Meet Alisha Abdullah, India’s First Female Racing Champ!
The world of sports is still pretty much a male domain, especially in India. Which is why the story of this female racer is truly inspiring. 26-year-old Alisha Abdullah from Chennai is the country’s first female racing driver and has an impressive list of achievements.
Alisha’s tryst with racing began in her childhood when she was introduced to go-karting. By the time she turned 11, she was winning go-karting races all over the country. Two years later, she won the MRF National Go-Karting Championship and the Best Novice Award in the National level Formula Car Racing in the open class.
This girl continued to ride on the road to success and in 2004, Alisha made it to the top five in the JK Tyre National Racing Championship. Stepping-up a level ahead, she decided to try her hand at bike racing in the same year. Even though she had been riding 110 cc bikes since her teens, she went ahead with 600 cc superbikes and gave the other male bikers some tough competition.
But in 2010, Alisha met with a terrible accident and told media in an interview, “In a completely male dominated sport, I think I bruised quite a few men’s ego. They couldn’t stand a girl push past guys and many a time they deliberately hit my bike. Being a no-nonsense girl, I always fought back. But the crash was the threshold. I didn’t want to race bikes anymore, though I loved it.”
So, she switched to car racing in 2011 and participated in Polo Cup where she made history by being the first ever woman to make it to the podium. But Alisha is still open to bike racing and won Honda All Ladies Race a few months back where she competed with ten other women from across the country.