Talk:London-Sydney Marathon

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Did You Know An entry from London-Sydney Marathon appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 14 November 2006.
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[edit] 1977 Singapore Airlines London-to-Sydney rally

Shouldn't this event also be mentioned here? I don't know much about it other than that a Mini Moke came in in 35th place and that it was won by Andrew Cowan in a Mercedes. SteveBaker 15:37, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Hummm, I was aware of subsequent re-runnings of the original event organised by TWE and using classic cars (see User:DeLarge/LSM), but wasn't aware of this. As you can see, the article's very much a work-in-progress. To be honest, I just wanted to get the original event on WP as a start, since I thought there was a great DYK in there regarding the finalé; Lucien Bianchi had travelled 10,000 miles across dangerous terrain in Asia without incident, only to crash out 150 miles from the end on a well-surfaced main road in Australia.
Bear in mind, though, this page has been half-finished for a while. I keep meaning to get round to it, but it might take a while. I really should. Obscure stuff like this is far more interesting, and less stressful, than edit warring over the car classification of an Acura RL or Toyota Camry images. I'll add 1977 to my sandbox page, though. --DeLarge 16:07, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes - I strongly agree! I only mentioned this because I'm putting some final polish on the Mini Moke article - I was looking for rally events that the Moke had participated in (there weren't many!) - when I found this one. I was hunting for a link for the rally - and this was the best I could find - but no mention of the 1977 event. I have a reference to it in an Australian magazine called 'BushDriver' Issue 3, 1978 - which was reprinted in the book 'Mini Moke - Ultimate portfolio' by R.M.Clarke in 1989. The ISBN is on the Mini Moke page. It's mostly about the car - but what it says about the rally is:
  1. It was called: "The 1977 Singapore Airlines London to Sydney rally".
  2. It took 30 days and ran over 30,000km.
  3. Amongst other places, it crossed Yugoslavia, the Great Salt Desert in Iran, India, Pakistan, Gibson's Desert in Australia and they encountered snow in the Australian alps.
  4. Andrew Cowan won in a Mercedes.
  5. Danish adventurer Hans Tholstrup and John Crawford drove the CocaCola-sponsored Mini Moke ("the Coke Moke") - they came 35th having failed to finish some special stages and incurring hundreds of hours of penalties...everyone was surprised that they finished at all.
Additionally, there is this web site [1] which seems to say that the '77 event was an organisational disaster...but it's not always clear which rally he's talking about.
...and that's all I know. SteveBaker 17:47, 1 January 2007 (UTC)