FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

Al­li­son ‘Sil­ver Bul­let’ Ga­jad­har has ral­lied on­to the list of Women to Watch in 2023 with her fear­less spir­it as an ac­claimed woman in Mo­tor­sports. A cham­pi­on car rac­er, she has been ho­n­oured with many ac­co­lades in the rac­ing sport­ing in­dus­try, such as be­ing short­list­ed for the First Cit­i­zens Bank Sports­woman of the Year Award two years in a row (2018 and 2019) and be­ing named the Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­bile Sports As­so­ci­a­tion’s Sportsper­son of the Year in 2018.

Guid­ed by her faith, sup­port­ed by her hus­band, and dri­ven by her tal­ent, Ga­jad­har plans to con­tin­ue rac­ing for as long as she can, buoyed by her ded­i­ca­tion and pas­sion for the sport.

A Curepe na­tive, Ga­jad­har grew up and lived in the area all her life, at­tend­ing Curepe Ju­nior Sec­ondary School, and go­ing on to study Lit­er­a­ture and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies at the ter­tiary lev­el at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. Ga­jad­har was raised in “a fam­i­ly of non-rac­ers”, who were not pas­sion­ate about sports in gen­er­al.

Her at­tempt­ed for­ay in­to sport­ing be­gan when she de­cid­ed to try karate ses­sions at her school.

“My moth­er, be­ing quite tra­di­tion­al about these things and be­liev­ing young girls shouldn’t be in­volved in these sports, locked me in my room and dis­al­lowed me from at­tend­ing,” she re­mem­bers, a con­se­quence of her moth­er’s con­sec­u­tive warn­ings to not go to karate ses­sions.

Now that Ga­jad­har has be­come a rac­er, ce­ment­ed in a sig­nif­i­cant­ly more dan­ger­ous and far less “la­dy-like” sport than karate, her moth­er, “al­though sup­port­ive of my ca­reer, must think I’ve gone ab­solute­ly mad,” she says with a sheep­ish grin.

Ga­jad­har was in­tro­duced to the world of car rac­ing by her hus­band, Gre­go­ry Chun-Hun. She de­scribes how she quick­ly and eas­i­ly fell in love “with both him and the rac­ing” and made life­long com­mit­ment to the mar­riage and the sport. More than 20 years lat­er, she can­not see her­self with­out ei­ther.

When she start­ed rac­ing, she had pre­cious lit­tle knowl­edge about cars and rac­ing, but quick­ly be­came very fond of the feel­ings that sport im­bibed, say­ing “when you get be­hind that steer­ing wheel, all your fears go away… af­ter each race, I’m al­ready crav­ing an­oth­er.”

She cred­its her hus­band’s sup­port as fun­da­men­tal to her rac­ing ca­reer, as he does the nec­es­sary prepa­ra­tion for events, in­clud­ing build­ing, tun­ing, and gen­er­al me­chan­ics, al­so func­tion­ing as her man­ag­er. Al­though she de­scribes her­self as “very handy” and com­pe­tent with ve­hi­cles and me­chan­ics, she does not hes­i­tate to sit back and al­low him to sup­port her.

Car rac­ing re­quires dili­gent and con­sis­tent prepa­ra­tion of the ve­hi­cle, to en­sure that it is suf­fi­cient­ly ready to be pushed to its lim­it. Over the years of rac­ing in her Mit­subishi Evo­lu­tion IX, Ga­jad­har and her hus­band have con­tin­ued to push the lim­its of the car and the sport, which al­so presents chal­lenges and set­backs. As she has re­cent­ly gone up in horse­pow­er, they face prob­lems that re­quire con­sis­tent trou­bleshoot­ing, es­pe­cial­ly in the days lead­ing up to the race. On race day, al­though her nerves have nev­er gone away, she re­mains in­tox­i­cat­ed by the adren­a­line, and chan­nels her ner­vous en­er­gy in­to strength.

As a woman in a male dom­i­nat­ed sport, Ga­jad­har says that the ra­tio of women to men will “al­ways mean that there’s an in­vis­i­ble di­choto­my.” How­ev­er, con­sid­er­ing that car rac­ing is one of the few sports in the world where both women and men com­pete at the same lev­el, she finds it re­fresh­ing that the of­ten used per­spec­tive is “car ver­sus car and dri­ver ver­sus dri­ver,” not women ver­sus men.

“But get beat by a woman in a race and it’s lev­el pi­cong,” she laughs, think­ing about the races where she has out­stripped and out­shone some of her male com­peti­tors.

Ga­jad­har com­mits her­self to car­ry­ing her­self in a prop­er man­ner, al­ways hard­work­ing, fo­cused and prop­er­ly dressed which cul­ti­vates an en­vi­ron­ment of re­spect from her com­peti­tors.

Her first race was in 2008 at the Cam­den Race­track, which was sub­se­quent­ly closed. This has hap­pened with many tracks, since then, as there is no per­ma­nent home in T&T for Mo­tor­sport. Ga­jad­har laments that con­sis­tent clos­ing of tracks as prob­lem­at­ic for rac­ers, as there is nowhere for them to prac­tice and hone their skills, lead­ing to long lulls of in­ac­tiv­i­ty.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was al­so a set back for her as she was not able to race fre­quent­ly, to ex­cel or win any­thing to add to her ac­co­lades. Ga­jad­har is a ma­jor ad­vo­cate for the cre­ation of a per­ma­nent home for the Mo­tor­sports com­mu­ni­ty, as it is an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised and loved sport, and brings re­gion­al tourists to T&T.

Oth­er Caribbean gov­ern­ments fund Mo­tor­sports and she would like to see the same in T&T, hop­ing for the sport to re­ceive the same plat­form and re­spect as more pop­u­lar sports.

Ga­jad­har is a force to be reck­oned with and con­tin­ues to dream big dreams to race in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and rep­re­sent T&T on the world stage. She en­cour­ages women to fol­low their pas­sions, “nev­er to sit on the side­lines and wait for op­por­tu­ni­ties to come knock­ing,” but fierce­ly pur­sue them. Be­ing nom­i­nat­ed for sports awards along­side Olympians has been one of her life’s great­est ho­n­ours, and she tes­ti­fies that God’s will has con­tin­ued to work in her life.

Al­li­son ‘Sil­ver Bul­let’ Ga­jad­har con­tin­ues to speed con­fi­dent­ly in­to the fu­ture, with­out an end to her ca­reer in sight, shat­ter­ing ceil­ings and mak­ing a name for her­self as a woman in sport.

Fay­ola K J Fras­er is a pro­fes­sion­al in the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment are­na. She has a BA in In­ter­na­tion­al (Mid­dle East­ern) Stud­ies and an MSc in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions and Diplo­ma­cy from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.