’m a fan of meeting and talking to
people that have passion, especially
if it’s a passion that I share. So, when
I heard about Eline Mets, a woman
who is working to create a television
series about women motocross riders
called Diaries of Badass Chicks, I decided to
reach out to her. I sent her a message and
we agreed to meet at a local coffee shop.
I heard about Diaries of Badass Chicks
via Facebook. I saw some posts pop up
that asked female motocross participants
to take part in an upcoming pitch video.
The plan was to bring Vancouver-area
women riders together to shoot some
scenes that would be combined with
scenes from other pitch shoots sent in
from various cities around the world. I
was unable to make the shoot date, but I
did have a great conversation with Mets
about her vision for the unique TV series
she wanted to create.
Mets, previously employed as a
TV director and segment producer for
prime-time news in her home country of
Estonia, used to hate motorcycles. In fact,
her husband, a mechanic and rider, had
been trying to get her to ride for some
time, but she was never interested. “No
way!” she told him. “Motorcycles are
death machines. We are never going to
have a bike – ever!”
However, among the segments she
covered on prime-time news included
broadcasting the YouTube video watched
the most during a given day. One day in
January 2012, the featured video of the
day was called Dream Ride, which fea-
tured epic motocross footage. Mets says
that watching that video literally changed
her life.
“I remember watching the video and
thinking this is what I want to do,” she
says. She went home the day she watched
that video and told her surprised husband
that they were going to get bikes. Two
weeks later, she booked a riding lesson;
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bike, a KTM 125.
After Mets moved to Vancouver, she
took her dirt riding to another level and
began racing in the local motocross series
in Mission, B.C. During that time, she
began to perceive a large discrepancy in
the motorcycle world between how the
male riders were being treated compared
with the female riders. One moment in
particular stood out for her.
“I went to a race and got third place,”
she says, “but when I went to collect my
trophy, they said, ‘Sorry, we don’t have
trophies for women.’” The series had
plaques for the women, but in all the
men’s classes, trophies were handed out
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says, “because it’s not about the trophy;
it’s about the recognition – about us being
taken seriously.”
Mets decided right then and there
that her story about women in moto-
cross should be expressed in a TV series,
although she took a couple of years to
realize that she had to be the one to create
it because nobody else was going to. “I
want to change the way women are per-
ceived in the industry,” she says.
In 2017, she registered the website
domain for Diaries of Badass Chicks
and, shortly after that, put together
a pitch for Telus Communications
Inc.’s Storyhive program, which offers
production grants and distribution
opportunities to content creators in B.C.
and Alberta. She won a $10,000 grant
that went toward a pilot episode, which
was shot in Vancouver in November
last year. “It was so cold that the owner
of Popkum Motor Park had to break the
ice by the start gate so we could ride,”
she says. “I had girls and women com
ing from places that were seven, eight
hours away just to be in [the pilot], so
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The completed pilot is eight minutes
long, and Mets has outlines for seven
more episodes of about 10 minutes each.
All the episodes are based on true stories
and are scripted so that she can tell the
stories properly, using actors and stunt
doubles. That process is part of the reason
why she believes her series is so unique.
“I want it to have an uplifting feel,
but still feature actual real-life stories in a
scripted sense,” she says. “The goal is to
get more mainstream interest from spon-
sors and also from women who never
thought they could do it. For example, no
one cared about a cappella singing until
the movie Pitch Perfect came out; now
there are all sorts of a cappella singing
groups. That’s the power of scripted
shows.”
Mets’ immediate goal is to create a
pitch video featuring clips of women rid-
ers from all over the world to help raise
funds and secure the resources needed
WRSURGXFHWKHÀUVWVHDVRQRIDiaries of
Badass Chicks. For more information, visit
badassckicks.tv and follow
@badasschickstv on social media.
LIFE IN THE FAS T LANE
by Misti Hurst
DIARIES OF
BADASS CHICKS
ILLUSTRATION:DEANFOSTER12 MOTORCYCLE MOJO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019I