INCEPTION

At the end of Metsa Street in Põlva stands a former shooting-range building that one generation remembers for shooting, another for wrestling and orienteering, still others for its driving school—and some primarily for rallying. All of them are right. For many years, Metsa 7 was more than just a building. For motoring enthusiasts, it was a place where driver training, engineering, sport and people came together—people for whom a gravel road did not merely provide a way of getting from one village to another. Sometimes, it also served as a special stage.

During the Soviet era, the building housed the technical and sports club of the Põlva District Committee of DOSAAF, known as Põlva TSK. The name may sound long and official today, but its work was highly practical. It trained car and motorcycle drivers, supported shooting and technical sports, and developed people who knew not only how to drive machines but also how to build, repair and race them. The shooting-range building at Metsa 7 became a kind of headquarters for motorsport in Põlva.

The central figure in the story of this building and rallying in Põlva was Toivo Kaldmäe. Originally from Järva-Jaani, Kaldmäe became involved in motorsport at an early age, beginning with motocross and motorcycle enduro events. In 1977, he took over as head of the Põlva technical sports club and also began competing in rallies himself. He was not an organiser who knew rallying only through paperwork and telephone calls. Kaldmäe knew first-hand what drivers felt at the starting line, how a car behaved on gravel and how much work was required before a single day of competition could even begin. In 1979, together with co-driver Rein Sillaste, he won a bronze medal in his class in the Estonian SSR Rally Championship.

Põlva’s larger rallying story began to take shape in 1978 with the “Põlva 78” rally. Its organisers included the local technical association and Põlva TSK. The first car was sent onto the course at eleven o’clock at night. This was not a modern, short urban stage after which the spectators went home, but a long and exhausting competition, much of it driven in darkness. Behind such a rally stood an entire invisible machine: routes had to be found, regulations drawn up, officials assigned, communications, transport and catering arranged, and local companies, collective farms and volunteers brought on board. Kaldmäe’s particular skill lay in bringing all these people and resources together in pursuit of a common goal.

Metsa 7 was the natural starting point for all of this. It was where plans were discussed, tasks assigned, new drivers and officials trained, and the expertise required for motorsport kept alive. Although the rally itself sped along the winding gravel roads of Põlva County, its organisational heart beat inside the shooting-range building. Older residents of Põlva still remember a time when rally day was not merely a competition but an undertaking involving the entire region. One person supplied a car, another provided communications equipment, a third volunteered as a course marshal, and a fourth knew exactly which forest road could withstand rally cars and which would become impassable after the first rainfall.

By the 1980s, the rallies organised in Põlva had grown into events of national importance. The 1982 rally covered a total distance of 530 kilometres and included 18 special stages. A few years later, Põlva County was entrusted with organising “Estonia 85”, while “Põlva 88” attracted 56 crews to the starting line. These figures convey the scale of the events, but not the true amount of work behind them. Even at the time, Kaldmäe was described as “absolutely tireless”. During one major competition, he reportedly remained on his feet for three days and three nights without interruption. In local rally organisation, there was no clear boundary between an official job description and personal commitment—if something needed to be done, it was simply done.

The old DOSAAF system began to disintegrate in the early 1990s, but the knowledge and people gathered around Metsa 7 did not disappear. In 1991, the first event officially bearing the name “South Estonian Rally” was held, with Toivo Kaldmäe serving as one of its initiators and leading organisers. The route ran along roads in several southern Estonian counties, and the competition was included in the calendar of the international motorsport organisation FISA. Instead of relying on funding from the state system, the organisers now had to find supporters and sponsors—even fundraising cards were sold—but the organisational expertise developed in Põlva over many years continued to carry the event forward in the new era. What had grown out of a small local technical sports club had now reached the international rally calendar.

Kaldmäe remained involved in motorsport in later years as an official, rally director and organiser. At the same time, the driving school continued to operate at Metsa 7. Even in the 1990s, the school based there was known as the Põlva TSK Driving School, although many locals simply called it Toivo Kaldmäe’s driving school. A great many people from Põlva and the surrounding area received their first lessons in road safety and earned their driving licences there. The influence of the building therefore extended far beyond the rally stages: on the one hand, Metsa 7 taught people how to drive fast, but it taught an even greater number how to drive correctly and responsibly.

Toivo Kaldmäe died in 2015, but the mark that he and Põlva TSK left on local history remains. Today’s South Estonian Rally did not emerge from nowhere. Its roots reach back to a time when routes were marked on paper maps, the competition’s communications network had to be built from scratch, and organising a major rally required the labour and trust of dozens of local people. Many of those plans, telephone calls and agreements began in the shooting-range building on Metsa Street.

Metsa 7 is now awaiting a new life as a sports centre and hotel. This will be a major transformation for the building, but in its own way it will also continue the old story. In the past, students, competitors, officials and mechanics came here; in the future, they will be joined by guests staying at the centre. If these walls could speak, they would tell of roaring engines, long nights of competition, traffic diagrams drawn on blackboards and people who believed that great things could be achieved in Põlva. This history should not be cast aside with the creation of the new centre. On the contrary—it gives Metsa 7 an identity that no other building possesses.

A glimpse of this history can also be seen in video footage from the 1983 Põlva Rally, available here.

For those who have seen the film Teisikud: a couple of scenes from the ceremonial opening of a sports competition were filmed in Põlva, right here at the stadium in front of Metsa 7. The photos are screenshots from the ERR Jupiter streaming platform.