Sun, Jun 17, 2018 page10

• Personalities making waves in powerboating

  • AFP, LONDON
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  Australian Grant Trask said that an arrogant streak has helped in confounding the doctors who said he would never walk again after his leg was amputated, and now he is competing in the Formula One Powerboat World Championship.

  The 29-year-old is emblematic of the type of colorful character drawn to the dangerous sport, as is Norwegian Marit Stromoy, who also ignored preconceived ideas by succeeding as a woman in a sport often dominated by men.

  Not content with becoming the first woman to win an F1 World Championship Grand Prix, Stromoy has also forged a successful singing career back in Norway.

  They are to line up for today’s Grand Prix of London, where racers are strapped into a cockpit of a machine that goes from zero to 97kph in two seconds and is capable of going up to 225kph.

  Trask and Stromoy both grew up in the powerboating world.

  Trask’s father and uncle competed against each other, while Stromoy’s father combined jazz drumming with racing from the 1960s to the 1980s.

  Stromoy was only four when she sat in her first engine-powered boat, but Trask took longer after being hit by a car when he was five.

  “I was hit by a drink driver and they had to amputate my right leg [above the knee],” he said. “It could have been worse — I could have been in a wheelchair.”

  Trask, who won the Australian F3 title at 17 and was crowned national F2 champion on two occasions, said it was at that point his character really shone through.

  “I am very determined and was even arrogant as a kid,” he said. “All the doctors told me I would never walk again as I broke my left leg and back as well. I wanted to prove them wrong and was out of there within three-and-a-half weeks and back at home in a cast.”

  However, Trask would not settle for just that and accepted a challenge from his father.

  “Where we lived, the drive was about 1km long and Dad said if you walk that, I will buy you a motorbike, and what kid doesn’t want one,” Trask said. “I went out there after learning to walk again and walked it four or five times back and forth and got the bike.”

  Trask’s goal is to win the world title, although this year, his more modest ambition is to finish in the top six and on the podium in at least one race.

  Stromoy, 41, has also had to accept challenges laid down by her father — some more to her liking than others.

  “He bought a piano when I was seven and I was told you and your sister must go to lessons,” she said. “I went once a week and I really dreaded it, I hated it every time I had to go there.”

  However, she said that good came of it.

  “I began to sing while playing and I got my first job as a piano player aged around 16, then I sang in a band, and when I was 20, I became a full-time musician,” she said.

  Stromoy, who for several years performed in Oslo and Copenhagen in a show she said was somewhere between a musical and Cirque de Soleil before quitting to race full time, said that few things would rival the effect of her Grand Prix win.

  “I still get goosebumps thinking of it now,” Stromoy said. “I knew it was possible, but lots of those around me didn’t think it was.”

  She puts that down to a macho element.

  “Believe me, I know as I am married to an Italian,” she said. “He is not that bad of course.”
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