‘Pied Piper’ Eva keen for girls to follow her onto the grid…

Driven by a desire to prove that girls are just as good, if not better, than boys has taken Strabane’s Eva Mullen from having never ridden a bike before to being co-owner of her own race team in the space of five years.

But it’s not just any race team. Boss-E Racing is dedicated to supporting young riders, particularly females, who are keen to show what they can do on the tracks of the Irish Minibike Championship and beyond.

The progressive outfit, which is owned and run by Eva and Thomas Galbraith, has grown year on year, developing from a one rider set-up when Mullen first dipped her toes into the world of racing at the age of 32 in 2021, to being a five racer squad that includes Katie Clint, Paige Mullan, Zak Turkington and Harry Birch, as well as a partnership with Chawkie Bros Racing that will see James and Liam Chawke on hand to share their knowledge with the next generation of stars within the Boss-E ranks.

Eva and Boss-E Racing have come a long way in a short space of time – from earning the ‘Top Tumbler’ award in her first campaign! – but it’s perhaps not surprising given she had been immersed in the sport for several years before taking the plunge of competing and forming her own team, with a key focus being on female racers.

“ I got involved in motorbike racing having done PR for Chawkie Bros, so I would have been supporting them and I’d have done a bit of fundraising for Loris Britton, so that’s kind of where it took off from for me,” Eva explained.

“ I’d have been watching them and I looked at them and thought ‘I could do that, no problem’. I’d never even been on a bike but I thought that looks pure easy, I could do that!

“ I saw Melissa Kennedy and thought ‘I could go out on a 125’, so I started looking, trying to find things because I wanted to create a female team. There were hardly any female riders, let alone teams, just Melissa Kennedy really and obviously Yvonne Montgomery on the roads too but for me, I would liked to have seen more girls.

“And I thought there were bound to be more girls who would like to give it a go and watching year on year, that thought grew and then I came across the Irish Minibike Championship around the Christmas of 2020.

“ I think it was Baylon McCaughey, who shared their Facebook page or a video from YouTube and that’s where I saw it and thought ‘right, these aren’t big road bikes, plus it’s on a closed circuit and they always said if I could find bikes small enough on a closed circuit they would take me’, so I went back to Tommy and said ‘I’ve found my racing career, where we’re starting with this team’.

“ He was like ‘what are you on about’ so I showed him the pit bikes and that’s where the team got started from.”

Immediately, Eva caught the eye of her fellow IMC teams and riders with her unique race number of 666. Initially, eyebrows were raised at a potential hell-raiser entering the family-friendly ranks of the series, but the sentiment behind that particular number meant people came around very quickly.

“ I actually lost my father [Martin] in 2018 and I was going through a wee stage that I was down and depressed and I wanted to do something to keep his memory alive, that I felt I was doing something for him.” Eva explained. “ He wasn’t actually into bikes but what he did like to see was females beat boys, he loved that. He always had me in male dominated sports, like football, Gaelic football, sports where you were always up against makes, like boxing.

“ With that upbringing, I wasn’t really phased by entering the IMC race paddock, although my race number did raise a few eyebrows when they saw 666 so I had to get defensive over this because it’s my father’s number and I explained how the number came about because his date of birth was 6/11/66, so we dropped the 11.

“ People were thinking I’m some sort of satanist, ‘Evil Eva’ with 666 but once I explained the number then they came around and thought it was nice.”

Since her arrival in the IMC paddock, Eva has gone from rookie to the ‘Pied Piper’ as youngsters flock to her at each and every round to play, have fun and to learn about racing and that is what drives the Strabane woman, the chance to help the kids in the sport develop but to enjoy themselves while doing so.

“ You see me in the IMC paddock, I get called the ‘Pied Piper’ because I’m coming walking and there’s a trail of wains coming behind me because I mess around with them, I play with them, I give them all wee words of encouragement but I do tend to favour the girls a bit more because I like to see the girls beat the boys, if they are in our team or not,” she beamed.

“They ask me to show them their race videos and they like me to go through it with them, and it’s great to see them taking that onboard and the smiles on their faces when it works.

“It makes me feel good, knowing the wains listen to me and take on my advice, so I like taking on that management side. But I love the racing side too, because you have the banter with other riders on track and off track.”

The late Keith Farmer used to say on a regular basis ‘a happy rider is a fast rider’ and that is a sentiment that Eva and Tommy have fully embraced at Boss-E Racing. Results are a secondary by-product for them, seeing their riders enjoy racing, learn and improve is all they are concerned about and that is why they put absolutely no pressure on them to even race.

“There’s no pressure on the riders, we work with them at their comfort level,” Eva added. “If they turn round to us and say, ‘I’m not going out there’, that’s it, they aren’t going out. They make the final decision because at the end of the day, I now what it’s like going out on track when you don’t want to be.

“I think the confidence level is the huge factor and if you don’t have that, it holds you back and I know from my personal experience, I can talk to Katie and say ‘I know what you’re feeling, I used to feel that too’.

“At the start you’re too busy thinking about everyone else, about what they are looking and thinking and saying about you, instead of paying attention to what you’re actually doing on track.

“If they say they are not going out on track, you cannot force them because in their wee mind, all that’s in their head is they don’t want to be there and they won’t be thinking about who’s coming up behind me or who’s coming to overtake me or track position, they’re too busy thinking they don’t want to be there.

“We don’t care if they are coming in last, as long as they are coming in. If they are taking a second off a lap, coming back in saying they’ve learned something, that’s, for us, going in the right direction. At the end of the day, not everyone is going to learn at the same pace.”

It’s a very family-oriented team and even after riders leave, move on, or go elsewhere, they remain part of the Boss-E fold.

“Our main aim is longevity with the riders, we want tenure, we want to help them get to that stage where a team in the British Talent Cup will come and take them, basically,” Eva said.

“We wouldn’t be ending our support at that point, we’d continue to sponsor them, that’s our aim, to get them that opportunity.”

And that sense of togetherness that the team has developed over the last five years extends beyond the confines of their awning, which is why at the end of this season, they will be honouring a dear friend, the late Stuart Castles, a popular member of Two Brothers Photography, who sadly passed away recently, with in-house trophies come year’s end.

In order to ensure their riders have something to race for all season, they have decided to create a ‘Girls v Boys’ championship, so that if their team members aren’t competing at the sharp end of their respective series, they still have something to race for.

“We decided to do a Boys v Girls thing or a Girls v Boys thing and that way I can continue to drive my female ethos side of the team,” Eva explained.

“I’ll be honest, part of the reason I brought that in was because I wanted to keep the female ethos, but then there was the other side of it, I felt disheartened for the kids.

“Paige, for example, when she was coming in [last season] and she was pushing her bike to the absolute maximum but she was wondering what she was doing wrong.

“We were telling her she was doing everything she needed to do it was just we couldn’t get any more out of her bike legally, so to save her coming in having done everything right on track, it gives them something else to work for, they still achieve something by taking the competition on track into the team as well.

“So, we’re putting up two trophies this year, one for the top boy and one for the top girl, so either Zak or Harry will win a trophy and either Paige or Katie will win a trophy, whoever achieves the most and we’ll do an overall top Boss-E rider, which will be judged by Jonny Castles, the other half of Two Brothers Photography and that will be in memory of Stuart Castles, who was not just a big supporter of us but racing in general and for me, personally, he was one of the few during that first season, he was giving me compliments after seeing where I had improved.”

Before any silverware is handed over, the team and riders will navigate the 2025 IMC season, which got underway at Nutts Corner last Sunday, and they will also take in select rounds of the British Championship, all of which Eva is relishing.

“We’re all good to go and I can’t wait to get going. It’s exciting and I can’t wait to see these girls kick some ass!,” she concluded.