The American Rally Association (ARA) has announced plans to establish a national rally training center in Owsley County, Kentucky, through a partnership with Backroads of Appalachia. Located on a 200-plus-acre site near the Daniel Boone National Forest, the facility will include a 60,000-square-foot building with shop bays and classrooms, along with a 1.4-mile off-road course designed for team and manufacturer testing. The center will serve as a hub for training rally officials and supporting the growth of the sport nationwide.

The project is part of the larger "Appalachian Overland Triangle" initiative, a tri-state effort to revitalize rural economies through motorsports and adventure tourism. Funded in part by a $7.4 million ARISE grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission, the initiative aims to boost economic development across Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio by leveraging the region's natural terrain and motorsports potential.

"ARA's mission is to advance the sport of stage rally in the U.S.," said Lance Smith, founder of Rally Forward, promoter of the ARA, including the ARA National Championship presented by Kubota. "A big part of doing that is assisting our event organizers in recruiting, training and retaining the people who make it all possible.

"The ARA National Rally Training Center will give us a base of operations to share knowledge, safely practice skills and ensure we have a world-class rally workforce ready to execute events as the sport scales up. We're grateful to Erik Hubbard of Backroads of Appalachia and to the Appalachian Regional Commission and other area leaders for recognizing the economic impact that the ARA Rally already has in many small towns across the country and seeing the potential benefit that we can bring to the Appalachian region."

For more information, visit americanrallyassociation.org.
 

Image courtesy of American Rally Association