Checkpoint Teheran

CHECKPOINT TEHERAN - by Frank Goldsworthy

It takes more than cars and drivers to make a motor marathon when checkpoints are a thousand miles apart. It took five months for a committee of Persians, Dutch, and British members of the Iranian Touring and Automobile Club to organise the Teheran checkpoint. Their secretary, Sheffield-born Mrs. Pauline Sturgess, a reporter who writes as Pauline Jackson on a Teheran English language daily, told me: "We made our minds this was going to be remembered as the best checkpoint."

Teheran is just over halfway along the 6,600 mile Euro-Asian section of the Marathon. It was the first big city after the "killer" night drive over rough tracks and loose gravel between Sivas and Erzincan in Turkey, which left such a legacy of battered suspensions and damaged transmissions. It marked the start of the longest stage in rallying history - 1,400 miles across deserts and through Afghan Mountains to Kabul.

With fast driving over the good Persian roads from the Turkish frontier the crews had hopes of much needed rest and servicing before reporting time in Teheran. The site chosen was the Phillips electronic factory east of the Iranian capital, which has the craziest and least disciplined traffic I have ever encountered. The factory's welding and repair shops were set ready with all staff on duty although it was Thursday - the Persian equivalent of Saturday.

Miles before Teheran, a police car began leading the first arrival, Dieter Glemser's German Ford at a speed which astonished him, along roads specially controlled - and in some cases, closed to other traffic. A police chief travelled midway in the long spread out convoy of Marathon cars, and an ambulance came along in the rear.

I spent 25 hours at the factory checkpoint and it left a blur of fleeting memories. Men with dirty lined and tired faces walking stiffly towards the showers and restrooms, to emerge spruced up and cheerful hours later.

Irish fashion designer Rosemary Smith, scarlet cap covering her long blonde hair, driving in with a newly put on face which must have cost her precious minutes on the road, but certainly brought the photographers a-running.

Three inexperienced Australian girls driving a Morris 1100 in their first ever rally, half dead with fatigue and streaming head colds, near tears when they discovered they had made a tactical error in booking in sooner than they needed. The astonishment of an autograph hunter whose paper thrust through the window of car No.95 a Vauxhall Viva GT, came back with a strange series of squiggles - the signatures of the all-Japanese crew Then the excitement as the cars lined up again to begin that long exhausting slog to Kabul.

When those who were still on time had roared away into the desert darkness, there was the nail-biting anxiety of the latecomers still in trouble and lonely in the near empty floodlit compound. Dr. Wadia, an Indian gynaecologist, waiting hour after hour for new valves for his Ford Lotus Cortina America's only entry, Sydney Dickson working furiously to get his Rambler American ready for the road again.

Then there were two disappointments, each of which came near to tragedy. Surrey driving instructor, Peter Wilson's crew came back to say their Ford Corsair had turned over twice on the road to Kabul and was out of the Marathon. Then former Oxford rowing Blue, Duncan Bray, already hours late through breaking two half-shafts got going again and turned back into the city to fill up with petrol. A few minutes later one of his crew came in to say they had hit a bus which shot, unlit from a side street.

It looked like the end of the Marathon road for three young men who had quit their jobs and invested £3000 of their own money in their unsponsored entry. But there was a happy ending. The Teheran police immediately took the side of the foreigner, agreed that the bus driver was to blame, called an emergency court hearing at which the British crew were exonerated and helped to arrange for emergency repairs. The Bray crew got going next night and arrived in Bombay, 72nd in points - but they were given one of the two extra places provided in the P&O Liner Chusan in recognition of their determined efforts.

Yes, it was quite a night in that Persian factory garden.

- FRANK GOLDSWORTHY

Rosemary Smith

Photo courtesy Alan Sawyer

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