Joan Richmond
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Joan Richmond (1905–1999) was an Australian pioneer in motorsport who competed internationally in seven Monte Carlo rallies and two Le Mans 24 Hours races.
Joan Richmond was born in Cooma in 1905 and grew up in Victoria. She was educated at St Catherine’s, Toorak, leaving at the end of 1923.[1]
Racing career
As a young woman she trained and rode her own racehorses. In 1932, however, Victoria banned women from being horse trainers,[2] which caused her to take up motor racing instead.[1] She had competed in car trials from 1926 onwards. In the 1931 Australian Grand Prix, held at Phillip Island, she finished fifth in a Riley Brooklands in the male-dominated field. After this success, she and two friends (Jean Beatson and Kathleen Gardiner) set out to drive three Riley Nine motorcars overland from Melbourne to Italy in order to compete in the Monte Carlo Rally. The trip took five months and is considered to be the very first international overland tour to have begun in Australia.[1][3][4]
Travelling to England she accepted the opportunity to compete with Elsie Wisdom in the two-day 1,000 mile race at Brooklands. They won in a Riley Nine, at 84.41 mph, taking 12 hours 23 minutes and 53 seconds to complete the distance.[1][5][3]
In 1933 she bought a 1921 Ballot that had previously been raced by Malcolm Campbell,[6][7] but its age and poor reliability gave her little success.
In the 1930s she was co-driver with Bill Bilney, to whom she became engaged in 1937.[8] He was killed during a motor race at Donington Park in July 1937.[9] She gave up motor racing following the outbreak of World War II and remained in England, where she worked in a de Havilland aircraft factory.[1][8]
