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South African Woman Breaks Motorsport Boundaries

by Darren Taylor

   PRETORIA --

   Twenty-one years ago, Fabienne Lanz swapped ballet to do something very
   different, especially for a woman in Africa: motorsport. Now, the
   29-year-old is the best on the continent in her chosen discipline,
   having recently won the African Open Karting Championship'¦ competing
   against male racers. Lanz is the first woman in the history of
   motorsport in Africa to hold this title. And now she's preparing to
   take on the world.

   Pounding music accompanies a practice session at Zwartkops raceway.

   Smells of oil and fuel fill the air. Drivers with their names
   emblazoned on their jumpsuits prepare to race.

   One of them is a slim young woman with long brown hair.

   Fabienne Lanz's racing career started at this racetrack more than two
   decades ago, when she was offered a chance to drive a kart.

   "I think you could have walked faster than what I drove, I went that
   slow. But somehow the bug bit and I was like, 'No; I actually really
   like this.' I was like eight years old," she said.

   Several years of intense competitions against boys followed.

   "I got bullied a lot -- not physically or anything like that, but on
   the track. They push you out, they bump you off. You're isolated, by
   yourself, because in that time there were much less girls racing," said
   Lanz.

   Lanz said her father, a former saloon car racer, forced her to "toughen
   up."

   "Eventually he said, 'That's it. If you don't drive left of them, right
   of them, over them, under them, or whatever you need to do to get past,
   we're going to stop racing.' So I had to make a plan," she said.

   That plan, she said, was to drive much more aggressively.

   Footage from a camera onboard Fabienne Lanz's 125 cc kart shows her
   racing on a track in Florida, the United States, at speeds sometimes
   reaching 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour).

   'Iron Lady'

   She's known as 'Iron Lady' on the international karting circuit.

   "I've [also] been labeled 'the fast girl from the South.' I do my
   annual return at world finals and things like that. When they see me
   they're like, 'Yeah; she's here. She's the crazy one; that's cool,'"
   she said.

   Despite Lanz's "take-no-prisoners" driving style, she said she's had
   only one "major" crash.

   "I got bumped from behind and I [and my kart] rolled over the guy in
   front of me and I landed on my hand and damaged my finger," she said.

   Her recent victory at Zwartkops against Africa's top kart drivers,
   where she captured the African title, means she now has a ticket to the
   World Kart Championships in Italy later this month.

   Lanz is used to racing around the globe, and she has a few "special"
   places to drive in.

   "I think my most favorite one would be Belgium. I really liked the
   country, the track, the food; everything was really nice; the people
   were awesome. Italy's another one because the competition is really
   stiff there and I normally always want to go and race where the most
   competition is, because to be the best you have to beat the best," she
   said.

   Eager to give back to the sport, Lanz has opened an academy at
   Zwartkops. She trains youngsters to race karts. Some are so poor that
   they don't even own bicycles.

   A few of her pupils roar around the track. At such speed it's hard to
   imagine that they're between the ages of five and seven.

   Five-year-old K.C. Ensor-Smith said karting is "amazing." "You're
   actually riding and you go quite fast. Sometimes you can get scared."

   Lanz's proteges are mostly all winners. But drivers like 6-year-old
   Alex Carle just want to talk about the drama they've experienced on the
   track.

   "When I was three, my steering wheel broke and I fell out of my kart
   and other racers where just going right past me. I just rolled into the
   tires [tire barriers] then my kart broke," he said.

   His friend, Josh Le Roux, isn't to be outdone. "My friend, M.K., he
   spun and then I went over him. I fell, my whole body, out of my
   go-kart. Then I bit my tongue and it was bleeding from there, to
   there," he said.

   Lanz warms a kart engine up before another practice for the world
   champs.

   She said everywhere she goes people ask how she feels about being a
   pioneer in motorsport. Her answer's usually the same, and given with a
   cheeky smile: "I'm nothing special; just one of the boys."