Special tribute for rally ace Girvan
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Jimmy Girvan's Subaru Impreza, in which he and co-driver Kirsty Riddick competed in the Snowman Rally, which will be the course car for this year's event.
EMOTIONS will be running high at the Snowman Rally on Saturday in and around Inverness as a fitting tribute is paid to the late two-times Scottish champion Jimmy Girvan.
In September last year, the North Kessock driver was killed when his Subaru Impreza was involved in a crash as Girvan (56) competed in the Colin McRae Forest Stages rally in Perthshire.
The sport, especially in the North but also throughout the country, was rocked by the death of the man no-one could match in 2008. Now a united effort will see the five-year-old Impreza in which he won the Scottish title become the course car at the Snowman this weekend.
A course car is the vehicle that runs the course before the race to check conditions and everyone who sees this car will remember how great a champion Girvan was.
Iain MacDonald (52) owns the Impreza which set Girvan on the road to glory and he’s swapped competing for the umpteenth time to get behind the wheel of the ‘Moy’ car alongside well-known Highland Car Club member and respected navigator Andy Jardine to play a key role in the championship’s opening round.
He said: “I normally compete, but many of us were speaking about how we could pay tribute to Jimmy at the Snowman. All the sponsors who backed him when he won the Scottish Championship in 2008 have got together and their names will be on the car which will read “in memory of Jimmy Girvan”.
“Jimmy was always very grateful that this car gave him to chance to compete and I was delighted to see what he achieved from that point.
“It all started years ago when I broke my leg and asked if he wanted to compete in the Scottish Championships – and that year he finished sixth overall and just went on from there.
“Jimmy was a special guy. It was said at his funeral the glass was always half full, not half empty.
“I knew him for more than 25 years and we went out in various rallies together. If we rolled the car over, his attitude would be “we’ll do better next time”. He was a genuinely good guy, who is sadly missed.
“It’s going to be an honour for myself and Andy to be out there with the car, which has been worked on and repainted and will be ready.
“The car has never rallied since (the accident), it’s only been out on one gravel sprint, but all the sponsors were happy to do this for Jimmy, who was a pretty proud and patriotic person.
“The Snowman was always special to him and he won it in 2008 – the year when he went on to again become Scottish champion.”
Girvan was one of the Highlands’ best-loved sportsmen. He won his first Scottish title in 1990 and showed he still had the class 18 years later.
