Similarities between Safari and Acropolis rallies

The EKO WRC Acropolis Rally concluded on Sunday as Kenyans McRae Kimathi and Mwangi Kioni shared the limelight with top drivers.

The rally saw Hyundai score their first top three positions in the FIA World Rally Championship led by the overall winner Thierry Neuville from Belgium.

Acropolis Rally is one of the oldest events in the 50-year-old WRC. It lost its WRC status in 2013 but was re-admitted last year.

They have borrowed a lot from Kenya as the EKO WRC Acropolis Rally is a state project. It has offered financial guarantees to the WRC commercial rights holder WRC Promoter and resources including use of the Olympics Stadium, also the headquarters of many sporting federations, as a central point of managing sports.

The government has also purchased rally cars and equipment to sustain motorsport as a going concern.

We can compare Greece with Kenya as both countries do not have a high number of R5 and Rally 3 rally cars.

One would be forgiven to think that the Greek national championship events structure has been borrowed from Kenya.

Drivers from both countries sustain rallying by using affordable cars like the Subaru and Mitsubishi Group N cars and attracting similar numbers of competitors.

Like in Kenya last year, the organisers in Greece were determined to put up a great show, and they did not disappoint, coming up with a demanding route concept.

This included a Super Special Stage inside the Olympic Stadium. Laying out a 1.95km circuit complete with a six inches concrete foundation dressed with Grade A1 four inch-tarmac road was an impressive piece of civil engineering.

The multi million dollars work was done in record time for Greece to showcase its country to a global television audience in one of the many ways the country is using major cultural and sporting events to promote its tourism which attracted 34 million visitors last year.

The two-hour showcase by the 69 competitors was watched by a record 60,000 paying spectators who cheered on each race by two drivers competing side by side like a goal scored in a football match.

Everyone who attended returned home with good memories of Greece, a country with historical and sentimental appeal as the birthplace of the ancient Olympics, and Athens where the first modern Olympics were held in 1896.

Greece has used the same template like the WRC Safari Rally Project which is funded by the state and commercial sponsors KCB Bank, Kenya Airways and Toyota Kenya.

Greece also acted as the breakthrough for Kenyan drivers. Kimathi and Kioni have demonstrated that given an opportunity, Kenyans have the talent to take their sport to the rest of the world.

Both remind us of drivers who excelled at home, prompting major factory teams to invite them for selected events in the WRC.

They included past Safari winners Joginder Singh and Shekhar Mehta. Others were Vic Preston Junior, Mike Kirkland, Patrick Njiru, Karan Patel and Ian Duncan.

Kimathi has driven in five WRC events in Sweden, Croatia, Estonia, Portugal and Greece, races carefully selected to offer him a chance to drive in varying conditions.

His team mates Jeremiah Wahome, Hamza Anwar and Maxine Wahome were in Greece courtesy of their sponsor Safaricom to collect some competition parts for their Ford Fiesta cars and learn the demands of the WRC.

They described the whole experience as humbling and an eye opener especially Anwar and Maxine.

Wahome, who has raced in Europe on the tarmac circuits, said he saw what he has also experienced in Europe where he honed his skills as a driver a few years ago.

The young Kenyans will be in Rwanda next week for the Africa Rally Champion Mount Gorilla Rally as Kenya continues to showcase its talent development programme.

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