from:
http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNation/Today/Sports/Sports161220037.html
East Africa Safari Rally
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
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Uninformed public show little interest
By PETER NJENGA
The leading drivers among 38 survivors in the East African Classic Safari Rally are finding it strange going past Kenyans along the route who are unaware of the event.
Yet on Wednesday last week, briefly excited Kenyans turned out in large numbers between Mombasa and Kajiado to cheer the participants.
The wananchi were apparently happy to see an event, modelled in the original East African Safari ? unlike the world World Rally Championship which was held on the floor of the Rift Valley in sparsely populated areas ? return to East Africa. But Kenyans are simply confused because they are not well informed about the rally.
This rally was a golden opportunity to win back the goodwill of ordinary Kenyans and corporate sponsors. But the organisers appear to have failed to avoid the same path others followed in killing the once-famous Safari Rally; kicked out of the World Rally Championship last year due to lack of local support and poor organisation.
By Thursday fans of the ongoing Classic Safari Rally were calling media houses for unavailable updates on the competition. Reaching the organisers on telephone was and has been impossible especially in areas not covered by the mobile phone service providers.
Neither have the organisers bothered to provide information from a permanent headquarters. Their official website is always 48 hours late.
With a healthy field of 53 starters from 17 countries the rally deserved better publicity and exposure here and abroad. The Government had declared its support as one way of promoting tourism. But halfway the 2,500km journey, though competition has been tight, people cannot see anything Kenya in the Safari.
In Uganda where a local rally attracts as many of 20,000 spectators, Ugandans stayed away in absence of any of their home bred drivers in the Classic Safari to identify with.
Similar complaints by Kenyans who could not afford paying Sh630,000 entry fee has made the whole thing appear as if it is a private function.
Without a headquarters from where to access information, the other alternative was to have a media co-ordinator inside the light aircraft organisers hired exclusively for use by foreign journalists from specialised magazines since they did not accredit the local media corps.
But despite the galaxy of foreign Press, none of their reports seem to appear in well known television and radio stations; very unlike the WRC Safari that advertised Kenya in all the leading media outlets. It remains to be seen where Kenya's name and that of her tourism destinations, is benefiting in terms of publicity, from the ongoing Classic Safari.
The organisers do not even seem to have bothered to introduce themselves to valuable news agencies such as Associated Press, Reuters, BBC or CNN. It is likely, though, that had these agencies been on board, they would be facing the same severe difficulties of getting information about the rally.
It is for such reasons of de-alienating motorsports from Kenyan people that the sport is actually dying in the country.
