it when he wasn’t home.

From there it just grew really organically and gradually. It’s not that long ago – I’m 31 – but back then women definitely weren’t racing locally, or within my line of sight. It’s not something that I knew of. No one in my family raced as well. I started trailriding and then my dad and my older brother went and did a local race because they were part of the local club. I went and watched and I was like ‘I really want to do it!’ But I didn’t have the right sized bike, so dad got the bike that I could actually do a race on.

How old were you when you first started competing?

I was trailriding for couple of years and dad could see I was getting a bit bored with that. Dad’s idea behind us riding was to stop us from going into town and being feral kids. Once I wanted to go to a party in town, so he took me to a trailride instead.

At 14, I started doing a little bit of racing, but there was no girls class, so I just rode with the boys. At 16, there was a women’s class, so I started racing some Aussie title events and I did my first International Six Days Enduro in Portugal with team Australia at the age of 19.

When I was 22 I started my five years of racing in the Enduro World Championship GPs as a privateer. My fiancée (now husband) and I had a van and a bike in France, so we’d just fly over and drive around to the different races, which was a really cool experience. I retired officially in the middle of 2018, so it’s been two years.

Going back to your younger years, you mentioned you rode a lot with the boys. Did you ever feel like you were on the outside of a ‘boys club’? Or did you always feel comfortable and like you fit in?

At the time, I was just like ‘I’m one of the boys, whatever.’ But looking back, and as I started to get older, I definitely started to feel it a little bit more. And you’re in this kind of no-man’s land, because you’re not one of the boys, even though you’re racing with the boys. A lot of the guys had really awesome girlfriends and wives that would come along to all the races, and they were really nice women, but you weren’t one of them either.

And my husband was in the same boat, because he wasn’t one of the boys racing, but he wasn’t one of the chicks. He was on the sideline supporting me. So we both kind of lived in this no-man’s land at the race.

Now that I’ve finished racing, and I’m running these ladies only events, it’s actually for myself. I finally have a place, and I’ve made some really amazing female friends. Because it is such a huge part of my life, we have that in common. I’ve got friends from high school, local friends, who will always be my friends, but motorcycling is like 80 per cent of my life and they don’t understand it, so it’s really hard to create the bond and friendship. But doing these ladies-only events, I’ve met some amazing women from all different aspects of life, all different jobs, all different age groups and all different levels of riding. But we all enjoy bikes and it’s just so easy to make friends. It’s brilliant.

That’s incredible. Why do you think there aren’t more women in this industry? And for those that are, what is attracting them to the sport?

That’s a really good question. What I’ve been saying lately is that the reason more women don’t ride bikes, is because more women don’t ride bikes. The fact that it’s already a bit of a boys club, it can be a bit intimidating to break into. The idea of my events is to remove the intimidation. You know, a lot of the women that come to the events ride with boys – they got into it because of their dad, or their boyfriend, or husband, or brother, or neighbour. It’s one in a hundred that rock up and say ‘I’ve just always wanted to do it, teach me how.’ But that’s happening more and more, which is cool.

I’ve had ladies in their 50s that would say ‘I had to wait until my dad passed away, because he’d be mad at me for riding.’ Or it’s just something they’ve always wanted to do, but they’ve had a career and then they had kids. Now the kids have left home and this is their thing now.

I love bikes because it’s just what I’ve always done and my dad supported me with it. I wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for my dad. But not all women have that opportunity, and I never realised how much motorcycling gave me with the rest of my life until I got this feedback from other women.

I started the Fox Women’s Camp Out to coach and have fun, but I’d be getting emails saying ‘this has given me so much confidence in my life, I don’t just have to be a mum or work really hard in my business, and I can carve out this time for myself.’ So it has been an unintended side-affect and such a brilliant aspect of what I’ve been doing which is cool.

That’s sounds so empowering. Incredible. What kind of perceptions do you think run through the industry? I feel like there is this stigma (with non-riders) that it’s dangerous. Is this something you’ve come across?

Definitely. So the outside perspective of motorcycling is that we’re just feral hoons. And it’s changing. We’re starting to see, you know, ads popping up on mainstream TV of a guy doing freestyle, or an insurance ad, which probably isn’t great (laughs), and it will be two blokes unloading their bikes on a Sunday and having a ride with their friends – it’s that lifestyle aspect.

It’s starting to change because yes, there are feral hoons who will do a mono on an unregistered bike in the street without a helmet or protective gear and ruin for the rest of us, but the majority of people that ride bikes are families and professionals, who know it’s a risky thing but life is risky. And you minimise the risk the best you can buy wearing the proper riding gear, riding where it’s safe and everyone is going in the same direction. Also, it is fitness, and you’re out there with friends and family creating moments and adventures. I think we all, as an industry, need to keep showing that side of it and not that it’s dangerous, because a lot of things are dangerous.

Like people walking in to cars…

People are going to take notice when it’s a motorcycling accident. I think road bikes are a different kettle of fish because you have cars that move, but if you’re off-road, and you hit a tree, it’s your fault. And you’ll try not to do that, of course. But yeah, I think the road is a different level of dangerous, but if you minimize the risk and stay alert and do what you can, you can ride the road as well.

I thing that is a good tagline – when you said riding is risky, but life is risky.

Yeah, and it doesn’t mean you have to be crazy. You don’t have to hit some massive jump because your friends have, or ride 200km/h down the road. You don’t have to do that for it to be a fun time. You can really minimise those risks and enjoy it.

So you retired in 2013 and you’ve been working on your tours. Can you give us a bit of an overview of the kind of events and programs you’re running? Specifically the ones skewed more for women and that kind of a community.

I do actually run some stuff that isn’t for women, and I was pushing hard for that last year. But I have to change society’s perceptions to make a successful business out of that, because naturally a guy doesn’t want to come and get coached by a girl. So my co-coach, Ellyse O’ Connor, and I work really well together, and other than an absolute A-Grade rider, we can coach anyone and they’ll walk away having learnt something in a really fun, friendly environment. But it’s hard to try and get blokes to come and get coached by us. So I have scaled that back a bit, because I’m just one person and it’s hard to change society.

I’m putting a lot more effort into my ladies only stuff. And I realized it’s so much more fun as well – the atmosphere is just brilliant. I have the Fox Women’s Camp-Outs and I usually run three a year. It’s a coaching weekend. I’ve had women who only know literally how to ride in a straight line, and by the end of the day they are going over a log and absolutely loving it.

It’s been running for five years now and it’s really got some traction, which is cool. It’s the east coast, so Gympie in Queensland, Cessnock in NSW and Bright in Victoria. They change a little bit every year, because I want make it as accessible to as many women as I can.

And then I have the Husqvarna Women’s Trailride which is a two-day trailride with lots of different loops and motocross style tracks, but we encourage you not to bring your partners. We have lots of sweep riders to help the girls, and we also have a pied piper who will lead the girls around if they are a little bit intimidated to ride in the bush by themselves.

The trailride is at Green Park in Conondale which is one of the best properties in Australia, so it’s cool that they let me use that. We also have the Fox Women’s Ride Day which moves every year (this year it’s near Gympie) and it’s like the trailride but we have a motocross track to ourselves. It’s not a coaching event per se, but we definitely give a lot of assistance.

I’m feeling so inspired by this. I’m thinking Bright, Victoria – I could do that one.

Yeah, and it’s the nicest property at Bright that we use. And the people that own the property also own the Porepunkah pub, so we go there on Saturday night and have dinner and drinks which is really cool.

You had me at drinks…

I did a bit of a road ride last year as well, and I’m not a road rider. I’ve only ridden on the road a few times. Husqvarna lent me the Svartpilen 401, which was so cool. It’s so upright, which is good for me coming from an off-road background. I did a rut in the backyard at the Airbnb. So that was really fun and I was way outside my comfort zone for that one.

We had a really interesting mix of bikes – we had Harleys, to WR250s with supermotard tires and really cool café racer bikes. And we had this really different mix of women, and we all stayed in a house in Pottsville together. We rode all through Nimbin and Kyogle and stuff for two days, which was really cool. And they knew what they were doing, and I didn’t.

And this year, I was planning to take girls to America, which was going to be my first trip like that. You know – Disneyland and hanging out in a mansion for a few days. And then we had two motorhomes that we were going to drive up to the event. Hopefully things settle down in America and we can go next year.