Rally great is on the road again

By SANDY MYHRE

You wouldn't read about it. In fact, no one has because former the world rally champion, Sweden's Stig Blomquist, is on the has slipped so quietly into living in New Zealand he could almost be accused of being lost.

At an age when most of us are nervously sweating about Retirement Commission advertising, Blomquist seems to be more active in his laid-back way than ever.

Technically he lives in Auckland with his New Zealand-born wife, Kim, and their two children.

But but a peripatetic lifestyle means he is spending an average of about three weeks in Auckland at any given time before he's off campaigning elsewhere.

This can range from test driving a Puma for Ford of Britain, testing for Skoda - which is owned by Volkswagen - teaching a rally driver how to do it in the Ukraine, or (in October) competing in a race of champions event in Spain, organised by the legendary French woman rally driver, Michelle Mouton. He's done an odd bit of truck racing, too.

Now he's to compete for the Teams Cup in the Group N division of the World Rally Championship in a Mitsubishi Evo Lancer.

His co-driver is Anne Ceone, a Venezuelan now resident in Spain. Their first race will be the British RAC Rally in November.

To the inevitable question of why someone with his achievements wants to do this at 54, Blomquist says simply it is what he knows.

Besides, "there doesn't seem to be the young drivers coming through like there was 20 years ago."

Blomquist won the World Rally Championship in an Audi Quattro in 1984, the same year he won the New Zealand rally.

He then switched to Ford, successfully campaigning an RS200 until his so-called retirement from the sport in the early nineties.

So-called because he's barely been away from a competition car since.

In June this year Blomquist and his Australian co-driver Ben Rainsford, in a Ford Capri V8, won the gruelling London-Sydney marathon, an event designed to re-enact the glory days of long-distance rallying.

The cars were pre-1970 and the drivers more so, but the calibre of the field included former Finnish rally great Hannu Mikkola and Mouton, so the demands on competitors in the 32-day, 16,700 kilometre odyssey were unquestioned.

Blomquist had driven in the six-day East African Safari as a works employee but the London-Sydney was his first ultra-long-distance event.

"The car was very quick and comfortable and the co-driver was easy going, so it was not that difficult," he said.

He doesn't do any specific training either. "I just drive." His professional reputation accounts for the continued offers of work.

Indeed, Blomquist shares the late Denny Hulme's opinion of what constitutes a good driver - "someone who can jump into any piece of machinery and make it go fast without whining about understeer, oversteer or the #@!# brakes."

If he didn't know them before, Blomquist will soon become acquainted with many of today's young Group N hot-shots on the WRC circuit. Likely as not, he'll see them in his rear-vision mirror.