The World Series will be run for the next ten years in Saudi Arabia, which takes away all the rhetoric, writes Urheilu’s rally editor Micke Suopuro.
In Saudi Arabia, women received permission to drive a car in 2018. The country will host a World Rally Championship competition in 2025.
There are two facts about Saudi Arabia in a row, which in themselves have nothing to do with each other.
The promoter of the World Rally Championship announced over the weekend that it had signed a ten-year contract with Saudi Arabia to organize the World Rally Championship.
The value of the contract was not announced, but it is certain that the price tag in question was enough for the World Series decision-makers to sell their own values.
The duration of the contract is completely exceptional. The crown jewels of the World Series, Monte Carlo and the native Jyväskylä World Rally Championship have been allowed to enjoy contracts of a few years at most.
Still, there is nothing surprising about the decision.
Saudi Arabia is known to be a country where human rights are interpreted quite liberally. The first written criminal law is being drafted in the country, the draft of which was leaked to the human rights organization Amnesty. Homosexuality is criminalized, marital rape is not. The death penalty is the appropriate primary punishment for blasphemy.
Saudi Arabia is also a country that has sunk billions into sportswear About Cristiano Ronaldo all the way to top golf.
Extending the tentacles to the rally is only part of the continuum. Especially when the F1 series has been run in Saudi Arabia since 2021.
The umbrella organization FIA could of course stop or even disapprove of competing in countries that trample on human rights. However, the FIA has never made this a problem with the companies managing the marketing rights. of the FIA and its president representing the United Arab Emirates of Mohammed bin Sulayem the values are visible to all in these decisions.
Next, those who think critically about the contract in the sport are more or less emphatically told to keep quiet. Instead, we get to hear from different parties how important it is for rallying to spread to the Middle East and how traditional rallying country Saudi Arabia wants to develop its youth into top drivers for the world.
In reality, it’s just that Saudi Arabia hit the counter with enough millions, like so many times before.
In recent years, the FIA has wanted to profile rally as more equal with the Women in Motorsport project and as environmentally friendly with fossil-free gasoline.
Granting the World Cup rally for ten years to an oil state that systematically imprisons women’s rights advocates says everything essential about the reality of these eloquences.