All hail the Crownaroos

We have a new winning team, the Crownaroos. Our boys not only took the gold, they did it in that Australian icon: the Leyland P76.

FORGET the rest of the Australiana like the Wallabies, Wallaroos, Kangaroos, Socceroos, Matildas, Kookaburras, Hockeyroos, Sharks, Stingers, Boomers, Cockatoos, Opals, Jackaroos, Sapphires, Crocodiles and Redbacks.

For today we have a new - and, best of all, winning - team, the Crownaroos. Yes sports fans, some of our finest athletes took on the world's best in a 10,000km, five-week trot across eight countries on a course that would have seen even Pheippides (the Cliff Young of Greece in 490BC) collapse and die.

Our boys not only took the gold medal, they took it in that most Australian of icons - the Leyland P76. At a time when our real emblems, the Commodore and Falcon, are going the way of the Tasmanian tiger, locals Gerry Crown, 80, and Matt Bryson, conquered marshes, mountain passes, sleeping and/or drunk drivers to cross the finish line in the 2013 Peking to Paris Rally ahead of our own Tim Smith and a Pom in a Porsche 911. (Happy birthday Porsche, look what a real Aussie car can do.)

Third was another team from Australia, Robbie Sherrard and Peter Washington in a cheese-loving 1974 Citroen DS23. A special call out to Perth's Nicky Bailey and Nadja Saralam, who finished in the oldest car, a 1913 Ford Model T that Nicky rebuilt from scratch.

It was back on January 31, 1907, that the newspaper Le Matin set out a challenge: "What needs to be proved today is that as long as a man has a car, he can do anything and go anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Peking to Paris by automobile?"

Well, once the punters knew the prize was a bottle of Mumm champagne, 40 teams entered. But only five started. Perhaps this was because the race committee cancelled the race. Never mind, as you would expect for such an internationally historically important event, a journalist won. Luigi Barzini, helped by Prince Luigi Marcantonio Rodolfo Scipione Borghese (we called him Skippy during the drive), creamed it in a 7.0-litre Itala followed by Charlie Goddard in his Spyker. Charlie could be an honorary Australian. He was arrested for fraud towards the race's end.

This year's victor, Gerry Crown, rang me soon after crossing the finishing line in the city of light. Gerry is an old mate who made his money in the board game caper at Crown and Andrews.

Most of you would remember Sketch-A-Graph, the first Australian export with intellectual content, Test Match and Gezza's personal favourite, Rummikub.

"Johnny, while you and your socialist mates on The Australian were writing about the winter Olympics and some Spanish painter's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust selling for a hundred mill, I was winning the Toy Oscar for Sorts and the 2010 Peking to Paris in an EH Holden.

"I started in my first rally in 1963 then drove a works Renault for two years and made a comeback in 1995. The Paris rally is amazing, tough, demanding and competitive. Winning this year was a tougher achievement than 2010."

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