Autosport’s David Evans recently lamented about the lack of mainstream media that the World Rally Championship receives.
Even after Ott Tanak’s incredible “TiTANAK” accident, when his car crashed into a dam, there was little coverage of the incident outside the motorsport press. Not even graphic footage from inside and outside the car seemed to help the WRC’s cause.
Our own ECB Bullbars Australian Rally Championship suffered from a similar lack of interest last weekend, on what was one of the most momentous occasions in local rallying’s long history.
Molly-Taylor's stellar drive saw her become the first woman to win a heat of the Australian Rally Championship.For the first time ever, a woman won a Heat of the ARC, with Molly Taylor surprising everyone (including herself) to lead home a quality field on day one of the Quit Forest Rally.
It was an incredible performance on her return to the championship. Not only was she driving the ex-Scott Pedder Renault Clio for the first time, she had a new co-driver in the left-hand seat, with Bill Hayes calling the pacenotes.
Make no mistake, this was a brilliant victory. Molly is widely regarded as the best female rally driver in the world at present, but surely nobody expected her to upstage both Eli AND Simon Evans to take the heat win. Second overall for the event was a remarkable performance.
But somehow most of the media overlooked it. A quick Google news search showed stories on Molly in the Canberra Times, The West Australia and on Speedcafe and RallySport Magazine, but no other major news outlets picked the story up.
On the other hand, in the last 24 hours alone, stories on Gary Ablett were featured in the Brisbane Times, ABC Online, The West Australian, TripleM Sydney and the Herald Sun. The AFL season hasn’t even started, so it’s clear where the media’s priorities lie.
Yet that was only half the ‘opportunity lost’.
Also battling for the lead in the Forest Rally were two brothers with no less than six Australian Rally Championship titles between them.
In the white corner was Eli, a two-time champion driving a factory-backed Citroen. In the red corner was Simon, the winner of four titles, and returning to the sport in a car that was formerly driven by his brother!
Surely there’s a story in that! Apparently not if you take the mainstream media’s interest as any indication.
The enthralling battle between Simon (pictured) and Eli Evans is one that should have widely reported.This is nothing new, and there’s no easy fix. The ARC media team are doing a good job in sending out regular press releases, but as Dallas Dogger’s article last week strongly stated, we need to build on the personalities within rallying, and not just on the battles won and lost.
Other major sports have a media representative on the phone to radio and TV stations pushing their news stories and doing everything within their power to get their sport the publicity it so rightly deserves. Rallying needs to do the same thing.
Sending a press release via email and thinking the job is done is no longer good enough. A follow-up phone call might be all it takes for rallying to go from being of no interest, to of some interest.
The punters want their news delivered now, not hours after an event finishes or the next day. Social media has proven that, and our attention span for information is now extremely short. Once you’ve read a snippet on Facebook or Twitter you feel you know what happened, and you move on to the next thing in your life, whatever that may be.
There’s no doubt that media coverage is an ever-evolving medium, and sports – including rallying – need to move with the times.
But let’s not forget the performance of Molly Taylor, or the intriguing battle between the Evans brothers. Our sport is exciting, vibrant and does have personalities and stories within stories. We should be singing it from the tree tops.
- Peter Whitten
Photos: John Doutch
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