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Vatican attacks Dakar Rally
10/01/2007 20:09 - (SA)
Vatican City - The Vatican has decried the death on Tuesday of South African motorcyclist Elmer Symons in the Dakar Rally, the latest of many associated with what it called "a bloody, irresponsible race".
The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano said in the issue to appear on Thursday that 29-year-old Symons died in a race that had "precious little to do with healthy competition".
"The trail of blood that lengthens from one year to the next... emphasises the undeniable component of violence underlying any attempt to export 'Western' modes to a human and ecological context that has little to do with the West," the weekly said in an article datelined Rabat.
"With a cynical attitude that ignores the reality (of the countries) traversed cars, motorcycles and even enormous trucks throw themselves at breakneck speed into the desert where their carcasses are often abandoned to rot, becoming rusty monuments to irresponsibility."
Figures vary on the number of people - contestants, spectators, journalists and bystanders - who have been killed during the period of the rally since its inception in 1979 but Osservatore Romano put the figure at 54.
- AFP
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