Mary McGee, a risk-loving motorcycle rider who was often the only woman on the tracks she raced on — and certainly the only one wearing a pink polka-dot helmet — died on Nov. 27 at her home in Gardnerville, Nev. She was 87.
Her family announced the death on social media. Their statement did not specify a cause, but The Associated Press reported it as complications of a stroke.
McGee died the day before ESPN released “Motorcycle Mary,” a 22-minute biographical documentary, on its YouTube channel. The movie chronicles McGee’s years as one of the few female racecar drivers and the sole woman in motorcycle racing.
The main talking head is McGee herself. She wears clear spectacles and a cozy purple turtleneck, and her deeply lined face frequently breaks out in a toothy smile. Yet she reveals herself to be motivated by a zest for confronting danger and a fiery self-respect.
Her most remarkable achievement in racing came in 1975, when she became the first person, man or woman, to complete the Baja 500 race solo since the race had been founded in 1969.
The Baja races — there is also a Baja 1000 — cover hundreds of miles off-road in the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico. As the temperature surpasses 100 degrees, contestants have to crisscross rocks, bramble, brush, ruts, mountain slopes and desert canyons. Riders are allowed to bring teammates and use sturdy vehicles like pickup trucks.
McGee went out by herself in a Swedish motorcycle. Her right shock blew out. Her rear wheel lost practically all its spokes. She destroyed her sprockets. She was pitched into a cactus.
“But if I’m starting a race,” she said in the ESPN documentary, “I’m going to finish.”
Out of 365 riders or teams to start the race, McGee came in 17th, becoming the first person to complete it without a partner.
McGee attributed her racing achievements partly to her intense focus.
“Stay calm,” she would say to herself. “Twist the throttle.”
Mary Bernice Connor was born on Dec. 12, 1936, in Juneau, Alaska . Her father left the family shortly after her birth. Her mother was a nurse who was required to stay in Juneau during World War II because Alaska was considered the possible site of a Japanese invasion. Mary and her older brother, Jim, were sent away to live with their grandparents in Harpers Ferry, a small town in northeastern Iowa.
Her brother taught her to take a deep breath anytime she felt nervous. “I learned not to worry,” she recalled in the movie.
After the war, the family moved to Phoenix, where Mary graduated from high school in 1954. Jim had begun racing cars, and she became a frequent spectator.
“You want to drive?” he asked one day.
She thought about it.
“I wanted to wet my pants, I was so scared,” she recalled in the documentary. Still, she took his car around the track.
“After that,” she continued, “my motto was: Always say yes if someone asks you to go somewhere or do something.”
Her brother also gave her a tip for achieving full concentration. In the final moments at the starting line, he said, clear your mind of everything except the green flag that signals drivers to go.
In 1956, she married Don McGee, a mechanic, who also encouraged her to race. In 1960, she began shifting into motorcycle racing.
In 1961, The Arizona Daily Star labeled her “the No. 1 ranked woman sports car driver” and commented, “Mary has raced in numerous events throughout the nation and is also the only woman to successfully compete against men in road course motorcycle races.”
At a New Year’s Eve party in the early 1960s, the actor and motor racer Steve McQueen mocked McGee’s road bike and said she had to come out to the desert. She started going trail riding with friends of his.
“In road racing I never got really tired, but out on a damned dirt bike I was worn out,” she later told the website NV Racing News. “That’s how I started in the dirt.”
In 1964, her brother was killed in a car crash while racing. Not long after that, McGee got hit head-on by a car on the highway. While being treated in the hospital, she found out she was pregnant. She later gave birth to a baby boy though it took her a year to recover from her injuries.
“Did that deter me from racing? No,” she said in the documentary. “Jim would have wanted me to fight back.”
In addition to her pink helmet, she became known for taking her husband and son along with her to races.
A widely syndicated news article in 1976 suggested that McGee’s story would not seem credible to television viewers: “Is the nation really ready for a sitcom about a six-foot-tall, 38-year-old mother who races motorcycles and pickup trucks over the worst terrain in the world?”
At the Baja 500, an “iron man” trophy was, McGee thought, supposed to go to the first solo finisher. But after the race, the authorities decided it should go to the first solo car driver — a man who finished after McGee.
“There wasn’t any notoriety about me doing it, because I’m a woman,” she said in “Motorcycle Mary.” The achievement went unrecognized for decades.
After McGee and her husband divorced in the mid-1970s, she became a sales manager for Motorcyclist magazine. In later years, she competed in women’s over-60 and over-70 races.
“Motorcycle Mary” premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in June. It was directed by Haley Watson and produced by both Lewis Hamilton, a much laureled Formula 1 driver, and Ben Proudfoot, an Oscar-winning documentarian.
Complete information about McGee’s survivors was not immediately available.
Before McGee died, hundreds of motorcyclists at Babes in the Dirt, an annual women’s dirt-bike camping event, watched an outdoor screening of “Motorcycle Mary” in screaming, tearful ecstasy, according to a firsthand account by Alyssa Roenigk published by ESPN.
When it was over, the women revved their engines into the night sky.
“We love you, Mary!” one shouted. “We are you!” said another. Another woman in the crowd even went further: “I would blow up my engine for you, Mary!”
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