Internal squabbles, egoism, commercial stakes and politics in a corrupt motor racing set-up have brought the sport into disrepute with more revelations expected to surface following last Sunday’s calamity at the famous Fox Hill Supercross that gained notoriety with the deaths of seven persons including an eight year old girl witnessing the highly patronized event in Diyatalawa.
An investigation conducted by the Sunday Observer has blown the lid off what has become one of the country’s most unsupervised sports associations where a free-for-all was taking place while the safety of ticket holders to witness racing events have never been taken into account.
Designed by a German expert Hans Ralf in the early 1990s, the track at Fox Hill and the races had been a trouble-free event in its infancy and subsequent years under an organization called the Sri Lanka Association of Racing Drivers and Riders known as SLARDAR that down the years split into two halves gradually paving the way for another entity known as Sri Lanka Automobile Sports (SLAS) to enter the scene and were responsible for the running of last Sunday’s races.
Key decision makers at SLAS had only a record for conducting tarmac or road races with very little or no knowledge of the gravel track at Fox Hill suited for a Supercross that resulted in none calling the shots at the top on the day, it has been revealed.
The deadly crash brought to light the lapses on the part of SLAS with the most serious being the failure of officials responsible for watering the track to prevent clouds of dust from blinding the drivers.
“People with no knowledge of how to run motor races on a gravel track took charge and made the wrong decisions.
“When they should have prepared and watered the track to prevent the dust being stirred up for a high powered race involving cars in the 1500 cc category, they took care of minor events that did not need watering,” said Geesha Munasinghe, who is considered the country’s most knowledgeable and veteran racing correspondent who was at the scene of Sunday’s carnage.
Having covered the inaugural Fox Hill races in 1993 and was present at all subsequent events during a 25-year incident-free period, Munasinghe told the Sunday Observer he saw plenty of new faces which he described as aliens at the Supercross among the organizers of the event and had some kind of a premonition something could go wrong.
“They were totally unprepared for a meet of this nature not knowing that their ignorance can make the worst happen”, said Munasinghe.
The Fox Hill track comes under the maintenance of the army as part of their Academy complex and is also used as a firing range before and after the races raising more questions on what part the military could have played to prevent the tragedy.
Military personnel have already commenced a probe into the circumstances that led to the seven deaths that marked Sri Lanka’s worst loss of life at a sporting event, but whether the report will be made public could be another challenge for investigators as racing officials, the army and commercial backers of Fox Hill will find it very difficult to convince outsiders their hands are clean.
Questions have also being raised on why the races started after a delay of more than one hour later than the scheduled start at 8.30 am which did not contribute to minimizing the dust.
For the record a motor racing event in the country can rake in big money as corporate companies rush in to grab advertising slots taking into account heavy spectator patronage to promote their goods and services while pumping in the finances which become the property of organizers who also gain from gate money.
According to a racing official, there has never been a compilation of an accounts statement showing the profits made at competitions in the country that unlike other sporting events don’t present winners with prize money.
“Racers and competitors don’t mind the absence of prize money. For them it is about racing even at the cost of lives and settling driver rivalry on the tack”, he said on condition that his name will not be revealed for obvious reasons as he was once an office-bearer of SLARDAR that became the first to hit the jackpot from Fox Hill income.
The Sunday Observer also learns that there has been reverberating calls to blacklist Fox Hill or abandon the race track until spectator safety can be guaranteed or adequate crowd arrangements put in place conforming to international safety requirements at motor sports.
Some of the viewing positions at Fox Hill are within touching distance of the track and with the craze for capturing cell-phone photographs for Facebook, spectators according to observers sport a tendency to encroach on the narrow borders jostling for what they think are prized shots.
One eye-witness at the scene said some racing officials feared a backlash at the hands of angry villagers enraged over the deaths and had to be given military guidance to exit the venue.
Motor racing enthusiasts may also have to grapple with the thought of patronizing a venue that snuffed out the lives of seven people whose deaths could have been prevented with the right People in the right Places.
