FEMALE DRIVER RACES AGAINST DRUGS

In a realm dominated by males racing automobiles pasted with cigarette
company logos, Formula 1600 race car driver Marybeth Harrison is definitely
unique.

The Vancouver native started her racing career in open-wheel cars after
taking a racing course in 1992. Since then she has worked her way up from
kart racing to Formula 1600. She has won races in every division she has
raced and recently won the Canadian Formula Drivers Association
Championship. But perhaps more extraordinary than her meteoric rise through
the racing world in such a short period of time has been how she has done it.

Harrison is the only female racer in her class. She is sponsored by
Fountain Tire, which takes care of the cost of racing - a price tag that
comes in around $60,000 a year.

"My dream is to eventually race Formula One," said the driver and part-time
motivational speaker.

Before reaching the upper echelons of open-wheel auto racing, Harrison said
she will have to work her way up through Formula 2000, Atlantic Kart and
IndyCar. The costs are enormous - only the obsenely wealthy could fund
their way through the sport without sponsorship.

"For Atlantic it costs about $1 million and that's only for one year."

Despite the costs, she has consciously chosen to stay away from some of the
major sponsors of the sport: cigarettes and alcohol companies. Until she
was 19, Harrison smoked cigarettes; she drank alcohol and, according to her
own account, was spiraling perilously downwards towards terminal addiction.

"I started smoking and drinking when I was 12," she told the student body
of St. Joseph's school last Thursday in her motivational talk called Racing
Against Drugs.

A friend took her to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when she was 19, and
she has gone clean for more than 14 years.

"I wouldn't have been able to do what I do today otherwise," said Harrison,
who wore her racing jumpsuit and thinly soled sneakers made specially for
auto racing, for her presentation at St. Joe's.

"The people in Formula One, their heart rates are the same as astronauts at
take-off for a shuttle launch except the drivers' rates stay like that for
the whole two hours of a race."

Her public stance against cigarettes might have caused her to lose a chance
at some juicy sponsors such as Players Cigarettes, but she said that is not
the case, nor would she want to accept the money if it was offered.

"I made the decision not to accept any alcohol or tobacco sponsorship
because of my negative experiences," she said.

As it stands now, she has made more than the ethical choice because by
2001, tobacco companies will not be able to advertise by plastering their
logos all over the cars they sponsor.

At the end of her talk with the students last week, Harrison read a poem
that touched her and inspires her each time she faces a new challenge. It
was a poem about winning but not about the feeling of defeating an
opponent. It was about knowing the reason you won came from inside you,
from hard work and from just being yourself. For Harrison, that knowledge
of believing herself is what got her where she is today, and the reason she
races against drugs.