FAcoat RALLY MONGOLIA 2019 INTERNATIONAL CROSS COUNTRY RALLY
「Onward to a Grassy Prairie Adventure」
This rally feels almost like a voyage at sea. It is a journey like the adventures of Sinbad traveling towards a flower paradise. Sand dunes attack like giant waves and beautiful blue lakes give off great visual appeal. This beautiful adventure is unfolding like an epic sea voyage that continues to the ends of the earth.
————–
FAcoat Rally Mongolia 2019 “Ever more beautiful, the Grassy Odyssey”
Rally Mongolia has changed! You might even say drastically. One example of this is the catering and bivouac system. Essential equipment you will need no longer includes a tent or even a sleeping bag.
But more than anything else, the biggest change in this rally is a shift from a tough competition rally to a beautiful rally. The top cross country rally experts around the world with nearly one voice call it, “The most beautiful grassy plain rally in the world.” These experts saying this include the likes of Gaston Rahier, Raymond Loizeaux, and Yoshimasa Sugawara.
However, the top rallyists know that these beautiful landscapes hide an intense, rugged course route. The quest to know these beautiful landscapes even further is the current Rally Mongolia. This is the 21st century where unknown wilderness has all but vanished. Yet Rally Mongolia is a route offering beautiful vast landscapes, stunning scenery and an awesome natural world that people can no longer find anywhere else.
After getting numerous requests we have set our sights on Khar Nuur for 2019. The lake there has a color like nothing you have seen in this world and you feel like you could keep looking at it forever. Here is where we want to once again attack the heights of Sugawara Pass which still remains closed.
We want to go a little farther into the hilly area of sand dunes spreading out west of Uliastai. These beautiful sand dunes were discovered by helicopter in 2018 while attempting to find all kinds of varied and interesting rally routes. We will have to wait until spring before knowing a route can be carved out here or not. Though this new route will be beautiful and appealing, it certainly won’t be easy!
OFFICE SSER ORGANISATION 1992-4 Minamikata, Toon, Ehime, 791-0301 Japan Tel +81-89-960-6905 / Fax +81-89-960-6906 E-Mail: support@sser.org
TOKYO OFFICE JAPAN RACING MANAGEMENT 2-29-6, Ebisu, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, 150-0013 Japan Tel +81-3-3440-5581 / Fax +81-3-3440-5583 E-Mail: teru@j-r-m.co.jp
MONGOLIA MONGOLIA AUTO MOTO FEDERATION
CORRESPONDENT
NORTH AMERICAN Lawrence Hacking http://overlandadventurerally.com/ lawrencehacking@gmail.com MONGOLIA Natsag Munkh-Amgalan munkhamgalann@yahoo.com
EUROPEAN Team Kaiser Thorsten Kaiser https://team-kaiser.de/ teamkaiser@gmx.de Karl.dersch@web.de
BEIJING PAUL B.Y.SHI http://www.chinaoverlandinfo.com paulbys@chinaoverlandinfo.com
SCHEDULE
Date
Content
Dec.25, 2018
closing date for Pre-entry CASE 1
Feb.25, 2019
closing date for Pre-entry CASE 2
Apr.25, 2019
closing date for Pre-entry CASE 3
Jul.1,2019
Closing of Final entries
Aug.9,2019
13:00~18:00
scrutineering day 1 participant from abroad
Aug.10,2019
10:00~16:30
scrutineering day 2
17:00~
Comprehensive briefing in Ulaanbaatar
Aug.11,2019
ETAP-1 400km ULAANBAATAR 8:00 Start
Aug.12,2019
ETAP-2 560km
Aug.13,2019
ETAP-3 500km
Aug.14,2019
ETAP-4 560km
Aug.15,2019
ETAP-5 500km
Aug.16,2019
ETAP-6 450km
Aug.17,2019
ETAP-7 450km
Aug.18,2019
ETAP-8 380km ULAANBAATAR(H) Goal
Aug.19,2019
17:00~ Awards ceremony closing ceremony
*The cruising distance is 280km
開催以来変わらぬ大会テーマは「Go beyond the Universe」星の彼方へ、そういう意味でもあり、それだけの意味でもない。宇宙とは、あなたの心と身体のことを言う。それを、超える。そこに震えるような感動、一生涯を共にする記憶として手に入れるのだ。これもまた草洋のオデュッセイア、その叙事詩の詩人になるのも主人公になるのも、あなただ。
The organizers of this year’s rally issued the following statement at the general briefing. “Some might think that our rally is dangerous, but in the rally this year no one had to be taken to the hospital or required emergency transportation. Now that is what can be called a beautiful rally!” Beautiful is not just a word reserved for scenic landscapes. Even tire ruts can be beautiful and the traces left after a rally starts show a way to leave things that makes it hard to believe it was a bivouac or a camp spot the night before. Of course not everything went so smoothly but all participants had a trash bag with them at the bivouac. And of course if you don’t take your lunch bag trash along with you the next morning then you won’t get your next lunch. There were strict rules like using pet bottle with numbers written on the caps and you get disqualified if your number is found in litter thrown away somewhere, but those rules weren’t needed.
Well then, the most obvious trend we could see this year was use of SXS or side-by-side vehicles. A total of nine SXS vehicles took part in this rally and delivered overwhelming performance. Race vehicles were hastily grouped into SXS, AUTO and MOTO but the SXS dominated the overall wins on the victory stand. Boldbaatar achieved a grand slam by being the first person to have won in each MOTO, AUTO and SXS division.
The fighting spirit award went to Team FA-coat, and the team win went to Team Husqvarna Japan. Each of them left a deep impression in this competition. Well then what exactly is the deep impression? What did the organizer’s statement achieve? All of that will be made clear via SNS of the rally participants.
Rally Mongolia 2018 was the 24th year that this rally was held. The upcoming year 2019 will make this a quarter century rally. Among all this, the global power balance will shift, Mongolia will make amazing progress and people’s feeling about things will change yet for many centuries to come the beautiful landscape of Mongolia will still keep visitors thunderstruck.
THESE BEAUTIFUL VAST OPEN PLAINS—HOW CAN WE DESCRIBE THEM TO YOU?
On this final day we all move on our own from the bivouac and head toward the group start point. The vast plains of the Gobi Desert make you doubt your own eyes and wonder if there is any place like it on the planet. Sand is mixed into a beautiful carpet of green. From skyward it looks like brownish-green but from ground level it looks dark green.
At the start signal from a helicopter we make a racing start along the beautiful green plains, trailing a huge cloud of smoke and dust. It seems like some kind of ritual to drive away the harsh days behind us. At this final SS, #103 Nakano headed towards the final goal still beset with mechanical problems. At the parade and pre-award ceremony, when things finally quieted down after the huge racket of the champagne fight and the noise of the band, #103 quietly made it to the goal. He was treated to big cheers came from the staff who had been waiting all that time and with the finish medal hanging from his neck the rally finally came to a close. It was truly the perfect finishing touch to the rally.
「DAY OF OUR TRIUMPHANT RETURN—A DEEP AND REMAINING MEMORY」
Today is a mass group start. We race towards the shimmering heat of the great plains where our happy goal awaits! Do our lives up to now, our course up to now, and all kinds of objects and things, all add up to some kind of special feeling? On these grassy plains we probably sense and experience our own lives under the perfect starry skies of the desert.
BEAUTIFUL RIVERS, HISTORIC RUINS, A BLUE SKY LIKE OUTER SPACE!
This is ETAP7, the final stage of the rally, Today we headed for the bivouac site situated between valleys to the south of the town of Sayhan Ovoo near the group (mass) start that has become a big feature of this rally in recent years. Today’s heat makes us feel for the first time that this is really the southern Gobi desert. Here we see the sad ruins of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery called a lamasery that is a place of deep emotions. This is a place showing the extent of religious persecution by the old Soviet regime or namely communism. Why weren’t they more severely criticized for what they did here? That question haunts us as we view the ruins.
At this stage of the rally the Can-am X3 driven by Boldbattar is running perfectly and at a slightly slower pace. But the same model driven by Matsuno and Tashiro has had multiple problems that have dropped it low in the race standings. The rally through the beautiful Gobi desert this year has one day remaining. Tomorrow we will set off with a group start and make our triumphal return to Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator).
Leaving the bivouac we start out on the SS heading towards the dunes. The goal of today’s course was once a city of Tibetan Buddhist learning that was formerly sacred religious grounds. Over the past several years the rally has always headed to this area and is within easy walking distance yet it seems impossible to find the time to go see it. These remains are a stark reminder of religious oppression in the times since the Russian revolution. Today we face the ever-changing Gobi Desert route. This is the final phase of the rally.