F1 driver Karun Chandhok, an Indian success story despite his country’s lack of high-level motorsport events, will be the star of a Red Bull showrun this weekend. We celebrate six other nations of sportsmen and women who made their names despite an unlikely demographic background in their chosen fields…
May the Force be with you
Karun might be flying the F1 flag this year, but the trail was actually blazed by another promising Indian, Narain Karthikeyan. Debuting for Jordan back in 2005, Narain’s best result was fourth in the 2005 US GP where only six cars, all on Bridgestone tyres, ran in a controversial race at Indianapolis where all the Michelin runners retired after the parade lap because of tyre safety concerns. Narain then became Williams’ F1 test driver and an A1GP driver for India in 2006 and ’07, and then a driver for PSV Eindhoven in Superleague Formula, an ill-conceived series with teams based on soccer clubs, with a stint in the Le Mans series for good measure. He now drives a camper van in NASCAR*. He may have fallen out of favour in the top echelons, though he’s been linked with the Force India team at regular intervals, with team boss Vijay Mallya declaring his desire to see Indians at the wheel of his car but so far sticking with Germans or Italians (or occasionally a Scot). Perhaps an Indian GP on the calendar might change his fortunes. Let’s hope so…
*OK, he drives in the Camping World Truck Series for pick-ups, but it’s hardly the Sprint Cup.
From Russia with love (of motorsports)
Russia, the largest country (by territory at least) in the world, more famous for gymnasts and weightlifters but only recently appearing on the motorsports map – this is largely thanks to Vitaly Petrov, whose raw pace and occasionally impressive results so far this year for Renault F1 have been a good advert for a country trying to get its own grand prix, and then there’s Mikhail Aleshin, current leader in Formula Renault 3.5. Another exciting prospect is Red Bull Junior Daniil Kvyat, already making waves in this year’s Formula BMW at the tender age of just 16. Away from the track, a highly successful all-Russian affair is the Kamaz truck team who have shared the last two Dakar Rally victories between their top drivers Vladimir Chagin and Firdaus Kabirov and their respective Russian crews. They’ll be campaigning again shortly in the Silk Way Rally in Russia and Turkmenistan, by the way, which you can follow on redbull.com.
Swiss movement
Switzerland like to do their own thing, but one aspect of society that must irk their motorsport fans is that the activity has been banned in the country since the 1955 Le Mans disaster (not that this stopped there being a Swiss GP in 1975 and 1982, held at Dijon in France). How encouraging, then, that Toro Rosso’s Sébastien Buemi refused to be cowed by this and worked his way up to the top level despite being Swiss (before heading off to live in Bahrain). He’s not the only one, either. His highly-rated female cousin Natasha Gachnang is a onetime Swiss junior karting champ and former F3 and F2 racer, and this year became part of the first all-female team at the Le Mans 24 Hours race for nearly 20 years.
Bolt from the blue
OK, athletics is a truly worldwide sport, but in terms of success, the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica, albeit the largest country in the region, punch way above their weight for a nation with just under three million inhabitants. As well as boasting the quickest man who’s ever lived in 100m and 200m world record holder Usain Bolt (pictured, top, at the Laureus Awards), the Jamaican track and field team boast a former 100m record holder and gold medalllist in Asafa Powell, and world-beating women like Shelly-Ann Fraser and Kerron Stewart. At the 2009 World Championships, Jamaica were second in the medal table with 13 medals, seven of them gold. The only team ahead of them were the USA, population 310m, some 110 times Jamaicas’s. Oh, and they even put a team into the bobsleigh at three Winter Olympic Games, despite a distinct lack of snow in the Caribbean, beating France, Russia and the US to 14th place at Lillehammer in 1994. And their first outing at Calgary in 1988 was the basis for the movie Cool Runnings, starring John Candy…
Sarky footballers get what’s coming to them
Sark (population 600) is a tiny island in the English Channel with its own ancient laws and customs, and with cars also banned (though it seems driving a damned great tractor is acceptable since horse-drawn carts went out of fashion there), the next big thing in Formula One is unlikely to be coming through Sark’s junior formulae. They do, however, have a ‘national’ soccer team, which participated in the Island Games, a biennial sporting event for European island countries and dependencies from the Faroes and Greenland to Rhodes and Minorca, back in 2003. The Sercquiais footballers were record-breakers, but not in the Jamaican sense of the word. They conceded 70 goals in four games without scoring once, and their record defeat was 20–0 against the Isle of Wight, the small island county off southern England famous for the Cowes Week sailing event (ie, they’re not renowned for their soccer, either). “It was a special occasion for our lads to enter the tournament,” said coach Shane Moon. “They will probably never do this again in their lifetimes.” Probably for the best…
Alex finds success abroad (in Italy)
MotoGP’s San Marino Grand Prix at Misano, like its former F1 counterpart held at Imola, is of course not actually in San Marino at all. The tiny landlocked principality, surrounded entirely by north-eastern Italy, is scarcely big enough for a racetrack, hence the lucky Italian fans effectively enjoying the luxury of two grands prix in all but name. However, one of the riders in this year’s MotoGP shake-up is Sammarinese, though he was born a few kilometres away in Rimini, on the Italian Adriatic coast. Alex de Angelis has climbed to the top of the motorcycling tree, having ridden for Gresini Honda in 2008 and last year, when he finished second at Indianapolis, then proving a worthy understudy at Interwetten Honda while main rider Hiroshi Aoyama recovered from a spinal fracture this season. With Hiro on the road to recovery, he’ll be back on the RC212V at Misano, but Alex will still be doing it for San Marino in Moto2 with Scot at his home track (as Misano, like San Marino itself, is also right next to Rimini). Good luck, Alex!
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