It’s been no secret that certain folks in this world have fully adopted the concept of lawn mower racing, but no one is going it quite like the Lone Star Mower Racing Association.
LSMRA was recently featured in Texas Monthly, since it is — perhaps obviously — a Texas organization. And it’s entirely badass. This organization is composed of men and women who cruise around the state’s finest dirt tracks at 35-40 miles per hour. Not exactly as fast as, say, a stock car, but faster than you really want to be going behind the wheel of a lawn mower. The Texas Monthly article, though, focuses on the women.
Here’s a little excerpt from the article:
The LSMRA started in 1998, but the sport goes back to at least 1968, when a British cricket club held a charity event called the Lawn Mower Grand Prix. In 1973, an Irishman named Jim Gavin, who was fed up with the hefty price tag that came with most motor sports, had a few pints at a pub and decided to form the British Lawn Mower Racing Association. Gavin’s dream is alive and well on dirt tracks from Boerne to Gun Barrel City and beyond, and instead of millions of dollars, Neel says you can get into mower racing for about $1,500 to $2,500. During its past season, the Texas club had 72 paid members, with 46 active racers ranging in age from 6 to 72. Neel estimates that only 6 or so of the 46 racers are women, but she says the number of female racers is growing each year.
“This is a sport for everybody,” says cattle rancher and racer Kevin Counsil of Madisonville. Participants come from all walks of life. “It’s a cornucopia of what people do for a living. We don’t have any preachers, though, probably because there’s too much swearing.”
I’ll let you go read the article yourself, since it’s a good one. There are some women that have been competing on dirt tracks all their lives. Some work with their hands. Others operate bulldozers. Yet others are stay-at-home moms. Some get rough and rowdy. Others nickname their lawn mowers “Tweety Bird” for their cute size. It’s a whole subculture that I vaguely knew about but didn’t know existed in my very own home state, and I wanted to share the goods with the rest of you.