She’s French, she’s 27 years old, she won the first ever FIM Women’s World Motocross Championship on a Kawasaki in 2008, and she’s currently leading the 2015 title chase with one round to go, after scoring two second places in Germany – this while riding with two broken ribs sustained in the French GP at the end of May. A week before her fine showing in Germany Livia Lancelot clinched the French national championship for herself and Kawasaki for the umpteenth time, and she now has a month to recover before the season finale on the world stage in the Czech Republic GP on 26 July.
The first FIM Women’s MX World Championship in 2008 grew from the FIM World Cup for women that was run between 2005 and 2007. Livia, then Yamaha mounted, finished third in the FIM Cup in the first two years and narrowly missed out on the title in 2007 after moving to Kawasaki. The next year she clinched the world championship on a Kawasaki in the first year the women’s class became a full-blown FIM World Championship series. Since then she’s left world championship racing to contest the X Games, and raced in the USA before returning full-time to MXGP with Kawasaki in 2013, only to be side-lined by a broken knee. In 2014 she became a team owner and manager as well, running her own factory-backed outfit with three women riders – all on Kawasakis, of course – and this year she’s hell-bent on making the championship her own again.
Despite spending much of her life in plaster of Paris or riding motorcycles at speed through mud and dust Livia scrubs up very well. HERE’s a video clip of her showing a much more sultry side during a 2011 photo shoot. And HERE she can be seen talking about her life as a thoroughly professional Kawasaki works racer.