FOR many years, Fiona Newnham has been scoring for Ventnor Cricket Club and is currently the first team manager.
She has sat in score boxes all around the south of England — and even at Lords.
It would be fascinating to know how many of the opposition scorers actually realised they were sat next to Fiona Brothers, a former world record holder.
On water, she was once the fastest woman on earth in her inshore powerboat. Her top speed was 130 mph.
On first meeting Fiona back in 1992, I quickly realised how lucky I was to be in her company.
She’d had an horrendous accident at Bodymoor Heath Water, near Birmingham, in 1983, and was extremely lucky not to lose her life.
Powerboating was a dangerous sport and six of her contemporaries did not have the same good fortune.
Inshore powerboat racing all began when Fiona and her younger brother bought a class 3 boat with an 850cc engine, for weekend fun, in their home county of Gloucestershire — away from their stressful day jobs in London.
They entered local competitions just for the pure enjoyment of it all.
At the end of that season they had both qualified for licenses to race anywhere in Britain.
That did create one major problem, however, as Fiona explained: “It was really crunch time and we couldn’t afford two boats.
“He could never go quite as fast as I could — mainly because he was heavier than me and that makes quite a difference.
“He’d also just got married.”
That was in 1979. In the following year, Fiona raced in the intermediate class.
In 1981, Fiona was racing on the world F1 circuit.
Was she a natural racer?
“No, not really, but I was quite logical and could work things out,” Fiona adds.
“When you got into it, there was no doubt it was mostly seat of pants time.
“You also raced by instinct and that was the only way you could win.”
Fiona could often beat the opposition before they even got onto the water.
She was gifted at being able to psyche the others up and was such a fierce competitor. Often the boats were just a few feet apart, unlike the seagoing variety.
It was not a glamorous sport and finding sponsors was such a necessity, but she did have some luck with major companies.
After a racing weekend, it was back to being a food buyer for Marks and Spencer at its head office.
She bought dairy produce and fresh meat and, at one time, had a weekly budget of £1 million for nationwide distribution.
For Fiona, 1981 was especially memorable because she set a world record on a stretch of water near Nottingham.
She was representing England that weekend and the racing finished on the bank holiday Monday.
The other competitors went out for drinks to celebrate, but she went to bed early, as the following morning, at 5am, she was going for a world record.
She broke it with an average speed of 116.72mph.
This went unbroken for ten years and even Sir Donald Campbell’s daughter, Gina, failed in several attempts.
The following year, Fiona, who was the only lady qualified to race in F1 world inshore powerboat racing, was in with a real chance of becoming the world champion.
Four of them were in the running. She fancied her chances against the three men.
It was on the River Seine in Paris. The winner would clinch it.
Fiona was going well in the heats in the final event of the season, but it was not to be and a breakdown put her out of the competition.
It was still a great year and she had the bonus of marrying an Islander.
She had known Keith Newnham many years earlier, but they met up again in 1981 — on the Isle of Wight.
Sadly, Keith, one of the nicest guys you could ever wish to meet, died in 2018. He did such a lot for both Ventnor Cricket Club and Ventnor Football Club.
In 1983, at Bodymoor Heath, Fiona won the first heat of the championship, but she had a slow start to the second race.
“I had to quickly overtake the rest of the field and was very close to the speeding boat of Jonathan Jones, who later became a world champion,” explained Fiona.
“His boat started to lift and cartwheel, and once that happens, all the air around your boat gets displaced and mine went after him.
“I did a pancake roll and the boat landed upside down with me in it. That’s all I could remember.”
Fiona fractured her skull and fragments of the bone cut the nerves to her face. She was unconscious for 36 hours.
Luckily, she was treated by a specialist in nerve disorders in Zurich and, eventually, she made a good recovery and overcame speech problems.
Fiona was back racing four months later, but now, in hindsight, she admits it was too soon.
She did go for one more season, before she deciding to retire.
In more recent years, Fiona has become famous as a cricket scorer — the highlight being when she scored for South Africa at Lords in a one-day international against England.
When watching Ventnor play a Southern League match at Newclose, I marvelled at her skills.
Fiona found time to beautifully record the details in the scorebook, acknowledge the umpire’s signals, update the ground’s electronic scoreboard, answer phone calls from the press and update the scores on the Ventnor website.
I was once told when she was driving the Ventnor team minibus she drove over her precious laptop.
I’ve never been brave enough to ask her if this was true.
I do know she drives rather quickly when trying to get the Red Funnel car ferry back after a mainland match.
Apparently Fiona, who retired from the Island’s NHS Trust in 2019, has had to learn all about gardening, since Keith died.
Just between us, she thought she had a lovely gladioli in her newly weeded flower bed — only to find out it was a wild onion!
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