Sport impacts us at every level of our being: body, mind, soul and spirit. Sports validates our in-built competitive nature, it engages the mind, whether you’re a participant or a spectator, sports touches the very depths of the human experience. World-class athletes continue to demonstrate the fundamental nature of competition by giving us the most inspired performances on the planet, and we applaud their stunning athleticism. But cheering them on isn’t gratification enough.
Sportspeople, like people in any other profession, derive their living from sports. But in Kenya, that often isn’t the case. Most of them are inadequately funded. They don’t receive much financial support from the government or sponsors. Therefore, many of Kenya’s finest athletes cannot take up sport as their sole profession and have to resort to other means to fund their sporting interests.
Sports is not a lucrative profession for most Kenyans, especially for a sport such as rallying, which is disappointing given rallying’s colourful history in Kenya. The Safari Rally was first held from May 27 to June 1, 1953 as the East African Coronation Safari through Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika as part of the celebration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In 1960, it was renamed the East African Safari Rally until the name was changed again to Safari Rally in 1974. In its formative years, the Safari Rally was dubbed the ‘world’s toughest rally’ because of the sheer endurance required to compete in it.
The Safari Rally’s notoriously tough conditions required cars to be adapted to cope with the intense courses lasting 3,100 miles of bush road from start to the finish line. The Safari Rally attracted audiences from all over the world, gaining its reputation as an endurance event; the rally gave rise to the Unsinkable Seven, a group of drivers and co- drivers who managed to survive to finish in the unusually difficult rallies of 1963 and 1968. The sport soon became a regular Easter holiday celebration, so much so that Patrick Njiru, Jonathan Toroitich, Joginder Singh, Kenjiro Shinozuka, Ian Duncan and Shekar Mehta were household names all over the country.
Yet, despite having an indelible mark on the hearts of several Kenyans, motor sports is not given the nurturing and attention it deserves. The Safari Rally was part of the World Rally Championship calendar for many years until it was excluded after 2002 due to lack of funding and proper organisation in 2003. Ever since this fall from grace, corporates and the government are not eagerly forthcoming with funding and local sports bodies are paralysed by corrupt practices, amongst a bevy of other problems.
We sat down and spoke to Kimaru Boit, a 26 year old Kenyan rally driver about his experiences. Kimaru got into the rally scene first as a navigator in 2014 and only started racing professionally in 2015. His first race was the Eldoret Rally; Kimaru and his navigator are both from the area and raced under the moniker ‘Wakale Wawili’ (two Kalenjins). They did not conclude the race in Eldoret but made quite a mark in their hometown—their name and brand really brought out the locals from the area who were proud to embrace homegrown rally drivers.
Kimaru is a trained pilot and works as a freelance pilot. He developed a passion for the rally at a very young age and rallying became a bonding experience between he and his father—a great rally enthusiast in his own right. Kimaru explains that Kenya has a great rally scene, with a championship circuit that sees participating drivers tour the whole country. However, not many Kenyans pursue rallying enthusiastically. Not only is it a high pressure sport (both physically and mentally) to get into, it’s very costly.
One can take up rallying as their primary profession, but this is only possible through sponsorship. Kimaru is trained as a pilot, and freelancing is what has enabled him to finance his rally aspirations. Kimaru informs us that rally drivers do not receive any kind of payment or incentives from the governing board of the sport. The Kenya Motorsport Federation or the rally title sponsor Kenya Commercial Bank do not offer winners of races any prize money, all funding that goes towards the sport goes to the governing body, regardless of the fact that each competitor in a race pays an entrance fee of up to 14,000 KES per race. Kimaru is still looking for sponsors and hopes to have found some by June in order to compete at the same level as other drivers.
Despite such challenges Kimaru has a great passion for the sport of rally racing. He converted and built his personal car into a rally car, a Toyota Celica, though this isn’t his prefered racing car. He finished third at the Kajiado Rally in a Mitsubishi Evo 6, and due to that race, Kimaru is now ranked second on the rally championship table in the group S category. He owes this success to the Kenya Racing Team garage which he raced under. The garage was started by the late Ben Muchemi, an accomplished rally driver. (Most rally workshops are owned by former rally drivers, current rally drivers and mechanics who have been around the rally scene.) Kimaru is a close friends of one of Ben Muchemi’s sons, who was kind enough to provide him with one of their cars to race in.
The challenge that many Kenyan drivers face is that corporates seem to have more faith in foreign drivers who are perceived to be more experienced than Kenyan drivers. Kimaru thinks corporates can benefit greatly from sponsoring local drivers. “If more corporates sponsor drivers in the rally, their visibility will increase in markets they may have not considered possible, due to the fact that the rally circuit travels all over the country,” he says. For instance Kabras, a sugar company based in Western Kenya, sponsors three cars in the championship, a move which is making quite an impact and creating visibility for their brand.
Rallying is a high pressure sport that takes a toll on a driver and if they don’t have a good support system it can destroy them, many drivers needs counselling from time to time. It’s advisable that one goes into the sport as part of a team or garage and not solo. Next major race is the Safari Rally in June, this race counts for double points in the championship.
