A spectator in his mid-teens has died in an accident at the Donegal International Rally on Saturday and the remainder of the event has been cancelled.<\/p>\n
A joint statement from governing body Motorsport Ireland and rally organisers Donegal Motor Club confirmed a “young male spectator has passed away” following an accident on the 12th stage. <\/p>\n
The accident occurred in the first pass of the Gartan stage of the rally on Saturday afternoon, which was the 12th of 20 in the three-day event – one of the biggest motorsport events on the island of Ireland.<\/p>\n
Two spectators remain in Letterkenny University Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.<\/p>\n
The rally was stopped after the accident and a decision to cancel the rest of the rally was taken as a mark of respect by organisers.<\/p>\n
Motorsport Ireland and Donegal Motor Club said they “express their deepest sympathies to the family of the deceased” and asked that their privacy is respected. <\/p>\n
Motorsport Ireland and the An Garda Siochana [Irish police] have started an investigation into the circumstances of the accident.<\/p>\n
A Garda\u00ed statement said it was “investigating the sudden death of a male youth following an incident at a motorsport event in Donegal on Saturday, 20 June 2026.<\/p>\n
“Shortly before 5pm, Emergency Services and Garda\u00ed were alerted after a number of spectators were injured in an incident involving a participating car at Trentagh, near Kilmacrennan. <\/p>\n
“One of the spectators, a male youth in his mid-teens, was brought by ambulance from the scene to Letterkenny University Hospital, where he was later pronounced deceased.”<\/p>\n
The statement added that the scene of the accident has been preserved for technical examination.<\/p>\n
It is the first fatality at the Donegal International Rally since three-time winner Manus Kelly died in a crash in 2019.<\/p>\n
In 2008, an 18-year-old spectator died when a car left the road and the rest of the rally was cancelled, and six years earlier two marshals died in an accident at the event.<\/p>\n
The last spectator fatality at a Motorsport Ireland-sanctioned event was at the Cavan Stages in 2012, when two spectators died in an accident.<\/p>\n
Kris Meeke, a five-time winner in the World Rally Championship, was leading the rally ahead of Callum Devine and Josh McErlean before it was stopped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A spectator in his mid-teens has died in an accident at the Donegal International Rally on Saturday and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-749570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}