Showing true grit and guts in the Kalahari Desert
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Team South Africa has once again claimed the gold medals and defended their title of international amateur 4x4 precision driving champions in the Spirit of Amarok Trophy, which took place in the Kalahari Desert. Not only does Team SA walk away with the bragging rights, they’ve also won the R60,000 main cash prize.
The South African duo of Juan Grant and Marius Henn came out tops as the overall winning team against stiff competition from 20 other teams from Australia, Botswana, Germany, Namibia, Russia, SA and the UK. Grant and Henn walked away with the coveted Wolf Trophy (Amarok’s namesake is the giant wolf in Inuit mythology). They also received R30,000 in cash after undergoing tests set by none other than rally legend Sarel van der Merwe.
The competition saw each country being represented by three teams who showcased their off-road driving skills in the unrelenting dunes and pans of the Kalahari Desert, referred to by one of the international competitors as “orange ice”.
The participants contested several speed and technical challenges in extreme off-road conditions over four days in 132kW manual four-wheel drive Amaroks.
“The Spirit of Amarok Trophy demonstrates Amarok’s impressive off-road capabilities and provides contestants with an opportunity to test their offroad driving skills as well as an opportunity to experience offroad driving at its toughest,” says Jaco Steenekamp, GM for sales and marketing at Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles.
At the end of the four-day competition, Team SA amassed a total of 7,212 points to take the gold medal, followed by Team Namibia claiming silver with 6,246 points. Team Russia took the bronze medal with 4,797 points, 360 points ahead of Team Australia.
In the individual competition, Alwyn and Melanie Jordaan from Namibia scored 2,503 points, coming in second behind the Grant and Henn pair with their 2,652 points. South African duo of Joggie and Albert Otto rounded off the top three individual team positions with a total of 2,355 points.
“Now in its third year, the International Spirit of Amarok continues to assert its status as the premier amateur 4x4 competition. The Kalahari Desert was the perfect place to demonstrate the Amarok brand’s philosophy of “Not just tough, smart”, adds Steenekamp.
“With Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles in Germany also as determined as we are locally to expand the event to include even more countries from around the world, the International Spirit of Amarok has become a very interesting event to follow,” says Steenekamp.