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Happy New Year! Now, petrol heads, and those who never saw a World Rally Championship before, it’s time to fire up your imagination. From July 16 to 19, motorsports fans will mingle with world rally champion Ott Tanak and his peers as they steer their Sh100 million plus rally cars on the roads of Nairobi, Kiambu and Nakuru counties, rising in excess of 200 kilometres per hour.
The return of the Safari Rally to the World Rally Championship series on these dates will be a triumph for motorsport in Africa and should provide an economic windfall for hosts Kenya.
The Safari will put Kenya on the world map of racing, earning enviable spots on commercial news segments of leading leaner television stations in the world to complement the Kenya Open Golf Championship in March and the World Under-20 Championships in July, both in Nairobi. In total, over 150 million foreigners will see our country with the Safari Rally’s coverage hitting global screens.
So important is the Safari Rally that World Automobile Federation (FIA) President Jean Todt had to announce the return of the iconic rally in televised global address, followed by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s speech.
It is a great year in the making.
In between, there will be trials for the Tokyo Olympics, the sevens rugby world series, big city marathons, among others.
However, the Safari Rally remains the jewel in the crown of Kenyan sport, and is so anticipated globally that, already, hotels are fully booked around competition routes in Nairobi, Nakuru and Naivasha.
And factory teams from Ford, Hyundai and Toyota are agonizing over the results of the torturous journey to ignominy or success.
More so Ford, the defending WRC Safari Rally champion, who are not so sure of what results to expect since the late Colin McRrae and Nicky Grist handed the manufacturer their last Safari win 18 years ago.
But as five-time Safari Rally champion Carl Tundo noted last year, maybe Kenya’s best may sit out to watch how the best do it.
Tundo was not on denial that the first 12 positions will be filled by the best in the world. The next 12 slots are reserved for World Rally Championship ‘B’ seeds.
Our guys will only start from position 25.
But, hey, the Safari is the Safari, unforgiving and ruthless even in its modern day format. Look at this: In 2019, Manvir Baryan was nosing the victor’s champagne, but 50 kilometres from the finish, his Skoda Fabia ingested fine dust and scuttled his victory.
This July will also be the best month for Wanjiku since the 1985 UN Women’s Decade Global Conference. Industry’s players estimate that between 2,000 and 100,000 fans will either come to Kenya for the Safari or tour later, leaving an estimated Sh9 billion in our economy. We should be proud.
