Macedonia’s best professional rally racer Igor – Idze – Stefanovski, a former dual winner of the European Hill Climb Championship, says he had his funding cut off by the Youth and Sports Agency which is tasked to support top achieving sportsmen.

Instead of being the best ally of professional sportsmen, the Agency is now our main obstacle. This institution declared me the best sportsman in Macedonia for 2014, among other prizes, but now it completely ignores me. At a time when I enjoy the greatest support possible from my people, as our most awarded rally driver, I receive nothing from the funding from them. I keep getting approached by people asking me why I am not competing in the latest championship, and I’m humiliated to tell them that it is because my funding has been cut, Stefanovski said.

It’s possible that politics played a role in this decision. The agency insisted that it paid 140.000 EUR to Stefanovski for competing in 2018, but this year the funding was cut to 9.000 EUR.