The 16-Year-Old Dutch Girl Making Motocross History

The Netherlands has been a hotbed for the best motocross talents in the world for as long as grass has been green, water wet, and hell warm. Its latest star was one of three to have a standout weekend in neighbouring Belgium last weekend.

Lommel is one of the most famous circuits in the world of motocross. At a time when MXGP tracks are increasingly built in shopping centre car parks (the circuit at Intu-Xanadu Arroyomolinos near Madrid at least proving that such a location doesn’t necessitate a boring track design), Lommel stands out for its continuity of both layout changes and intensely deep sand.

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Although the US’s AMA Pro Motocross Championship carries at least a similar level of prestige to the World Championship, the only race to come close to the physical challenge of Lommel in the discipline of motocross is the Canadian National at Gopher Dunes, which may even surpass Lommel. But the Belgian track is in a class of one as far as the World Championship is concerned.

For Jorge Prado — who declared himself the ‘King of Sand’ after beating Jeffrey Herlings at MXGP’s other deep sand race, at Riola Sardo on the island of Sardinia — Lommel meant the concession of that particular title back to Herlings, who chased him down in both motos to take a 1-1 on Sunday, winning 105th Grand Prix.

Herlings’ Grand Prix career began in 2010 when he was only 15. Despite a number of huge injuries throughout his career, especially since he won his first MXGP title in 2018 (that year itself involving a collarbone break in the middle of a year in which he was beaten to only three Grand Prix victories out of 18), Herlings has carved his way into the motocross history books as the sport’s most victorious rider, his new total of 106 GP victories carrying him five clear of the Belgian 10-times World Champion Stefan Everts on 101.

As Herlings solidified himself atop the all-time wins list in MXGP, he was joined in the annals of motocross by his 16-year-old Dutch compatriot, Lotte van Drunen,

Van Drunen has been a star of the European motocross scene for a while by now, having made top 10 results in the EMX125 class, which she raced as a 14- and 15-year-old. Once she turned 15, van Drunen became eligible to race in the Women’s Motocross World Championship, a European-based support class of MXGP, and she’s been full-time in that series since 2023.

Now in her second full season of WMX, van Drunen is currently leading the championship after five rounds, having only finished outside the top three of a moto once, that result coming in the only race run at the most recent round, the MXGP of Italy.

With WMX currently in the middle of a two-month summer break between Italy and round six, van Drunen’s home MXGP of the Netherlands at Arnhem on 17–18 August, the 16-year-old filled the time with a wildcard appearance in the MX2 Grand Prix class at Lommel last weekend.

Van Drunen was not the first woman to compete in MX2, but by finishing 20th out of 22 in Race 2 at the MXGP of Flanders, the #401 became the first woman to score points in the MX2 class of the Motocross World Championship.

20th from 22 might appear to dampen the achievement, but it shouldn’t.

It took Jorge Prado, a two-time MX2 World Champion who barely lost en route to the second of those titles in 2019, four years to win his first MXGP crown. In the years from 2020–2022, Prado often mentioned the physical disadvantage he suffered compared to his rivals, as they — the likes of Herlings, Tim Gajser (now a five-times World Champion, including in his rookie MXGP campaign in 2016), Romain Febvre (2015 MXGP World Champion and runner-up to Jeffrey Herlings in 2021), and Antonio Cairoli (the nine-times World Champion with whom Prado shared the De Carli awning in the Red Bull KTM setup until the Italian's retirement at the end of 2021) — were fully grown men, whereas he was a teenager moving into his early-20s. To Prado, it made sense that he would struggle physically compared to his rivals then because his body was only just finishing the process of growing.

In the case of van Drunen at Lommel, the case is similar, as she, at 16, is still a girl, whereas De Carli’s Red Bull GasGas rider, Simon Laengenfelder, who won MX2 Race 2 at Lommel, is 20, a year older than Prado was when he jumped up to MXGP, and the German’s Grand Prix career is now into its fifth season.

Van Drunen is also at the same age that both Kay de Wolf, the Dutch Husqvarna star who won the MX2 overall in Lommel and who has led the MX2 points since the first round, and Lucas Coenen, De Wolf’s Husqvarna teammate and closest title rival in 2024, were when they first entered MX2 (De Wolf in 2021, and Coenen last year).

It’s impossible to say where the career of van Drunen — who was signed as an athlete to F1 driver Lando Norris’ Quadrant organisation earlier this year — will end up, and suggesting she could end up in the positions currently occupied by de Wolf, Coenen, or even the mythical Herlings off the back of one World Championship point is about as fanciful as sporting imagination gets.

But that’s not the point. The point, actually, is that van Drunen, as a woman in a male-dominated discipline of a male-dominated sport, turned up to the hardest race going, finished respectably, scored a point, and made history. And she did it, basically, because she could, and because she wanted to. There was no championship incentive, and it’s hard to believe that Yamaha, for which she rides, sees her any differently now than what it did last Friday, before the Flanders GP. Instead, she simply desired the challenge, which is among the greatest qualities to be attributed to a young athlete of any discipline, let alone one of the toughest in all of sports.