Beauty and the Big Air Monster Truck: Who is Krysten Anderson
Do you love monster truck racing? Do you love beautiful, relentless women who sacrifice it all for racing? Then you’ll love Krysten Anderson.
Krysten Anderson is the first and only female driver of Monster Jam’s famous Grave Digger monster truck — and a Guinness World Record holder. She developed a passion for all sorts of motorsports such as off-road racing, dirt track racing, truck racing, and monster trucks.
Family ties and a pressure to compete, Krysten evokes the laws of gravity physics — and makes monster moves that will truly blow your head gasket. She competes in adrenaline-charged racing featuring the most famous trucks in the world.
Who is Krysten Anderson?
As a driver for the Monster Jam/Grave Digger team, Krysten performs at a high level. She is in a league of her own. She is the only daughter of monster truck, Monster Jam and Grave Digger legend, Dennis Anderson.
She’s the sibling of Adam and Ryan Anderson, both of whom are Monster Jam World Champions, along with their dad.
“I had a very rough first year, I’m not going to lie,” Anderson states. “It was rough for me. I was brand new. I was a rookie. I was driving Grave Digger, which is basically the most iconic truck in monster truck history or Monster Jam history. I had the pressure of being an Anderson and my dad and my brothers had always brought the show home all the time. They were always some of the top competitors. I was like, man, I’ve got to be good because I’m an Anderson. I’ve got to be good because I’m driving Grave Digger and everybody wants Grave Digger to do good. I’m also out here representing all of the girls.”
Krysten went on to say, “I was the first and only female to ever drive Grave Digger and I’m the only female Anderson. I feel like women in motorsports have a lot to prove or we feel like we have a lot to prove to show that we belong here or that we have a place in motorsports. I always put an immense amount of pressure on myself anyways, and then on top of that, the fans put a lot of pressure on me too. Grave Digger and Monster Jam have the most passionate and loyal fans amongst motorsports, but they can be pretty painfully honest sometimes.”
How She Got Her Start in Truck Racing
Close to her father’s 35th anniversary of driving Grave Digger, a seat opened up for Grave Digger. The team was going to add another arena tour to the Monster Jam fleet and to the circuit and this required a new Grave Digger driver.
“Monster Jam reached out to my dad and my dad told me about what they wanted to do. I realized this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a lot of people. There’s a lot of people that work very hard to chase their dreams and become famous NASCAR drivers or monster truck drivers or whatever it is. I would be so stupid not to reap the benefits of this path that my dad had paved for me. He had a huge foot in the door for me. This was an opportunity that I didn’t want to look back at and say, ‘dang, I should have done that,” stated Krysten.
“I had been around them, involved with them and sat in them my entire life, but I had never sat in the seat, turned the engine on and actually drove it before until that point,” she indicated. “I didn’t even know if I had it in me. My dad has created such a legacy and such an awesome career. My brothers, they came out swinging – both of them are going on 10 and 15 years of having a really awesome career. They’re all world champions. I was like, ‘man, I don’t even know if I have it in me. Is it even in my blood?”
Krysten continued by talking about equality amongst drivers, “Within Monster Jam, we’re not men and women in the sport, we’re drivers and we’re competitors and that’s it. There’s no female, there’s no male. It’s just us. The females compete on the same platform, in the same competition, in the same trucks, with the same amount of time as the males doing the sport. I think that’s awesome because it’s all an equal playing field. When you put the helmet on, we’re competitors and it doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a guy in the other lane against you, you don’t want them to win – you want to win. I think that it’s great that Monster Jam has created this space for us females to show the guys what we got and that we do belong here and that we are tough competitors.”
Want to learn more about Krysten, Get the Inside Story on Krysten Anderson.
