Resh­ma Ra­goonath

T&T drag rac­ers left the com­pe­ti­tion in the dust as they sped off with top awards at the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed Ab­solute Pro­mo­tions fourth an­nu­al Drag Wars Ret­ri­bu­tion event in St Lu­cia on April 28.

Lead­ing the win­ner's row was for­mer na­tion­al cy­clist and for­mer San Fer­nan­do may­or Ian Ather­ly, who was the fastest mo­tor­cy­clist at the com­pe­ti­tion held at the base at Vieux Fort, St Lu­cia.

Ather­ly, cur­rent­ly the chair­man at the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Port De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Lim­it­ed (PLIPDE­CO), was al­so the old­est com­peti­tor at the event and won the nine sec­ond cat­e­go­ry.

Rawle Ma­habir, of Au­to Sports Pro­mo­tions Ltd, said the T&T team was hit by me­chan­i­cal chal­lenges at the event, but "they were able to come out as the top per­form­ers in the com­pe­ti­tion."

Ma­habir said Ather­ly was rid­ing a Kawasa­ki Nin­ja 1000cc rac­ing bike which emerged as the over­all fastest bike at the event reg­is­ter­ing a time of 9.378 sec­onds over the quar­ter-mile dis­tance.

"He (Ather­ly), as the most ma­ture com­peti­tor at the event, and he was able to show that with his ex­pe­ri­ence and age he can be among the fastest at the event. T&T al­so pro­vid­ed the win­ner of the open class cat­e­go­ry who was al­so the fastest car at the event, Wazeer Khan, dri­ving his Nis­san Sil­via S14 tur­bo," Ma­habir said.

Mar­lon Roop­nar­i­nesingh, with his Toy­ota MK4 Supra, al­so emerged vic­to­ri­ous in the nine-sec­ond cat­e­go­ry.

Ather­ly said he was not sur­prised by his vic­to­ry.

"Com­pe­ti­tion has been in my blood from teenage days and I know how to com­pose my­self and do what is re­quired when you reach at that lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion from my cy­cling days. I have al­ways had a pas­sion for (mo­tor­cy­cles.) I was a li­censed mo­tor­cy­cle rid­er since I was 18 and I rode mo­tor­cy­cles dur­ing my cy­cling ca­reer," he said.

He said April was his sec­ond at­tempt at the drag wars.

"I was third in a low­er cat­e­go­ry (in 2012) and I do not give up," he said.

Ather­ly re­vealed that dur­ing his tenure as San Fer­nan­do may­or he con­tin­ued to ride his mo­tor­cy­cle.

He said the last year when there was lim­it­ed rac­ing at Cam­den airstrip in Cou­va he was prepar­ing for this big event try­ing dif­fer­ent tech­niques and he en­coun­tered tremen­dous me­chan­i­cal prob­lems which were cor­rect­ed and "I saw the re­sults I was look­ing for in St Lu­cia in 2013."

While he pleased with his win, Ather­ly said he was a dis­ap­point­ed man, since many drag rac­ing en­thu­si­asts do not have a venue to race.

"The mo­tor sport in­dus­try here and world­wide is a tril­lion dol­lar busi­ness and there is not one track avail­able here to har­ness and cul­ti­vate young peo­ple who are will­ing and in­ter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment with re­spect to mo­tor rac­ing," Ather­ly said.

He said in the ab­sence of a se­cure venue many mo­tor­cy­cle en­thu­si­asts and com­pet­i­tive rac­ers have tak­en "to our streets and we em­ploy mea­sures like cam­eras and not speak­ing on cell­phone (which are) all the wrong ini­tia­tives."

Ather­ly sug­gest­ed that a fa­cil­i­ty be built or leased for au­to sports and "40 per cent of road fa­tal­i­ties can be avoid­ed. I have cho­sen to take mine on the track so as to en­cour­age oth­ers, like my­self, to do it right way to en­joy speed."