Suresh Rana heading towards victory in final Leg

Shimla, Oct 8 (UNI) Seventy seven rallyists entered in final Leg of Raid De-Himalayas while four times champion of the event, Suresh Rana, still leading in the X-treme car event and two times Champion of the event, Ashish Moudgil, in X-treme bike event.

After flagging the rallyists on the eighth day, organiser, Navdeep told UNI that in the Leg-VII of X-treme car category Suresh Rana was followed by Sanket Shanbag, Harpreet Singh (Bawa)-third, Capt Amriender Singh Brara -fourth and Anil Wadia on fifth position, when the cavalcade of about 17 cars headed towards Leh from Kargil.

In the X-treme bike category Ashish Moudgil was followed by Sandeep Singh Mathur, Prashant Kumar on third, Yogesh on fourth and Karanbir Singh Bedi on fifth place.

K Prasad was leading the Adventure category followed by Ajay Singh on second Rajesh Chetan on third, JS Rana on fourth, Manoj Vaidya on fifth position.

Out of the 132 teams in this event, only 77 are now in the fray for final round including 17 bikers of X-treme, 17 four wheelers of X-treme and 43 vehicles in the adventure category.

Navdeep said that except one case all the 55 teams dropped out of the event due to mechanical failure in 2050 km Zig-zags, Bumby, rocky and snowy track.

Eight women participants took part in the event and till seventh Leg seven were in the fray, including Klaudia Honeder from Austriala who is taking part for the second time in the world's most toughest and dangerous route. Out of the seven women, one each in X-treme bike and car are in the competition and five are still surviving in the fight for adventure category.

Nine teams of the army took part in the event and five army teams were still in the fray heading towards the last point today.

The leading teams would get Rs 1 Lakh cash prize on X-treme car category and Rs 50,000 and Rs 30,000 to X-treme bikes and Adventure category respectively.

UNI XC PS MMS1508