Culture
At the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Iron Dames bring the power of pink
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What do you want to be when you grow up?
An astronaut chef. A jet pilot. A dancer. A racing driver.
Children’s imaginations run wild, and these dreams can sometimes seem like a distant future, an intangible concept difficult to grasp. But perhaps seeing their dreams featured on one of the most eye-catching liveries in all of international motorsports this year will help these aspirations feel more like reality. Because as the Iron Dames’ 2024 Le Mans project says, “Every Dream Matters.”
Ahead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the first all-women lineup in endurance racing asked fans on social media “what did you dream of becoming when you were a child.” They later visited an elementary school in Le Mans, France, asking them to draw how they imagined their future, and explained the story of how the Iron Dames are “Women Driven by Dreams.” With the help of AI, the drawings were converted into a livery that symbolizes what the Iron Dames stand for.
Iron Dames founder Deborah Mayer (in black) with Rahel Frey, Sarah Bovy and Michelle Gatting. (Courtesy of Iron Dames)
“We want to tell the kids that no matter what you are dreaming of becoming, everything in life is possible,” said Michelle Gatting, one of the three women who will pilot the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo2. “As long as you have a dream, a vision in your head of something you want to achieve, it’s already a big thing.”
Who are the ‘Iron Dames’?
Six years ago, former racing driver Deborah Mayer founded the Iron Dames to show that women can be involved in motorsports in any capacity. As Gatting said, “to prove that women can compete on the same level as men in motorsports.”
It’s about empowering women and easing the barriers to entry women face in the male-dominated world of motorsports, promoting inclusivity and investing in helping develop young talent. But it’s also about being competitive and winning, a project to last for years to come rather than a flash-in-the-pan type moment.
Gatting was one of the first Iron Dames, joining in 2019 before it even had a name.
“The project was basically not born yet,” she said. “It was already in the mind of Deborah, that she had a vision about during the project.” Gatting received an email about testing the car, which was a Ferrari at the time. It’s the kind of offer you don’t say no to.
Gatting’s motorsports journey began as a coincidence. The Dane was on a vacation with her family in the south of France when she hopped into a go kart at seven years old. She went from not knowing much about motorsports to making it her life. “When I was very young, I only dreamed about becoming a Formula One driver, and I was probably a bit more naive,” Gatting said. Over time, she saw that it was more than just F1. “I changed my vision, and for me, it was (that) I wanted to become an endurance driver.
“I wanted to race the 24 Hours of Le Mans.”
The Iron Dames’ Lamborghini Huracan got a special design for the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans. (Courtesy Iron Dames)
Endurance racing is fairly different from the typical racing category, like F1 or IndyCar. Rather than driving over a set distance, endurance racing involves driving as far as possible within a preset time limit. With how strenuous endurance racing is, the World Endurance Championship (WEC) allows teams to split the race into stints, rotating drivers through the cockpit.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans is the premier race of WEC. Part of the triple crown of motorsports, it’s an 8.5-mile (13.6 km) track where 62 cars and 184 drivers across multiple classes drive for 24 hours.
The Iron Dames gave Gatting that chance in 2019, and now, she’s preparing for her sixth 24 Hours of Le Mans. “The project has changed my life, my career, I always wanted to become professional and make a living out of it. But it’s a very few drivers in the world who get that opportunity.” But making it to the top of endurance racing was no easy feat. Gatting sacrificed her teenage years — and doesn’t regret it — but also endured financial troubles. At one point, she had to sit out a season due to having “no money” and “basically, year after year, begging people and sponsors for money to go racing.”
Every dream matters.💗
We have transformed your childhood dreams into a reality that will race with us at the @24hoursoflemans for Round 4 in @FIAWEC.
Every dream matters, and we’re here to prove it. They will be our lucky charms and will symbolise our commitment to nurture… pic.twitter.com/gPSc57Aqnz
— Iron Dames (@IronDames_) June 3, 2024
The other two members of the 2024 Le Mans driver lineup are Sarah Bovy and Rahel Frey, who replaced an injured Doriane Pin.
Frey is another OG member of the Iron Dames, along with Manuela Gostner. Brothers Giacomo and Andrea Piccini, the latter of whom is the team principal for the Iron Lynx (the service provider for the Iron Dames), reached out to Frey given her experience level. She started go karting in 1998 and moved to single seaters several years later — and won a German Formula Three race in 2007.
“They asked me to be part of the project because they were looking for a female racer who already has good experience for endurance racing, who can basically join and guide, lead, a female driver crew,” Frey said.
It was through Gatting and Frey that Bovy, the third member of the Iron Dames’ 24 Hours of Le Mans driver lineup for this year, learned about the project. The Belgian driver heard of the two women and saw the creation of the project via social media.
“At the time, I thought, ‘Oh, another great project that I’m never going to be part of,’” Bovy said. “I would say that my first impression was really like, ‘Oh, I wish I could do that, but it’s too late.’”
Still, Bovy, who got her start at racing through karting at a fair, followed them on Facebook and Instagram. She continued with her career, racing in the 24 Hours of Spa and the maiden season of the all-women W Series in 2019. But in 2021, she saw the team may be short a driver, and she sent them an email to see if she could fill in. Spoiler: the answer was yes.
Making childhood dreams a reality. 💭
As the Iron Dames prepare to tackle the @24hoursoflemans, we encourage all of you to dream big. One day the young girls of today will be lining up to race at this iconic location – and it could be you. https://t.co/o21ZEFaRjL#WEC… pic.twitter.com/I9qckS1cVV
— Iron Dames (@IronDames_) June 5, 2024
“It’s important to underline that nothing ever came easy. I think for all the Iron Dames, we worked our, sorry to say, ass off to reach this level,” Gatting said. “And I’m just extremely happy that what we’re doing with this project now, we are making it, let’s say not easier, but we are giving young girls an opportunity to join such a project (at) a very early age. If I had that opportunity when I was eight years old, I don’t want to think about where it could have taken me.
“But we are changing the world of motorsport with this project.”
‘Women Driven by Dreams’
You can’t miss the Iron Dames when they’re on track.
No, it’s not because of they’re women. It’s because of the car’s color. Bovy said originally it started as a black or dark blue base with some pink detailing. “When we started getting some stronger results, when we felt we were ready to expose ourselves a little bit more to the industry, our media team came back to us and say like, ‘Listen, girls, next year, we are inverting the color. The car is going to be pink with black details.’”
But it wasn’t just the bright pink car. It was the race suits and shoes, the team fully embracing what has long been considered a feminine color.
“The point is to say that pink is not a stupid color. Pink is not your weak color,” Bovy said. “Pink is the color we grew up with. We are kids from the 90s, and in the 90s, pretty much everything for girls was pink. So why would we need to hate it or say that it’s a weak color? We just don’t agree with that. We say if you like pink, pink can be a very powerful color.”
Ahead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Iron Dames visited an elementary school in Le Mans, France, asking students to draw how they imagined their future. (Courtesy Iron Dames)
If someone asked her to race with pink on her suit before she joined the Iron Dames, Gatting would quickly decline. “I don’t want to show people that I am a woman driving,” she says. But now? “I wear it with pride,” she said, later showing the hot pink nail polish on her fingernails.
But the pink does bring an element of pressure. It is a vibrant pink, one that can’t simply blend in with the pack. Bovy said, “We all looked (at) each other, and we were like, ‘Wow, okay, we need to win races with this car because otherwise we’re going to look ridiculous.’”
In 2022, the Iron Dames finished third with 93 points in WEC, competing in the top class of GT racing, the LMGTE Am. The following season, they took another step forward and finished second with 118 points. Both seasons, the Iron Dames also competed in 24 Hours of Le Mans with the same lineup as this year, finishing seventh in 2022 and fourth in 2023.
As time went on and they continued moving up the ladder, the women grew more comfortable with the car’s color, Bovy equating it to “representing your flags or your country.” It’s a source of pride. After all, they’ve won in the pink and in other colors, as Bovy pointed out. Most recently, they’re race winners in the WEC, making history in the series as the all-women crew that won the LMGTE Am season finale in Bahrain last year.
“We don’t really feel that the color is just defining us anymore,” Bovy said. “We just wanted to give more visibility to the project.”
And it is becoming more visible. Lines form for autograph sessions at the track, and the women are noticing how their merchandise is becoming more prevalent in the paddock, especially among male fans.
“They really just support us and they support the fact that the project, it’s really something to be taken serious,” Gatting said. “But also, people respect us for everything we have done and everything we do. Every time we race, we want to prove that we are not just here to drive around and be a part of the competition.
“We are here for one thing, and that is to win.”
Talking about the impact gives Gatting goosebumps and makes her emotional because of what they’ve achieved over the last several years and how they’ve grown. “We are top professional racing drivers. And we are competing with the best male drivers in the world. And people, they don’t look at us in this strange way anymore.”
And it all started with the determination to chase a dream from their childhoods. After all, that’s who the Iron Dames are — “women driven by dreams.” The Iron Dames are bigger than just these three women. While the project is heavily invested in motorsports with other drivers like Doriane Pin and Marta García, the Iron Dames are also involved in equestrian. The entire project, including those in background roles like marketing, now amount to 45 people.
This weekend, Gatting, Frey and Bovy will all strap in for one of motorsports’ biggest moments of the year, bringing children’s dreams to life on-track with the livery while simultaneously living out their own aspirations.
“What started with the idea of promoting women’s motorsport and trying to have more of us in there is basically now something much bigger than that,” Bovy said. “(It) is empowering women all across the world to stand up and to fight for what kind of dream they want to reach.”
(Lead image: Photos courtesy of Iron Dames; Design: Dan Goldfarb/The Athletic)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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