Paddon lured in by the forest roads
In two weeks, he will be racing through the Welsh forests in one of the most prestigious rallies in the world but before that, it’s a forest much closer to home that has Hayden Paddon’s attention.
Despite his looming assignments in the World Rally Championship at Wales Rally GB and Rally Australia, Paddon is chasing a record-breaking performance in the 40th running of the Ashley Forest Rallysprint this weekend in North Canterbury.
For Paddon, who won the 2011 title, the course record has become somewhat of an obsession since he returned to the event in his Hyundai i20 AP4+ rally car in 2017 and ‘‘caught the bug’’.
In the event’s heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was televised live and a young Paddon was fixated on the box.
In its 40-year history names such Possum Bourne, Kim Austin as (both three) and Rod Millen (two) have been multiple winners.
‘‘So many legends of the sport have all competed in the event,’’ Paddon told
A second victory for Paddon, who first competed at Ashley Forest when aged just 14, would be the ideal way to finish the two-day event tomorrow but of more significance is the course record.
Sloan Cox, the 2017 winner, broke Austin’s 17-year-old course record in 2016 and still holds it at 54.96 seconds – set in 2017.
For Paddon, lowering that record is far more important than winning the elimination-style event.
He was on track to lower it in 2018 before terminal engine failure struck in the top 16 runs.
There was even talk of a time in the 52-second range but despite chasing the record with some confidence, Paddon is cautious about setting the bar too high following some last-minute issues.
‘‘We think 52 is possible. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do it this year.’’
Paddon said the car had been refined with the learnings of last year and had the advantage of more horsepower and an improved aero package. It’s not just the prestige of the event that has Paddon fired up to hold the record.
Because he contests the unlimited 4wd class, there are few limitations on what can be modified on his Hyundai and with the rallysprint format, it allows time to makes changes to the car in between each run.
‘‘It’s a real opportunity to showcase how fast we can make the car go,’’ Paddon told
‘‘The event’s an engineer’s dream because we can essentially do what we want with the car.’’
Only Ben Stokes and his family can know what it feels like to spend 31 years sublimating the memory of an unconscionable horror.
Only they can truly express how tragedy has shaped and shadowed their lives ever since. And ultimately, only they can convey the pain of seeing the events of April 1988, still so raw for England’s cricket talisman that he has not mentioned them in either of his two books, broadcast against their wishes to the outside world. We learnt this week, courtesy of
front page, that three years before Stokes was born, his half-brother and half-sister were shot dead in Christchurch by Richard Dunn, his mother Deb’s former partner, in a fit of jealous rage. The wave of revulsion at the story’s publication has been instant and overwhelming.
Several news outlets have refused even to repeat the facts out of respect for Stokes, who has described the journalism behind it as ‘‘despicable’’. This seems an exercise in futility, given that the lid has already been blown. The murders were a matter of public record at the time in New Zealand, and now has joined the dots, there is hardly a soul in England not aware of the essential details.
Still condemnation comes in torrents. Even David Yelland, once a editor, has piled in on his former newspaper’s alleged scurrility. There were tales this week of the Stokes edition being binned en masse at Waterloo station, as well as calls for every
journalist to be banned from covering England cricket.
The outrage, echoed by everybody from Joe Root to Tom Harrison, chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, neglects one undeniable point: that the revelations about Stokes’ family history, irrespective of the frenzied debate over whether they satisfy the public interest test and the profound anguish they have caused his mother, do add to our understanding of what makes him such an extraordinary sporting figure.
Stokes is, as Sir Ian Botham has put it, a ‘‘once-in-a-generation cricketer’’. Who can tell how his singular temperament has been shaped by growing up against the backdrop of such shattering loss?
This is an acutely sensitive question. One regular observer of the England team tweeted: ‘‘If you’re interested in anything about Ben Stokes today, be interested in what he did on July 14 at Lord’s, or in what he did at Headingley. Everything you need to know is there.’’
It is an argument that chimes with the prevailing mood, seeing how proprietorial Stokes’ fans feel about his 84 to seize World Cup glory or his 135 to rescue the third Ashes test, and how determined they are not to have those feats sullied by the disclosure of a tragedy that was not even his to tell.
But in the context of what we now know, the view that Stokes must remain defined solely by what he does on the field of play needs nuance. Such deeds do not exist in isolation. One cannot say that ‘‘everything you need to know’’ about Sir Andy Murray is that he is a two-time Wimbledon champion, and that his traumatic recollections of the 1996 massacre at his Dunblane school are incidental to his psychological make-up. Equally, one struggles to claim that ‘‘everything you need to know’’ about Sir Bobby Charlton is that he is Manchester United’s greatest legend, without acknowledging that all he has achieved in football and in life is framed by his experience of seeing eight team-mates perish in the Munich air disaster.
Sporting heroes do not simply spring fully formed into the crucible of elite competition. While Stokes has been heralded by Root as a freak of nature, an almost comicbook