Riga City Council was attended by Raimonds Strokšs, Director of “RA Events” who familiarised the management and members of the Council with retrospect on the course of the FIA World Rally Championship, Tet Rally Latvia stage in Latvia, informing on the contribution of the rally to Latvia and Riga.
“WRC rally's stage in Latvia was the most ambitious sports event of the year, and Riga was honoured to be the city where the rally starts. That was a festivity in the city – for the residents of Riga, visitors and audience totalling tens of millions worldwide. The name of Riga and Latvia was highlighted meritoriously, and I am grateful to Raimonds Strokšs, organiser of the rally, and his team for their contribution to make this dream come true”, stresses Vilnis Ķirsis, Chairman of the Riga City Council.
In the summer of 2024, Latvia hosted the FIA World Rally Championship, Tet Rally Latvia stage for the first time, thus providing tens of thousands of people to watch it on the spot and millions of people worldwide to see it remotely, thus promoting Riga and Latvia across the globe.
Tet Rally Latvia will be remembered not only as large-scale and significant auto-racing festivity that gathered more than 100,000 spectators onsite in four days of the event, but also as a successful sports mega-event. WRC Latvia stage added turnover in excess of 24 million euro to the regional economy.
Tet Rally Latvia was attended by 10,196 foreign visitors, who spent 55 561 nights in Latvia in total. Tet Rally Latvia TV broadcasts in 61 countries worldwide have reached audience of 80.4 million.
Latvia was the 37th country so far where a stage of FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) has taken place. Overall, rally took place at 36 various places of the event in total in Latvia, in five cities of Latvia, including Riga. 20 special stages took places in four days with the total distance of the track reaching 300 km.
Participants from 18 countries took part in the rally, 40 crews in total, serviced by more than 1,500 persons. The largest numbers of foreign spectators were from Lithuania, Estonia and Finland.
Rally fans could follow the event in several fan areas arranged in Riga, Tukums, Kuldīga, Talsi and Liepāja.
On 11 July in Riga, at Rātslaukums, Tet Rally Latvia launching event took place where attendants could not only meet crews of local rally pilots Mārtiņš Sesks, Matīss Mežaks and Arturs Priednieks and look at their rally cars, but also to assess performance of these cars with the crews performing start demonstration drives in Vecrīga, followed by a symbolic passage over the Akmens Bridge and a photograph on the AB dam.
Whereas, on 18 July, an impressive opening ceremony took place at the Riga Rātslaukums launching the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) Latvia stage Tet Rally Latvia. Following the opening event, the first sporting Tet Rally Latvia challenge took place at the Biķernieki Track – special stage “SSS1 Biķernieki Track”, viewed by thousands of spectators from overcrowded bleachers. Rally took place in Riga, at Tukums Municipality, Talsi and Talsi Municipality, Kuldīga Municipality, Southern Kurzeme Municipality, as well as in the rally city Liepāja.
Welcoming the rally visitors and participants, Riga municipality arranged banners with special visual design of rally and Riga, and decorative flags with rally theme were arranged throughout the city welcoming many city visitors and local residents.
FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) stage Tet Rally Latvia was organised in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science, the rally city Liepāja, as well as the Riga local government, and local governments of the Tukums Municipality, Talsi Municipality and Kuldīga Municipality.
During the meeting of the Riga City Council on 18 December, R. Strokšs was presented a Certificate of Merit of the award "Resident of Riga of the Year 2024" for the creation of the most significant auto-racing festivity in Riga and promotion of the capital of Latvia worldwide.
"At the end of the year, assessing and looking back at the achievements, it is an unexpected, but true honour to receive appreciation and recognition of this kind. The greatest satisfaction is that Riga bravely chose to join other cities of the course of our rally becoming one of the most important partners of the WRC Latvia stage. Thanks to common and united work, we were able to hospitably host thousands of foreign guests and provided millions of viewers of the WRC stage worldwide to see both the beautiful Old Town of Riga, and the amber of Latvian auto-racing – Biķernieki Track, place of the historically first WRC special stage in Latvia!" says Raimonds Strokšs, Director of the FIA World Rally Championship stage Tet Rally Latvia.
Information was prepared by: Sindija Grāvere, Project Coordinator, External Communications Department of Riga City Council Communication Administration, e-mail: sindija.gravere@riga.lv
