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Regulations Available!
Kenmare Gears up for Historic Rally
Its Back (and it has changed!)
Click here for the Event Regulations Kenmare Gears up for Historic Rally
With just four weeks to go to the Kenmare Historic Stages Rally entries are coming in on a daily basis and Clerk of the Course Kevin Flannery is satisfied that all the groundwork has been completed for a resumption of the unique Historic Stages Rally, which was last run by the Killarney Club in 2007.
The move to Kenmare for the 2009 event sees a return of rallying to the town which from 1973 to 1979 could justifiably claim to be the rallying capital of Kerry, with the Circuit of Munster based there over the June Bank Holiday each year.
The Circuit of Ireland had been cancelled at short notice in 1972 because of the security situation in Northern Ireland and, in the absence of a local motor club, the Limerick Motor club, the second oldest motor club in Ireland, was asked to put on a replacement event.
The Killarney Easter Rally, which used most of the stages in the area which had been planned for the Circuit of Ireland, was led throughout the event by Billy Coleman until he retired with mechanical trouble in the last stage, leaving Cathal Curley to emerge as eventual winner.
The Circuit of Ireland returned in 1973 but the Limerick Club had seen the great potential of stages such as Liberty Hall, Sheen River, Inchimore, Borlin and others and so returned each year until 1979 to base the two day Circuit of Munster in Kenmare.
In some years the weekends rallying extended to three days, with the main rally on Saturday and Sunday and a separate single stage event for survivors of the festivities on Monday. Inchimore, which is the final stage of this year’s Historic Rally, was invariably used for the single stage on the grounds that it starts on the edge of the town and that neither cars nor crews were in any fit condition to travel further afield!
Indeed there are those among the more senior of the rallying fraternity who claim that the Circuit of Munster was really a four day event in that it was common practice for crews on their way to Kenmare late at night to unload the rally cars from the trailers at Torc Waterfall, just outside Killarney and then go for a blast over Molls gap to Kenmare.
Those were the days when an almost total absence of night time traffic on the Gap made that possible, with the odd errant deer as the only obstacle to high speed motoring. Certainly not a practice to be attempted or condoned in modern times!
When the newly formed Killarney and District Motor Club ran the first Rally of the Lakes in December 1979 the Limerick Club moved the Circuit of Munster back to Limerick, Clare and Tipperary, but the Rally of the Lakes incorporated most of the stages around Kenmare in the early Lakes routes, before ever increasing spectator numbers eventually forced a shift to the more accessible stages to the north and east of Killarney. Some of the great classics in the Beara Peninsula, such as Cods Head, Ardgroom and the Healy Pass still feature in the Lakes some years but in deference to the stage residents, club policy is that stages used by the Lakes in May are not normally repeated in the Historic rally of the same year.
If for example the Lakes does not use Cods Head etc in 2010, then those stages are likely to feature in the Historic Rally 2010, with some of this years Historic stages possibly forming part of the 2010 International route. 2009 Kenmare Historic Stages Rally
It is with renewed vigour that Killarney and district Motor Club has gone back to the drawing board to get the Historic Stages Rally back on track after its lay off last year.
Known this year as The Kenmare Historic Stages Rally the whole event has moved just down the road from Killarney to Kenmare.
Kenmare Town is this year’s title sponsor in association with The Kingdom Newspaper as media sponsors, Clerk of the Course for the event Kevin Flannery thanked Kenmare Town and The Kingdom Newspaper on behalf of Killarney and District Motor Club, the event organisers, and stated how pleased he was to have them on board this year. The rally will be a counting round of the 2009 Southern 4 Championship (Historic Section) and will bring significant tourism business to Kerry and Kenmare.
Kevin along with help from a dedicated committee have put together a route with a total of seven stages. The route consists of 96 stage kilometres and 80 road kilometres all run in daylight with centralised service.
Some classic stages have been revived by the club which have not been used since the early 80’s, these stages were used in such classic rallies as The Circuit of Ireland, The Circuit of Munster and the early days of The Rally of the Lakes.
Rally Headquarters for the event will be the Brook Lane Hotel. Action starts on Saturday 5th of December when Recce and Scrutiny for the event will take place. The rally will start from the square in Kenmare on Sunday morning and the first car is due at the finish ramp again at the square at approximately 3.30pm that evening.
A full field of 150 cars is expected for the final event of the year which attracts competitors from all over Ireland with a good number of crews coming from overseas also. In addition there have been a number of enquiries from crew based in mainland Europe
Regs and updates will be available on For further information Kevin can be contacted on 0876451400. Why not put The Kenmare Historic Rally in your diary, it is certain that few will want to miss what has invariably been a great social and sporting weekend.
You will not be disappointed. New Base & New Stages for the 2009 Historic Rally
With the support of the Brook lane Hotel, and the Kenmare Chamber of Commerce, Killarney & District Motor Club's Historic Rally is moving to Kenmare for 2009.
Using a 1 day format, the route will consist of 4 New Stages (3x2 + 1) giving 100Kms of stages in a compact loop close to the town, with centralised service area.
The last time these roads were used for Rallying was the Circuit of Ireland in the 1970s!
More details will be available in the next few weeks.
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