Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1501730
T hey didn't have the term "toxic masculinity" in the 1970s, so there was no clinical way to properly describe what was about to take place that day at Holiday Downs, a high-banked, 3/8ths-mile, red-dirt racetrack in Palmetto, Georgia. But as he sat on the line, waiting for the race to begin, this particu - lar teenaged male could hear his daddy's voice in his head, and he knew exactly what his words meant: "You can't let that girl beat you tonight!" If only the youngster knew who "that girl" was going to become, if only he could have taken just a little peek into a crystal ball. With a quick glimpse into the future, he could've told his pa, "that girl" was none other than Tammy Jo Kirk and that in a few years, she was going to wrestle a Harley- Davidson XR750 into the main event at Knoxville, Tennessee, a feat that was going to make her the first woman ever to qualify for an AMA Grand National Dirt Track race. Or maybe he could've peered ahead into 1986 to the DuQuoin Mile, where she was going to chase nine-time Grand National Champion Scotty Parker to the checkered flag, narrowly miss - ing out on a top five finish in the main event. With all of this infor- mation in hand, maybe his pop would've called off the "dawg" in the boy and told him to just do the best he could against this girl racer. But you don't have (or need) crystal balls to go motorcycle racing, so when this kid decided that the only way he was going to beat Tammy Kirk that night was to stuff her into the Holiday Downs' fence, he found out that girls can not only ride fast—they can punch hard, too! "I was a'wailing on that kid after the race before my dad came over and pulled me off him!" Tammy says today, with a Georgia accent so thick it sounds like it was just pulled hot from the smokehouse. "I was only 12 years old, but I was getting tired of this kind of stuff!" "Stuff" for Tammy was her description for another term that had yet to be invented. Its name would be "gender discrimination," and it became her fiercest com- petitor, lasting through her entire career. It fought her on the race- track ("boys did not like getting beat by a girl") and in the race shop, where she learned that girl racers were cute novelties, but successful women competitors were a threat. CNIIARCHIVES P122 That Gl BY KENT TAYLOR Flat Track Racer Tammy Jo Kirk Tammy Kirk runs her own Honda shop, Kirk's Cycle, in Dalton, Georgia.