Standing at 6 foot 7inches tall, young Southland rally driver David Holder isn't exactly vertically challenged and with two podium finishes from his first two rallies competed, Holder is quickly showing that his driving talent isn't lacking in stature either.

The 21year old from Invercargill was launched onto the rallying scene after becoming a finalist in the Rally New Zealand Rising Stars Scholarship, and while not pocketing the $50,000 prize, Holder walked away from the weekend with confidence and contacts that set him in good stead for his upcoming events.

Armed with this experience, Holders' focus turned to developing the skills needed to make it to the top level of rallying. His career kicked off to a great start with the Canterbury Rally in June , driving a Toyota Levin 2wd car with his brother James in the co-drivers seat, Holder improved with every kilometer and finished with a solid 3rd place in class.

Gore driver Andrew Graves was winner of the 2010 Catlins Coast Rally on Saturday. In doing so he became the only person to win the event as both a driver and a co-driver. In 2005 he was in the co-drivers seat when good friend Derek Ayson took the victory.

Graves was stoked, describing it as his "best win ever." "I'm absolutely chuffed. It's an old car but this is a well deserved result for the whole team. Lindsay Tressler spent the last two weeks preparing the car and it ran faultlessly. It was very frosty in Special Stage 2 and in the fourth stage we lost the back shock absorber so for the last few stages we had no shock. That made the car a bit indecisive!" However there would be no stopping Graves as he won the event from fellow Gore driver Paul Cross and co-driver Michael Kelly with Steve Wellington and Hudson Biggs of Dunedin third.  

A long connection with southern motorsport events will continue when Timaru driver Gordon Beeby competes in the Catlins Coast Rally this Saturday.

Beeby has lived in South Canterbury all his life but in his early motorsport days he came south to compete at every opportunity. "I started rallying in 1985 in a Datsun 120Y. My second ever rally was the Gore Rally. I had relations in Southland and I used to come down every year for the Southern Sprint Series. Four different clubs in the area used to hold two hillclimbs over a weekend on different surfaces. I won the series one year." Ironically the year Beeby won the Southern Series it came down to the wire between he and Roger Laird of Gore. Laird is a life member of the Eastern Southland Car Club who run the Catlins Rally and nowadays acts as Assistant Clerk Of The Course as well as Secretary for the event - a small world indeed. Laird remembers well one spectacular Beeby incident from those early years when the Timaru man managed to puncture three tyres on one corner during an event.  

A healthy number of newcomers to the sport of rallying will be amongst the field for this years Catlins Coast Rally on Saturday.

While the number of novices is great news for the sport there is also good news for the novice drivers as they will be in contention for some great prizes on the day.

The Catlins Coast Rally is organised by the Eastern Southland Car Club each year and former club member James Holder, now the New Zealand distributor of Monit Rally Computers, has offered prizes of trophies and Repco vouchers for some of the leading novice drivers and co-drivers in Saturdays event.

With the number of novice crews in the event these prizes are bound to be hotly contested and one driver who will be keen to take a prize will be David Holder, the younger brother of James Holder. David is starting just his second rally with sister Rachel alongside him in the co-drivers seat, ironically in the Toyota Levin that older brother turned sponsor James used so successfully in the Kiwi 2 category of the New Zealand Rally Championship in recent times.