Olympus Rally

This weekend I was competing in the Olympus Rally with Carey, it’s our first rally together for almost four years and we had a lot of rust to shake off. We started Saturday morning over some very familiar stages including the Northwest classic “Brooklyn Tavern”. We were building up speed as the day carried on and things were starting to come together and we were becoming more competitive.

I was writing a long piece about our weekend with lots of photos. I got back from the rally tonight and that’s not happening.

On stage Six, the second running of the Smith Creek stage 5 or 6 cars in front of us was the pairing of Matt Marker and Chris Gordon. I did not know them well, but was familiar with both of them. I spoke to them a couple of times earlier in the day swapping stage times and while hanging out before the stages start.

Matt Marker has a big accident on Smith Creek and was fatally injured during the accident. Chris Gordon was uninjured and was taken to hospital as a precaution.

It’s not the first time I’ve been through this. We all accept when we get in the car that we may have accidents, it’s part of the sport and I’ve spoken about my feelings about this in the past. That’s not changed and the fact that we literally put our lives in each others hands makes this such a tight group of people.

Matt Marker was part of the rally family, as JB reminded me tonight, knowing we are all in this together makes the sport so special on both a regional and national level. So to Matt, Tracy, Alex, Lianne, Carey, JB, Kelly, Steve, Max and the rest of you that cried, hugged, shared thoughts and feelings, thank you all for the last 24 hours.