Africa-Press – Lesotho. Multitudes made way to Masianokeng on Saturday June 1 for the annual Winter Spin Fest. Spinning is one of the fastest growing motor sports in countries such as South Africa, Namibia, Eswatini, and Botswana with the trend also growing fast here at home.
Over the years, the sport has proven to have the potential to keep thriving. Tebello Mofarasi, a passionate car spinner who is also an organiser of the famous Winter Spin Fest, believes the sport, which attracts scores from as far afield as Botswana, no doubt shows signs of increasing popularity among Basotho.
He strongly believes that all that Lesotho needs for the sport to go bigger and better is support from relevant authorities, especially the Ministry of Gender and Youth, Sports and Recreation.
The festival was held for the third time this year after the first one held in Hlotse, Leribe. The last two were hosted at Masianokeng in Maseru. Mofarisi indicates that the previous festivals were amazing but this year’s event was much better.
Attendance had improved as there were a lot of first timers who were clearly enthused by the sport. Mofarisi says he began to be passionate about the sport in 2006 and he had since then known that he wanted to make something incredible out of it.
His greatest dream, therefore, is to see the game, becoming one of the official sports in Lesotho as it has proven to be loved by many people. If this becomes the case then a lot of tournaments could be hosted thereby generating money as well.
Unavailability of official grounds is one of the greatest challenges that the car spinning fanatics in Lesotho face. “We do not have a residential ground and this costs us a lot of money that could otherwise be used to finance important projects.
The Masianokeng ground that we normally use is not ours; we hire it. We therefore appeal to the government to offer us a ground at an open space that we can proudly call ours, a ground away from traffic,” Mofarisi says.
The festival’s aim, Mofarasi says, is to move as many people as possible, especially the youth, from the streets where chances of committing crime are high.
He also reveals that he intends to recruit a lot of those youths and create different categories of competitions that would suit them best. Mofarasi further pleads with sponsors to lend a helping hand in securing the development of the sport that Basotho have proven to love dearly.
Among people present at the festival was Kayla Oliphant, a South African female motor spinner who made a debut appearance at the Lesotho Winter Spin Fest. Oliphant believes women have it in them to be car spinners as well even though the sport is dominated by men.
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