Just Add Dirt

Shayna Texter wants to teach you about flat-track racing—the most exciting sport you’ve never heard of

- Hannah Elliott

The thing about flat-track racing is that you’ll eventually get hurt flat-track racing. In April at the Texas Motor Speedway outside Fort Worth, I watch five riders crash on the same unrelenting turn, tumbling over one another like dominoes into a heap of cracked femurs, collarbones, and ankles.

Blame the dirt—or, technically, the “Texas gumbo clay.” The sport’s greatest challenge is to successfully slide a 300pound bike around a 180-degree turn at more than 100 mph. Adding to the difficulty is the short, half-mile oval track, which is pretty much flat: There’s no banked curve to help riders counter the centrifugal force that could send them flying into the air.

To get ahead, the really good riders will find split- second openings between all those skidding, dirt- spitting machines and dart through them. Winning isn’t so much a question of speed, because the track is so small that most of the race is spent in the turns. It requires a combination of timing, balance, aggression, and the luck of a survivor.

The only woman competing in the race with the big crash, Shayna Texter, escapes injury. Last year she won more races than anyone in the American Flat Track series, the sport’s premier racing circuit, but she came in fifth for the season. The overall champion wins the crown based on points accumulated for placing in the top few spots. That day in April, I watch as Texter knifes through a sliver of space so briefly available that I honestly can’t be sure she made any move at all. She continues to find these openings; by the end of the race, she’s meticulously worked her way to the front of the pack. She comes in second in the 15-lap run but posts the fastest single lap time: just under 21 seconds.