Twenty-three years down the road since he last won the African title but Luc Requile is still regarded as Rwanda’s motor sport legend. Requile, who drove his famous Opel Manta i200 back in the eighties, is still the only Rwandan to win the Africa Rally Championship. The speedster, who is currently believed to be living in Belgium, rewrote history in 1985 when he became the first local to lift the ARC crown. And although Rudy Cantanhede has earned a reputation has Rwanda’s most ferocious rally driver in recent years after back to back national championship titles, the ARC title has continued to elude him. The closest the Belgian-born rally ace went in hunt for Africa’s premium rally championship was in 1990 when he lifted the title but only as a co-driver to Walter Costa. This year, Cantanhede’s hopes of an ARC crown got dented when he pulled out of last month’s KCB Safari rally. However, Cantanhede has his third successive national rally championship title well within reach after winning the Mountain Gorilla Rally, Rwanda’s most coveted rally show piece. Although Zambia has not produced an ARC champion since 2005, but the country still tops the ARC charts with 10 titles. Ivory Coast and South Africa are tied in second place with three apiece; Zimbabwe and Kenya have two while Germany, Italy, Belgium, Uganda, Namibia, Rwanda and Burundi have one each. The African Rally Championship (ARC) is an international automobile rally championship organized by the FIA. Shekhar Mehta won the inaugural championship in 1981 while Zimbabwe’s Conrad Rautenbach is the reigning champion. Ends
