Neal Bates and Coral Taylor have been involved at the highest levels of rallying for more than two decades, so you’d imagine they are pretty accustomed to the stresses and strains involved, and you’d be right.
That is until their children, Harry Bates and Molly Taylor began rallying as well, and then they quickly realised that the challenge as a parent is far, far more complex than anything they’d ever experienced especially at the recent National Capital Rally where all four were competing, for the first time, simultaneously.
It proved to be an exceptional weekend for both Bates and Taylor families – Molly stood on the top step of the ARC podium, Harry alongside in third, while Neal & Coral won the Classics.
“I’m still a little stunned to tell the truth!” admitted Neal. “I’m so incredibly proud of Harry, but yeah very hard to imagine that he’d be on the podium in what is only his third ever rally.”
Neal said that even though he’d seen Coral go through the high’s and low’s of watching Molly compete over the years, he had no idea how much it would affect him until he was going through the very same thing with Harry.
“I found it difficult for sure. I’ve never found concentrating when in a rally car hard before, even running your own team, but this event I really was all over the place. The whole time as I was driving through the stages thinking ‘I hope Harry doesn’t cut there’ or ‘this is a really tricky corner, I hope he’s marked it in his notes’.”
“As a really driver you need to concentrate and listen to your notes, but as a parent I kept thinking about so much more than that, and it was incredibly hard,” added Neal.
Coral agreed, saying she’d noticed very early on in the rally that Neal wasn’t his usual focused self.
“As a parent you do worry about your children. That’s just part of being a parent,” Coral explained. “You worry about their safety and you worry about how they are feeling.”
This isn’t a new experience for Coral, with daughter Molly competing both locally and internationally for almost ten years. But she admits that the nerves do kick in when Molly is competing even after all that time.
“During the rally I watch the stage times and can feel my heart rate increasing until I see her time appear and know that she’s through the stage OK. It’s worse when we are competing in the same rally because I know exactly the roads she’s driving, I know where all the dangerous bits are and I’m hoping that she’s got them all marked,” said Coral.
For Bates the National Capital Rally was the first time he’d experienced the sensations Coral has been through many times before as a parent, with Harry making his ARC debut as a driver.
“I know Coral has been dealing with this for years, but she’s also very good at being able to block those thoughts out and focus 100% when the stage starts. On transports it’s a completely different situation though, she’s on her phone checking, wanting to know what’s going on, that Molly has cleared the stage.”
While Neal admitted to worrying about Harry’s performance on the stage, Coral said her main concern these days with Molly are the elements outside of the car.
“Mostly I worry about how she is feeling,” Coral said. “There are times when there is so much to be done just to get to the rally that I worry about her workload.”
“Over the years there have been rallies where maybe the stage times weren’t as good as she’d hoped, for one reason or another, and some people can be critical and I really take that personally. That’s probably the worst part, when someone is critical of your children – I worry about that!”
But on the flip side Coral said the feeling to be able to stand alongside Molly, as well as Neal and Harry, on the podium at the National Capital Rally was one of the highlights of her rally career.
“When the results come and you know she has earned the respect of her peers and you know just how hard she’s worked to do that, then that is such a great feeling. I feel so excited for her and very proud!”
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