4×4 competition will roar on Sunday

Tonight organisers of the first ever four by four driving contest are putting the finishing touches on preparations for the event and News Five got a special preview. With Francis “Cisco” Woods, chairman of the Rotary Club’s Fundraising Committee, behind the wheel, I got to experience first hand what the competitors will encounter this Sunday at the Old Belize compound on the Western Highway. Already shaken, Woods stirred up things with a metal crushing display that shook the ground. According to Woods, there’s a good cause hidden beneath all this excitement.

Francis Woods, Chair, Rotary’s Fundraising Committee
“Surprisingly, people have called me and asked me to take a couple old cars from their front yards and stuff, cars that gave them a lot of headaches. So if anybody has any old cars, I’ll be glad to pick it up so we can have enough cars to crush for this Sunday. On the preparation of the place, we really take safety very important and we are designing the track that nobody can really hurt themselves. It will present some challenges to your four by four driving skills, but we have it in a way that you can’t go too fast even if you’d like to, you can’t go fast, so that’s been a little tricky to do, getting the challenges and having it be safe at the same time.”

Janelle Chanona
“Tell me where the proceeds are going to go from this?”

Francis Woods
“The proceeds will go to a fund that was created after Hurricane Mitch to help our fellow Rotarian clubs in places like Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala. And with Katrina, we have a lot of clubs in Louisiana that really want to, that are out there in the field and now how to help the people that need it the most so, it’s for things like that we will send the money to.”

Competitors will be broken up into different categories: eight cylinder, six cylinder, and four cylinder vehicles, and there is a female division in all of the classes. Entrance to the event is two dollars for children, four dollars adults. Food and drinks will be on sale and there will be gate prizes. The action starts at eleven on Sunday morning. By they way, I am reliably informed that Sunday’s action is not in fact the first of its kind in Belize as in the late Eighties a number of four wheel drive and bigfoot competitions were held at Big Rock Farm near Ladyville.