Melissa Paris is a former professional motorcycle road racer, who was the first female to qualify and compete in a World Supersport race. She has dedicated her post-racing career to helping young athletes, specifically women, come up in a sport that requires the support of a team to achieve success.
How World Supersport hero Melissa Paris got her start in road bike racing
As a child growing up in Northern California, Melissa Paris pedaled after her older brothers on a BMX bike, but it wasn’t until going away to college that she found her love for motorcycles.
While attending San Diego State University in Southern California, Paris met a “cute guy” in the dorms who had a sport bike. They began dating and she learned how to ride a motorcycle.
“There’s no way of describing it,” Paris said in an interview last year. “It’s like in The Wizard of Oz, when all of a sudden everything turns to color.”
Her fling with the boy in college was brief, but motorcycles quickly became her true love, and she saved up to buy a bike of her own.
Soon she was ditching classes to fly down freeways and cruise through California canyons. Eventually, the group of older guys she frequently rode with thought she had enough talent to take to a motorcycle race track.
Paris was instantly addicted to the adrenaline of the opening up the throttle on a flat track, and made a deal with the owners to fix crashed bikes in exchange for riding for free.
After spending all her free time honing her skills on the track, Paris soon began club racing on 125 and 250cc bikes, which also cost a pretty penny. Despite being a full-time student, she picked up a full-time job to fund her entry into competitions nearly every weekend.
“All I wanted to do was be at the track every opportunity I had. And I knew from the first time the flag dropped [that I] don’t want to do anything else,” Paris told Jalopnik.
Melissa Paris becomes the first woman to compete in the a World Supersport race
Her racing career took off as fast as a superbike, when she became the Lightweight National Champion in 2008.
“I don’t think I ever looked at it as a big grand goal, I just want to keep doing this. I don’t want to do anything else,” she told YEDH. “There’s nothing out there that makes me feel this way.”
In 2009, she began racing professionally, making her debut in Daytona on a Yamaha R6 and finishing 21st. The same year, she became the first woman to qualify for and race in for a World Supersport race.
“It was so cool and so scary,” she remarked. “Talk about imposter syndrome and thinking you don’t belong there, and questioning yourself quite a bit. But I was the top qualifying wild card.”
Paris competed in the 2010 American Motorcycle Association (AMA) Daytona Sportbike series and finished 15th.
The next year, she competed in the British Supersport at Brands Hatch, and went on to become the first female rider ever invited to test a Yamaha MotoGP prototype bike, which she called “the coolest motorcycle you could possibly ride.”
Test driving supersport motorcycles
Her husband, fellow professional rider Josh Hayes, had won the 2011 AMA Pro Superbike Championship on a Yamaha, and the manufacturer invited him to test drive the motorcycle in Spain.
When another rider was involved in a tragic crash at the 2011 Malaysia Motorcycle Grand Prix, Hayes was tapped to compete for the Tech 3 Yamaha MotoGP in Spain that week, and Paris was asked to test out the prototype bike.
She was worried that people would think that she was riding like a girl and “wouldn’t open the gas,” so Paris decided not to give them “that opportunity,” and “held the thing full stick” while she clicked through the gears.
She called the experience, “terrifying but amazing,” and said she wasn’t sure why they let her do that, but is “glad that they did.”
For the next several years, Paris would compete in the United States at AMA Pro Flat Track and MotoAmerica Supersport races.
She would also travel the world to finish fourth in Spain’s 2014 FIM CEV Repsol International Roadrace Championship, and become part of the first all-female team to qualify and complete the 2016 Bol d’Or 24 Hour World Endurance Championship Race.
In 2017, she was a member of the first all-female team to qualify and complete the LeMans 24 Hour World Endurance Championship Race, which was the same year she would create MP13 Racing.
Melissa Paris launches a road bike racing team after breaking barriers in World Supersport
The further along Paris went in racing, the more she realized that the top racers had plenty of people to help get them there along the way.
After her own successes, she wanted to pay forward everything that had been done for her to the next generation of riders, which was why Paris started MP13 Racing.
“I wanted to help young kids, in a lot of cases other girls, and help create those opportunities to help move them along and go racing at the highest level they could,” she said about her inspiration to start the team.
She originally started MP13 to have a safe space for young girls to come up in racing, but there “just unfortunately aren’t enough of them” in the sport in her opinion.
Paris recently was part of Royal Enfield’s Build. Train. Race. Program, where they took a group of girls and women who had little to no experience riding on a racetrack.
Through the program she was able to help mentor them while they built race bikes, train the women to race on the track, and set them loose to race.
“For me that was really cool, because I was racing for a really long time before I ever spun a wrench on the bike,” Paris explained. “I think a lot of people probably thought I relished the race track side of teaching them more, but I really enjoyed the build of the bike a lot.”
She believes a lot of girls and women are not confident when it comes to the mechanical side of racing motorcycles.
“I love the opportunity to show them that it’s not rocket science and that you can figure it out, and that if you can’t there’s someone out there who wants to help you and will be happy to help you,” she added.
Why World Supersport road racing star Melissa Paris is a hero
Paris believes that there’s room for both men and women in professional motorcycle racing and has made it her mission to make sure everybody feels welcome.
“I want to make sure that everyone knows that there’s space at the table for them, and if I can pull out the chair, I’m happy to do that,” she stated.
“I want to help people because I was helped, and I think that’s what you’re supposed to do,” the former pro road racer continued.
She thinks that if people follow their dreams, they’re “probably not going to go wrong.”
“Stop thinking of all the reasons you can’t do something and just take that jump and try it,” Paris insisted.
While she encourages anyone to follow their dreams, they won’t get anywhere unless they’re willing to put the time an effort into succeeding.
“Work ethic is something that means more to me than anything in the world,” Paris shared. “Are you willing to stay up all night and do what it takes?”
Working on supersport motorcycles
When she gets a motorcycle ready to go on the track, she insists that that it be the ‘best” and “safest” bike it can be.
“That’s something that’s really important to me, that I pride myself on,” she commented. “I’m never worried that someone’s going to call me lazy.”
She had parents that modeled that behavior during her childhood, and unlike her, their careers were not their dream jobs, or even anything they were particularly passionate about. Her mother drove bread truck and her father fixed boilers.
“When I find myself with an opportunity to work in something I love and I enjoy, [working hard] is like a no-brainer,” the former racer detailed.
“If you think you did enough, then you didn’t,” she added. “I’ve never walked away from a bike and said ‘that thing’s perfect.’”
Every time that Melissa Paris looks at a bike that has just been completed, she only sees what she could have done better and what to improve on the next time.
Flat Track Motorcycle Racer Melissa Paris’ Resources:
Help support MP13’s flat track motorcycle racing team on Patreon.
Check out the latest about the World Supersport rider on Instagram.
Get the latest news about the former professional road racer on Facebook.
Learn more about her career racing SuperSport motorcycles on LinkedIn.
Follow the former AMA Pro Flat Track racer on X.
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