Entries open for 75th Mahagastota Speed Hill Climb

HILL CLIMB: The 75th anniversary of the Mahagastota Hill Climb - the oldest Hill Climb in South East Asia, will be held in Nuwara Eliya on April 11 and 12.

Looking back 75 years, the Mahagastota a Hill Climb is probably the oldest existing hill climb in Asia. In the 1930s young European planters of the area often spent their Sundays in friendly competition, racing on their gravel estate roads, purely for the thrill of driving fast.

Then at the Grand Hotel in Nuwara Eliya on September 9, 1934, the young planters inaugurated the Ceylon Motor Sports Club and from its inception welcomed Ceylonese as members, encouraging them to participate.

When the club held its inaugural meet, the first Speed Hill Climb at Mahagastota Estate in 1934, a young engineer T. S. Jinasena was warmly welcomed as a competitor by the Secretary Gorden Graham. Ten cars and two motorcycles entered the fray. Although no prizes were offered, the competitors enjoyed.

Mahagastota Hill Climb immediately became a regular feature in the motor sports calendar of Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then known. At the meet in 1939, T. S. Jinasena became the first Ceylonese to set a course record when he clocked 55.75 seconds. This record was set in the `Magpie', a super charged car he himself had assembled by welding an old Lea Francis engine to an MG chassis, gearbox and differential.