Welcome to Momentum, a motorsports podcast powered by High Gear Success. I'm your host, Heather Wilson Schiltz Here we share the stories and strategies that keep the world of motorsports moving forward. And joining me today is Rachel Gudish, a professional off-road racer with a long list of accolades, including the first American to win an FIM Enduro World Championship, multi-time member of the women's team for the International Six Days Enduro, an X Games medalist, and many more. So we're going to dive into the conversation. And Rachel, thank you for joining me. Happy to be here. Thanks for the invite. So you are a woman of many talents and interests. that bio that I read was just a fraction of all the achievements and all the disciplines that you've raced but you literally just got back home a few minutes ago from the last round of the AMA national enduro. And you won the women's elite championship this year. So how does that feel? It feels really good, especially since uh I've been racing this series off and on since 2011. And this is the first time I actually managed to bring home a title in it. So, you know, very exciting to be at something for so long and then finally have the success you were looking for in it. Yeah, and it came down to the last round, correct? More or less, yeah. In a strange turn of events, I mean, I've had many strange turns of events over my career, but this is one of the stranger ones. The girl I was supposed to go toe to toe with for the championship decided not to come race. So based on the points, all I really had to do was finish the first test and that was it. I was like, I was all amped up, right? Like it was going to be knock down, drag out, like battle to the death. Like I'm there on the town square, high noon, got my pistols ready. And then my opponent just doesn't show. So, like, I keep telling myself not to be, like, don't be disappointed by that, like, it made your job a lot easier, but it was just very anti-climatic as far as championships go. Yeah, I get that. And you're all like hyped up about it. But at the end of the day, you won the championship and you've earned it. You've worked all year long for it. It wasn't like you just got handed it, you know, in one race. that's something very cool. congratulations on that. Thank you. It's definitely been definitely been a good year and the national Enduro championship is just the cherry on top of everything else we've accomplished this year already. So in October, you won the women's title for the FIM Enduro world championship. And you were the first ever American, not just in women, to win that championship. So tell us kind of about that series and what it took to win that title. the thing about Enduro is it's not like what you've maybe seen with GNCC or motocross where it's head-to-head racing. You're racing the clock and it's whoever has the best or rather the lowest overall combined time at the end of the day. Now, the thing that's unique about Enduro GP especially is you have to be a little bit good at everything in order to be successful at it because there's so many different terrains you're required to compete on. And so the sections you're timed in that normally decide the race are five to 10 minutes long. So you're sprinting through these as fast as you can go. But to get from one section to the other, they have what's called transfer trail. And it's long enough. You're on the bike seven or eight hours in a day. So you have to have the endurance to be able to be on a motorcycle for seven hours through all manner of terrain. and have the sprint ability to be able to actually race through those sections once you get to them. And then the sections themselves are everything from motocross tracks to big open fields to tight single track to something that looks like a place a motorcycle should never have been allowed to go in the first place, like full on hard Enduro stuff. Yeah, so Enduro GP requires you again to be, uh I would say Jack of all trades, but maybe you still have to be a master of a couple things to get it done. So for me, that's why I enjoy Enduro GP so much. So that one is a seven round series in Europe. And how did you manage all the travel? Because I would imagine that it was a lot of back and forth. It's not like you're over there probably for the whole summer because you're racing here also. So what was that experience like traveling back and forth? So the women only did four of the seven rounds this year. The women's class, the vet class, and some of the youth classes don't run the full calendar. round one was Portugal. Then we went round two was Wales. Round three was a second round in Portugal. Round four was Germany. But when you add in the fact, I also did the six days enduro which is a two week extravaganza you're over there for. And the way the timing worked out, there was one point where Okay, so we did the Enduro GP of Wales. I flew back home for the TKO, flew out to the Six Days Enduro, flew back home for a week, flew back out for the Portugal GP, came home for the Corduroy Enduro. Like it just ended up being a case where like every third week I was overseas for a period of about two months. And I've always been pretty good at managing my training and never letting myself get in too deep of a hole. Like I live in fear of... Immune suppression and Epstein-Barr, like, you know, the kiss of death in our sport, right? So I've always really tried to pay mind to my recovery, but I just wasn't anticipating what that much international travel was going to do. Like I am, I do not think I've ever been this exhausted at the end of a season before. I think just the, and not even the going back and forth, cause I mean, eight hours on a plane, eight hours driving, like it's, I can sleep on a plane pretty well too. So that's not terrible, but it's more the jet lag. Like the fact I never really got my, circadian rhythm lined up ever in the past two months. So I am looking forward to being at least mostly home for the next month or two to get myself sorted back out physically. That would be really hard you're not over there for like an extended amount of time. It's just like, you're there to race and then you're back home and then you're trying to race here. And then yeah, the time, change would be really challenging. Yeah. And for the GPs, our schedule, we fly out Mondays, get there on Tuesday. I'm walking special tests. So you're not allowed to pre-ride these sections. You have to go walk them if you want to look at them at all. And if you want to be competitive, you have to look at them. And really not only do you have to look at them, you have to memorize them corner for corner, which is its own unique skill. Like getting to the point where I can take a three mile section and have every single corner memorized it after walking it twice. Like that's a whole other aspect of this we haven't even touched on yet. So spend Wednesday, Thursday, walking Friday night. do our super test and Friday morning afternoon is all of our admin paperwork, opening parade, all that race Saturday and Sunday for seven hours of GP today. And then fly home Sunday night or Monday morning. And of course, because, um, women's Enduro is maybe not the most highly paid sport in the world. I'm sleeping in my van and a hammock. I'm like, you know, I'm doing this as budget friendly as possible. even with the support of my team, it's still, still difficult. So that probably was not helping with the recovery either, but you you do whatever you have to do to make it happen. Right. absolutely. What was it like to compete overseas versus here in the US? Do you find that the experience, like the race experience and the fans are similar or does it feel completely different? I wouldn't say it feels completely different. So a lot of times I am racing against people who don't necessarily speak my language. Certainly not as a first language. I mean, a lot of them speak pretty good English, but there's some where it's just, there's nothing, but I found out everyone speaks motorcycle. You can use enough sign language to like, you know, I'm, I'm talking to someone from France who speaks very little English and we were having a full conversation about how bad that one test was. And, know, I went over the bars here and you know, Wide open up the hill. You can do enough talking and noises. Motorcycle people are motorcycle people no matter where you find them. It's a great community both here and there. In this last race in Germany when uh just some random German guy we met in the pits found out we were sleeping in the van, he phoned a buddy of his who lived 10 minutes from the track. And the next thing I know, I'm sleeping on a stranger's couch for the next three days. So it's a great community as far as that goes. The main difference I would say between the American and the European fans, there's a lot, it seems like a broader recognition of Enduro over there. Like more people know what it is. Like everyday people know. And like for the six days, the local schools let the kids out of school, like let them out of class. Like they take a holiday to go watch the races. Like it's a lot more on par with what like football is here. You know, it's maybe not to that degree, but the difference in terms of just I'll be riding a special test and like all the banner all the way around the three miles. There's people you just don't get that back. You've made 10 appearances at ISDE and been a part of the women's trophy team all 10 of those times. That is incredible. So tell us what it's been like over the past decade from when you first competed at the ISDE to what it's been like up to this year. We need more than one podcast to cover all of that, but, um, the short version, I'll give a quick intro to six days as well. It's more or less think of it as like the Olympics of Enduro. Each country picks several of its best riders, three of the best women, three of the best men under, think it's 24 for the junior team, but I was, no, that was never really my thing. So I can't say I know for sure what that age number is. And then four of the best overall men. and they compete against all the other countries for the world championship. So just like how in the Enduro GP, the lowest time wins for the day, here it's the lowest combined team time. So they take all three of the women's scores, add them together, and whoever has the fastest time at the end of all six days of racing, which it's called the International Six Days Enduro for a reason, ah takes home the championship. My first one, funny enough, I did in Germany only about 20 minutes from where I won my Enduro GP championship. And that's ironic because my first six days Enduro was an absolute train wreck of an event. I was 16 years old and I really don't know why anyone thought sending me at 16 was a good idea, but I went and I tried. I had to tell the whole story would again, take more time than this podcast has, but I fell so far behind in the times I actually got disqualified basically. so in addition to the special tests, you have to be at checkpoints at a certain time or they give you penalty minutes, which normally most riders are skilled enough. The penalty minutes are just to make sure you're not lollygagging out on the trail and things proceed in organized fashion. but sometimes if the event gets gnarly, like it did in Germany where it rained every day, you start to fall behind. And I ended up falling so far behind that it's called houring out after You're more than an hour late to a checkpoint. They don't let you continue on with the race. So I ended up crashing pretty hard on day three. I thought I had broken my leg. ended up being like a bone bruise, hematoma combo. I, uh, couldn't walk without a limp for seven or eight weeks after I got home. Like it was, it was kind of messed up. so. I didn't finish was told by my team manager. They were re-impounding me for the next day because unfortunately the last section of that day, one of my other teammates broke her knuckles and wasn't going to go out. So like, well, Rachel, you're going to have to reenter and try again. Each team got one re-impound at that time. So I got back on my bike and rode another 200 miles, houred out a second time ended up hitting a car on my way back to the pits. Just, was basically anything that you could have had go wrong went wrong for that six days, but. I'd wanted to do the six days my whole life. My dad had gone on a club team, which is the amateur division that goes over there to compete when I was little. And, you know, eight year old Rachel couldn't understand why she didn't get to go too. So I decided, you know, soon as I turned 16, I'm going to the six days. so then even though it turned into a complete disaster, my biggest fear at the end of it was they weren't ever going to let me come back. Like I wanted to go so bad and I blown it so badly. And now they're never, ever going to let me do it again. But they, obviously since we're sitting here talking, they let me come back the next year and I finished and redeemed myself and life was good. But yeah, so that's kind of story of the first one. Back when I first started going, our team wasn't quite as competitive as it was now. Probably the fact that they took a 16 year old should demonstrate to you that the team is just maybe not what it should have been, which a lot of that was a funding issue. More or less the AMA and the trophy teams didn't cover the women's expenses like they did for the men's. And a lot of the women just even with fundraising just couldn't make it happen. so I, those first five years we were, I mean, we were never, usually we weren't last, but we certainly weren't fighting for the world championship. And then when the women started to receive appropriate funding and support and help, there was, I think a gap of two or three years, I didn't get selected for the team, even though I'd been one of the faster riders on the team in those last couple of years, because all of sudden, Hey, so many more faster women can compete for those spots. And even though I was like, kind of personally bummed I wasn't getting going. It's like, well, this is how it should be. We should be sending our best to compete, not just whoever can go, right? But I really wanted to go back. So I worked my butt off and got to the point where I was one of the three fastest in the country again. the cool thing about our women's trophy team effort right now is we currently sit at six total wins. So the first one came I'm probably going to get the year wrong. I'm going to guess 2003. You'll have to fact check me on that was the first year they had a women's trophy division and team USA won it. And then they didn't win it again until and again, fact check me on the years. I believe 2018 was the next time. maybe 19 anyway, somewhere in that range. then not long after I earned my spot back on the team and I've been present for the last four wins we've had, which brings us up to six total, which ties us with the Australians for most ever. trophy wins. So we're currently tied on the leaderboard and I'm hoping next year to go back on my 11th and help bring the team to the top of the all-time scoreboard. Do you feel a little more comfortable having that many ISDEs under your belt now, or does it still feel like a crazy new experience every year that you go? Each country brings its own unique aspects and challenges, but I will say I'm a lot more comfortable in what I'm doing, having done it 10 times. And also just even doing Enduro GP, the amount of European travel I've had to do, like I'm a lot more comfortable just in those environments. And really that's the big thing about six days and even Enduro GP, you just kind of have to be learn to be comfortable with not really being a hundred percent sure what's going on at any given time. Like You get the best idea you can and you just sort of figure it out as you go. Especially like said, you don't always speak the language. Sometimes the traffic signals are different. That's always fun. And you just, like I said, you figure it out, make it happen. So you've done 10 ISDEs and then you've done the Enduro GP, you've done national Enduros, you've done EnduroCross and Extreme Enduro. Right? So you've won six Tennessee knockout titles. Do you like the struggle of tackling all those obstacles? Like, is that fun to you? Yes, absolutely. I mean, I like flying around a really fast grass track pinned in fifth gear as much as the next girl, I promise. But one of my very favorite things to do, and I don't often get to do it because, you know, I can't afford to tear up my motorcycles all the time. My favorite thing to do is find an obstacle or a section I cannot get through and then hit it over and over and over and over and over. I mean, falling and crashing each time usually until I actually make it like up the nasty rock climb or whatever it was. um There was one There's a friend of mine, Nick Thompson, I stay with when I'm out West for EnduroCross. He lives in Salt Lake and has a really killer EnduroCross track. Nick races the pro class. He normally makes mains. So it's designed for like the top guys in the world to sometimes struggle with it. So of course I'm fighting for my life out there. And he had one tire obstacle this one year. And after I would do my motos, my treat for myself was I got to go try and hit the tire obstacle that I couldn't make it over. my dad kept a tally because he and I were having a spirited debate about whether or not I was actually capable of getting over this. 104 attempts. Finally on attempts 104, we got over it, but it wasn't like, I mean, yeah, I was stoked when I got over it, but it was also like, the fun for me was just trying to, okay, well that didn't work. Let's try hitting it this way. Okay, let's try more gas. How about third gear? How about second gear? What if we preload? Okay, what if we carry the front tire from the first tire to the second tire? See if that helps. What about this? What about that? Like it's, it's like solving a puzzle almost while also crashing your motorcycle. I feel like that's a talent and like a very specific skill set because I feel like I'm the opposite as a rider Like, yeah, I enjoy some challenging stuff from time to time, but I don't like to struggle. Like, EnduroCross, Hard Enduro would be like probably the last type of riding on my list. Like that just sounds so brutal. And to keep doing something again and again and again, I don't think I would have the patience for it. So I think it does take like a very unique skill set. to want to race those disciplines and kind of tackle it like a puzzle, like you said. My dad's been my mechanic for a long time and I think sometimes he wishes I had a little less of that particular skill set. Do you think success in that discipline comes from the technique? Do you have to have a lot of strength to be able to do it, or is it just sheer determination to get it done? Okay, so a couple of the attributes that help. The first one is completely out of your control and it is height. Being able to put a foot to the ground on your motorcycle is key to this. I mean, I'm 5'6", and I'm about the shortest I think I can get away with, and really like... Because again, the number of times I've gone to put a foot down and just missed by that much and then you in the bike. So that's kind of the first thing, and you'll notice amongst the male pro riders there's usually... not many of them under six foot who really excel at hard enduro like cody webb looks like a spider working his way up sections sometimes like legs stuck out that's almost longer than the bike it looks like I've never thought about the height being a factor in that discipline, but it totally makes sense now that you're saying it. Now in something like motocross or even most forms of Enduro, it's not nearly as relevant because you're not putting your foot down until you've done something wrong and things are going poorly. There's times where the technique in hard Enduro is to put a foot down, like when you're pivot turning, like that usually requires you planting in foot. And also with something so difficult, you're much more likely to have things go wrong more frequently than you do just, you know, riding through the open field, like we said. So height helps. physical strength obviously helps, which again, females are somewhat limited by that, but that doesn't mean I'm not out in the gym three days a week getting every ounce of strength I can possibly genetically and biologically have. but the nice thing is if you know what you're doing and you have good technique, you don't have to use your height and whatever strength you have nearly as often. So I would say it's a blend of a lot of things and you can, maybe you're short, but you're wicked strong and you have such good balance. You rarely need to plant a foot. Good. You can probably be successful. Say you've got incredible strength. Like you can just bulldog that bike and make it do whatever you want, whether you're doing it right or not. You're to be pretty good. Let's say you've got a blend of all three that works too. So there's a lot of paths to success, but those are kind of the three main things I guess I talk about. and bike setup helps a lot. If you're riding on stock suspension, it's way too stiff for you. It's going to bounce you right out of that rock garden. So Knowing your motorcycle and having it set up correctly for what you're trying to do is also really important. that those were things I've not really thought about specific to that discipline because it is so different than most other forms of racing. So that's pretty cool. Want to talk X games next. So you've done that six times, I think is what I read. And you won a bronze medal in 2014. I was just gonna say that's been long enough ago. I can't really fact check you on your number. I would have to go look through my photos. It was honestly like challenging looking up all your stats online because there are so many. then articles I would find would be like from a couple of years ago. And it'd be like, she's been to the ISDE like, like eight times and you've actually been 10 times. So I'm going to have to write a little bio for you in this podcast and people can reference it for 2025 Um, but for X games, you won a bronze medal in 2014 and that was in EnduroCross too. Correct? Yes, basically they wanted to take hard enduro and put it inside where people could watch it. And then they decided people like it when the fans like to see people jump things. So then they put jumps Basically, they made a track out of construction debris and you're supposed to ride through it. That's that's more or less in EnduroCross in a nutshell. Where were those different X games located? Do you remember? Okay, so we did, I think, two in Los Angeles at the Staples Center. And then the one year we had the Global X Games, which is why I've got so many, ah that would have been Fos do Guaçu, Brazil, Barcelona, Spain, Munich, Germany, for the Global Rounds. And then I want to say I did two more in Austin, and then that was the last, the second year in Austin was the last year they had EnduroCross in the X Games. For Munich, would you have been there in 2013? Yes. So I probably watched you race because KTM, had a dealer meeting over there. And so my entire family went and we toured the factory in Austria and then we spent some time in Munich, happened to find out like, hey, the X games are happening this weekend in Munich. So we got tickets to the X game. Like I remember Maria Forsberg was racing there. so yeah, we probably did watch you race and like, didn't even know it at the time. Small world, isn't it? Yeah, except we were like in completely different country. ah So for each X Games, EnduroCross was what you competed in each time, Correct. I would have no business competing in speed and style or any of the freestyle events. I'll be honest, I don't really like jumping. It's not my favorite. I do it. I will get air on the motorcycle when I have to. I can race moto, it's fine, I've done it, but it feels very unnatural to me being 20 or 30 feet in the air on my motorcycle. It's probably my least favorite thing I have to do when I'm riding. So yeah, no freestyle for me. Well, and I can't even do it successfully. I can't jump, but I always make the joke that like my wheels don't leave the ground intentionally. And if they do it was a mistake. and hopefully I can ride it out. So I can understand that. Even when I am riding moto and jumping with intent, I was riding moto with one of my competitors, Korie Steede who races GNCCs, and my little sister was there, and my little sister is a complete smartass. And after the moto, I pulled in and she goes, you know, when Korie jumps the jumps, she looks like she's jumping jumps, right? And when you jump the jumps, it looks like you're throttle stuck and you don't know really what you're supposed to do up there. Like how many times have you ridden this track? You just look like you just freeze. And I'm like, I'm working on it. Okay. You mentioned GNCCs. You also raced those as well. So was there overlap in the schedule this year with the GNCCs and the FIM Enduro World Championship and all the other forms of racing that you were doing? Yes, because as a general rule, you know, the East Coast series in the US try and stay off each other's dates. Like, GNCC won't normally have a date on the same weekend as a national enduro. Sprint enduro won't put a race over the top of a GNCC. Like, they all try and play nice. And then same for the West Coast, like, Hare and Hound and WORCS and those races try not to schedule on top of each other. But they don't even really do a great job of not scheduling on top of each other, east to west. So they're definitely not concerned about the one lone American who's over in Europe doing who knows what and making sure to stay off those dates. It's just not even like not even a concern for them. And I can't say I blame them. I guess describing how I'm going to do it for next year makes more sense because we need to get into the whole story of how I ended up back at Enduro GP this year because I wasn't supposed to be originally. um But for next year, what I'm going to do is look at the Enduro GP dates because that's what Rieju wants me to do. Like that's their big important thing they want is for me to defend that title. So I'll look at those dates and then I'll look at all the dates here in the United States and pick whichever series conflicts the least. With any luck, I will at least have one of them whereby strategically using dropped rounds, I can make a full championship run. But like even this year with National Enduro, in theory, I should not have been able to win that championship because I was slated to have to miss two rounds. But then the first round I had to miss, had torrential downpours and it got rained out and nobody raced it. So if it hadn't been for a lot of rain in Louisiana in April, I would not have been the national enduro champion this year. So it does get tricky just trying to coordinate and I've yet to figure out how to be in two places at once. Like once that happens, everyone's in trouble, but until then, yeah, that's kind of the strategy. If you figure out how to be in two places at once, I think it's going to make you a lot of money. Yeah, I can, I won't have to worry about paying for, you know what, I will be able to rent a hotel at every single round of Enduro GP, I bet. And I can ditch the plane, probably, too. So headed into race season though, you were without a factory ride up until kind of like the last minute, right? So how nerve wracking was that? And talk about Rieju coming in to kind of save the day. If we are being honest, I thought maybe my career was over because I like, I don't have bikes. I don't have support. I guess I'm just going to go buy whatever I can afford and do some local races for fun. Like that's kind of where we were in February. So the fact I'm sitting here and I'm the world champion now, like what a turnaround, right? so short version of a long story. I signed a two year contract with Sherco USA that began last season. They were having some financial issues. We're past the point where I have to be quiet about it, especially since the original importer. I don't believe they declared bankruptcy exactly, but they ran out of money and Sherco USA had to bring in a new importer. like everything I'm saying is public knowledge now. So I feel comfortable talking about it. Signed with them realized in about March of that year, like I wasn't. getting paid like I was supposed to, parts weren't coming in the way I expected. they don't have the money to pay me. can't like get mad at them for not paying me money they don't have. Like it's really frustrating, but like, what am I supposed to do? Right. But then if I were to quit and try and ride for another team, not like there's factory rides just floating around for me to take, or even support rides just floating around in April. Um, if I even were to buy a bike and ride another brand, I've forfeited everything I was supposed to get in that contract. So no matter what happens, I'm definitely out everything I was expecting. but I don't want to just sit at home and not race because then that's going to ruin any chances I have of getting a ride with someone else if this doesn't work out. But then remember how I said I go to six days and I'd befriend all the foreign riders and we, you know, hand do hand signals and talk about tests. One of the, English speaking competitors, Nieve Holmes from the UK at the time was a Sherco dealer in Great Britain. So I'm like, ah, I think I found a loophole. So I called her up and I'm like, Hey, I know this is a completely crazy idea. Um, if I bought a motorcycle from you, could we split expenses 50 50 on Enduro GP this year? Like, would you be open? And she's like, yeah, that actually sounds pretty fun. I was looking for someone to split with. So I ended up riding with her. all season just through their little local team based out of their shop. It was good fun. ended up second in the series. I'm like, yeah, this was an adventure of a lifetime. I would love to make it back. Who knows if it's going to happen. and then in December, Sherco finally paid me all my back pay from the season. I'm like, okay, well, Hey, that's, that's good sign. They paid me. That must mean things are going to work out. and I had signed a two year contract. So process basically repeated itself at the beginning of this year only, In February, they basically called me up and said, yeah, we have no money and no parts. And we're probably going to need to return whatever bikes you have at some point. Like it's looking really grim. Good luck. hope you find something. So that was really not a good, so now I was in even a worse position because I'd spent most of the money. I really didn't have to go race Enduro GP the previous season, with hopes of collecting some money at some point. I got the money, paid myself back, but now I'm back to square neutral with no money, no prospects. Isn't that like a Jane Austen quotes, 27, no money, no prospects, unmarried, you know, whatever that whole, that whole situation. Um, yeah. So, then in stroke of luck, again, strokes of luck have really defined this season, like everything actually working out in a manner that, you know, made this possible. the woman who had beaten me for the Enduro GP title, Mireia Badia. was the factory rider for Rieju They had two riders Mireia from Spain and Rosie Rowett from the UK. Mireia retired. Nobody at Rieju really seemed to see this coming and they decided they needed the second woman. So they cold called me out of the blue basically. And I said, yes, of course I would love to. And then we worked it out with Rieju USA, got everything done. And I think I signed my contract the day before the first round of Enduro GP. It was a bit of a tight turnaround and I didn't have a whole lot of time with the bike. But like said, I think a theme of this podcast is you do whatever you have to do to make it happen. So that's. Yeah, definitely a stressful position to be in, not, not knowing if you're going to have a ride or getting a ride at the last minute. And it's a brand that you've never ridden before. So. I mean, now we can say everything worked out. Um, and I'm kind of a positive thinker that everything usually does work out, you know, if you're optimistic about it you put in the work. So, yeah, challenging start to the season, but at least it, picked up from there. Yes, and I really, that's one thing I want to stress. I cannot thank Rieju enough. Like I would no longer be a professional racer if not for that company. And I'm sitting here and I get to say I'm a world champion now. So like I owe so much to them and I'm so grateful for everything they did for me this season. I was reading kind of along the same theme. I was reading an article, while back where you said that top level women do not lack inspiration. We lack opportunity. it's important that we're given the opportunity to continue to provide that inspiration. So can you kind of expand on the opportunities that you wish women were given in the sport? I mean, we talked about on here too, how you said the U S women's team for ISDE didn't use to be, very well funded either. So. Well, one thing I do want to say is that's something I should have said about six days and about my 15 year career racing. How things were when I first started and how they are now, tremendous improvement. Like at least in the United States, uh, back when I first started, like maybe a dealer would give you a bike for the season to borrow and some parts credit, like the idea of salary or contingency pay or bonuses or like The idea that a woman could ever expect this to be a job in any real sense was, especially when WMX, when racer productions and when that whole thing happened and WMX failed to exist for a few years, like, okay, then it's really bad because there's no money on the moto side because they don't even have a series anymore, which that's something I sometimes live in fear of. And then on the off-road side, no one was making any money to begin with. It makes it tough, you know? Like I I'm a world champion and I sleep in my van at every single race. I have a feeling Josep Garcia probably does not sleep in his van at every single race, like just going out on a limb there. And I understand the underlying economics of the situation. As racers, we're billboards. We're designed to sell products. If you have a billboard on a county road versus a billboard on highway 70, you know, one of those things has inherently more value in the economics sense. But I also look at the gap and I think to myself, surely the reach cannot be that vastly different. But in the context of that interview, I was mostly talking about Enduro GP because over in Europe, there's, have one of basically three things I would consider true factory rides. Two of them are Riejus myself and Rosie Rowett and then Francesca Nocera rides for Honda. And everyone else is, you know, working full-time jobs and driving to the races themselves. they're their own mechanics most of the time. I thought in the US, sometimes things were rough for the women, but over there, they've got nothing really to speak of. And I don't really, well, no, I've got ideas for ways that could be improved. But again, that would be a whole nother podcast. I think those are maybe conversations best had with the people involved in those decisions, behind closed doors in a polite way, rather than like a public shaming on a podcast, right? In the interest of establishing productive working relationships and maintaining those relationships, probably that's, I've maybe even said more than I ought to have, but the nice thing is I do think most people, especially like every day riders I've talked to, most of them assume that we like, they're like, no way you don't get paid. like, no, I don't get paid. And they're like, no, no, really. And I'm like, no, So I think, A lot of people do recognize there's a little bit of inherent, maybe more unfairness than there needs to be, per se. I think, and I think a lot of people would like to see that change. So I don't want to just like be, everyone is awful and terrible and I hate it here. Like, no, a lot of people have worked for a lot of positive change and I think they will continue to work for that change and Like I said, I've just seen women's motorsports racing, especially in my discipline, grow a lot in terms of both the number of participants and the way the riders at the top level are treated. And even just like, it's not unusual now to see like five or six ponytails sticking out the back of the helmets and little 50cc races. And, you know, I love to see that. And I remember when I was a kid, like all the boys I beat, oh, they would be so salty about it. And the parents too were sometimes the worst. and you just don't, you don't see that anymore. Like you don't see the, the little boys don't view it as inherently shameful that a girl could be as good at them on a cycle. So like I take that alone as a great sign of hope for women in our sport. I mean, I think everything that you've said is super valid. mean, I've seen it myself throughout the years and not from a racer perspective, like you have. but even just being in the industry, it's easy to see things like that. I'm glad and, you know, hopeful like you are that things will continue to progress and it's definitely not, um, an easy situation and, can't kind of wave that magic wand and make it happen. And like you said, it does take, um, some careful. strategy to work with the correct people to get it done and not just be causing a ruckus that will not help the situation. Right. So I can totally appreciate what you're saying there. Exactly. I believe in- We'll be hopeful that it continues to improve. Yeah, big believer in targeted ruckuses. Don't just make a ruckus for the heck of it. Like have a plan, like go in with a strategy on this. The other thing too, I want to say just about the top women in our sport. A while ago, I can't remember why I did this and I'll send you the graph if I can find it. I looked at, because National Enduro, the women and the men always race the same course, whereas GNCC, they're in completely different races. So it's, you can't really compare apples and oranges. But you can look at the overalls in terms of test scores and national enduros. like, okay, you know, Russell Bobbitt won this test and then Mandy Mastin was, you know, 80th in the test, right? So over the last 15 years, I found, I was really bored when I did this. It was when I had a lot more free time. I think I must've still been in school and like college probably. Actually, I think I did it for a project for statistics and research methods. That actually makes a lot more sense that I would have done this for schoolwork, but I, went and looked up every single overall finish in a test of the top of whatever woman won the race that day. And then I tracked it over the course of a 15 year period and watched like in the beginning, like when I first started the earliest numbers I had access to I think was like 2007 or 2008 maybe because that's when they first started using like computerized online scoring for stuff. The average top finishing female was finishing 112th, 113th in tests. And just this last weekend, I believe Shelby Turner was 29th, I was 31st and Brooke Costner was 33rd. So like you look at the gains we've made over the last 15 years and it's really something. That's so cool. love that. I could like totally nerd out on all the statistics stuff. that our sport is sometimes lacking in a lot of different ways. Like I would love to know stats about different things that it's incredibly difficult to find them. but that's, that's really cool that you got to kind of dig into that. And you're right. That totally speaks to, the strength and the stamina and the the strategy and the skill that these women riders have. So I think that's awesome. tell us what's next for you. Like what are the plans for, are you relaxing the rest of this year or do you still have some, some races that you're going to hit? Enduro cross might be coming up, right? Yeah, relaxing is not usually a word in my vocabulary. I work part time for a logging crew. So I'm going to go down and spend three or four days this week making some money. And then I'm heading on to Texas for a team race. I volunteered to do this 24 hour team race with some friends of mine so that's the immediate thing. Drive to Texas and do the gut buster 24 hour. Then I'll be back home for a week. prep and build the bikes, ride EnduroCross, get some practice in on my track. And then we are driving out to Everett for the EnduroCross round out there. This year was a bit interesting. they were originally not going to have a women's EnduroCross class because they didn't feel like we'd had enough numbers, which again is why I think earlier I said something about living in fear of my series and the things I love doing, getting. capreciously canceled by whoever because they feel like it, right? In this case, the EnduroCross promoter has been fairly dissatisfied with the women's turnouts over the last few years, he said that he didn't want to have a class. And then one of my other competitors proceeded to drag him publicly on social media. And he decided maybe he ought to have a class after all, because a lot of people were not very happy about his decision. So he came to Shelby Turner and I, two of the more like, veteran riders of the class, said, Hey, what can we do? And we're like, well, you already told us there wasn't going to be a class. We've all made other plans. So no, we can't actually do the EnduroCross series this year. But then I'm scared if we don't have it, like have anything, it's never going to come back. Right. And I'm like, I can't have that. So we decided for a single round national championship for the women, which is a little unconventional. It's not really how you normally do things, but some events like the TKO or Loretta Lynns on the motocross side are a single race that serves the national championship. So it's not like it's unheard of. And the Washington round, the series finale was after all the other series in the nation wrapped up. So. Any of the women who had wanted to do EnduroCross, but made other plans upon hearing that was not an option for us, could come do it. So Shelby and I called all of our personal sponsors and solicited money for a pro purse. And we've basically become the de facto promoters of women's EnduroCross this year. So that's been something else I've been doing while I've been on airplanes and in airports and riding in my van and between motos and you know, just like, just one more thing, right? But I love the sport and didn't want to see it go away. So EnduroCross, and then I will come back, drive back from Everett, Washington, back to Missouri. There's a local hard Enduro I'm doing that has a nice women's purse. And it's a good time. I've got friends out there. And then I think that brings me to the first week of December. I have to fly to Switzerland for the FIM Awards banquet. Which I mean is cool. Like Switzerland's going to be really pretty in the winter, I bet. They're paying my expenses and they were going to fine me 500 euro if I didn't show up. So, know, very carrot and stick approach. So I will be there. And then I think after that, I will have three weeks to hopefully not do anything. And then usually first weekend of January is when I go to Florida to begin my pre-season training, So yes, definitely no relaxation for you, but. Tell people where they can connect with you online or follow your racing. so Instagram is Rachel Gutfish. Um, that is not how my name is spelled. That confuses some people quite a lot. the first ever EnduroCross I did, I had really sloppy handwriting as a kid and that's how they announced me to the entire stadium. And like 14 year old Rachel thought that was hilarious and decided to just sort of own it. So that's been my Instagram account since forever. And then. Rachel Gutish - G U T I S H on Facebook. you know, all the Enduro GP broadcasts, their accounts, the GNCC racing, national Enduro. And that's the thing, don't just follow me, like go follow women's racing. Like I'm pretty cool, but so are the rest of us, you know? then that's the thing, like I talked about with the billboards, you know? Every time someone follows one of the women, that's slightly less County road billboard and inching our way towards I-70 billboard, you know? Well, thank you for joining me. I know you're exhausted from the weekend of racing and just got back home. So thanks for jumping on this podcast and thanks to everybody for tuning into Momentum. This has been a production of High Gear Success. If you want to connect or recommend a guest, head to MomentumMotorsportsPodcast.com. Until next time, keep the momentum rolling.