A spectator 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
A spokseperson for Motorsport Ireland said 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 have started an investigation into the circumstances of the accident.<\/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
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 has died in an accident at the Donegal International Rally on Saturday and the remainder of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-510137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}