Tanya Muzinda
Most people at the young age of six were eager to learn how to ride that new bike their parents bought for them.
But Tanya Muzinda was already handling a motorbike on her own and had begun tackling a male-dominated sport: motocross. At just 13, she is already an accomplished motocross rider and the first ever female motocross champion in Zimbabwe.
She started learning how to ride a go-kart. With the go-kart, she usually visited a motorsport park in Harare where she found her love for motocross. When she was five, she participated in her first motocross competition, in which she came second and at the age of nine, she got a motorbike for her sport, the Austrian KTM after getting appointed as a European Union’s ambassador for food security in rural areas.
She later met motocross legend, Stefy Bau in 2013, who began training and managing her. Through Bau, Muzinda toured Europe in 2016 where she met world champion, Tony Cairoli. She participated in the Italian Motocross Championship, where she competed against top junior and senior female riders from Europe.
She had before in 2015 been awarded Junior Sportswoman and Junior Sportsperson of the Year at Zimbabwe’s National Sports Awards. In that same year, Muzinda was made Sportswoman of the Year by Zimbabwe International Women’s Awards in Birmingham, England.