Graham Bolger is set to run the Gumball - for adventure, fundraising and a finish in the Playboy mansion. Kilian Doyle reports
It has been variously described as a high-speed fancy dress party on wheels, the last bastion of freedom in the western world and a reckless race by wealthy hooligans in supercars.
The Gumball 3000 Rally is, in reality, a bit of all three. Since it began in 1999, when English thrillseeker Maximillion Cooper invited 50 friends on a jaunt through Europe, it has morphed into a touring circus attracting millions of spectators and hundreds of eager, if not totally sane, participants.
While it's officially a rally rather than a race, dodging police checkpoints and spectacular crashes are part and parcel of the Gumball experience, with a raft of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches and other glorious machines being totalled or impounded over the years.
Around 250,000 people are expected in London this weekend to wave 120 teams off on their 3,000 mile testosterone-fuelled, adrenaline-addled eight-day rip across three continents.
Lining up alongside the Bugatti Veryon, the Gumpert Apollo, the Ferrari Enzos, the Lamborghini Gallardos and the Pagani Zondas will be a VW Camper van, a 1970s Australian Holden and other vehicular oddities whose sole aim is to finish, leaving the speed-monkeys to their own devices.
They'll drive straight through Europe to Belgrade, where they'll be picked up by Russian transport planes and flown to Thailand. Following a 1,000 mile drive through the southeast Asian jungle and a huge party in Bangkok, they'll be airlifted to Las Vegas, where the final leg to Los Angeles begins after a gig by rapper Snoop Dogg. To top it all, the wrap party is being held at the Playboy mansion in Hollywood.
Rubbing shoulders with the motley crew of billionaires, sheikhs, jetsetters and other assorted nutters will be Dubliner Graham Bolger.
This 31-year-old musician watched a TV documentary about the Gumball 3000 last December. Someone described it as "the greatest adventure on four wheels." A lightbulb pinged on in his head. "I've got four wheels. Why not give it a lash?"
The four wheels are on his wheelchair. He was left paralysed when he came off his motorbike and crashed onto a grassy bank on December 8th, 2004. "My head was used as a stopper," he says, matter-of-factly. Two vertebrae were dislocated in opposite directions, leaving him immobile from the waist down. Never having driven a car before, he had to learn during his five months in rehab. "I don't really fit the bill with regard to these guys in Enzos and Zondas. The supercar aspect of it has nothing to do with it. For me, it's a superchair thing."
Places on the rally are at a premium. Some 5,000 applicants tried this year. Bolger reckons the fact he wrote "Hand controls for wheelchairs" in the section of the application form asking what modifications he'd made to his vehicle piqued the organisers' interest, and he was in.
But it doesn't come cheap. The entrance fee is €60,000 - not including petrol and speeding fines - for the whole trip, although the majority of that is swallowed up by the airlifts. The European leg, which Bolger is doing, is significantly cheaper and is being paid for by friends.
Bolger and his co-driver, the mysterious "Paul", will be using a BMW 603i loaned by Joe Duffy Motors, fitted with hand controls by Motability Ireland and shipped to London by Irish Ferries. Bolger, aware of the contractions in trying to raise money for Spinal Injuries Ireland by doing something that regularly leaves people seriously injured, is at pains to point out the Gumball is not a race.
"You can't win it, exactly. There are all sorts of awards, like Team Spirit and the like, but there's no first place." All drivers have to sign a waiver saying they break speed limits at their own risk. "It's supposed to be done within the bounds of the law. If people want to take it upon themselves to race, good luck to them. That's not the reason I'm taking part. Which is probably just as well, because I'm sure the Zonda will leave me standing. Or sitting, as the case may be!"
The actual reason is four-fold. First, raising money for SII. Second, adventure. Third, to put the last year behind him. And fourth, to show that wheelchair users are no different from everyone else, that being injured doesn't make you inferior. "Everyone has their own wheelchair. I'm just lucky you can see mine."
He cites the example of having to tolerate drunk after drunk hugging him in a Belfast bar recently, each telling him what an inspiration he was. "For what? Because I'm in a chair? You'd swear I'd come up with a cure for cancer."
In a sense, by doing something as outrageous as the Gumball, he's trying to become anonymous. "What I'd like is for it to be less of an issue."
Bolger is loath to use the schmaltzty psychobabble term "closure", but it seems apposite in his case. As it happens, the party in the Playboy mansion in Hollywood is being held on May 7th, 12 months to the day after he left rehab.
How better to shrug off the horrors of the last year than by flying out to party with Hugh Hefner surrounded by Playmates, Hollywood superstars and racecar royalty? He has only one real concern: "The biggest problem it's going to create for me is what am I going to do next?"
Follow Graham's progress on www.spokeout.com.
Donations can be made at www.spinalinjuries.ie.
More details at www.gumball3000.com.