August 25, 1996 All events of the 2nd Rally Raid Mongol have been completed. Although unstable weather and low pressure was anticipated for the event held in late August, we had no problem whatsoeverü@except for the first day. A heated race was held during the other fine days. In the Moto class, rider Hakata Iwao took the grand prize like last year. The only woman who completed the race was rider Seki Mamiko. Let's all give her a big big applause. The Auto class was very exciting although there were only a few participants. Rider Yokokawa kept first place at the start but was overtaken by rider Hasemi who had given up hope when he got a 3 hour penalty for not passing a checkpoint. He was then overtaken by the Watanabe and Saitoh team. Hasemi overtakes them once again but falls back after he runs into machine trouble. The heated race between the three cars was very exciting. Let's all give the other riders who had to retire because of machine trouble another round of applause. The participants, staff, and the organizing committee also deserve an applause. The short Mongolian summer will soon be ending and people are beginning to prepare for winter after a brief autumn. We would like to express our thanks to the people who will be helping us again next year (scheduled from July 21). The 2nd Rally Raid Mongol 1996 Tetsu Yamada, General Chairman, SSER ORGANISATION