Meet a Scientologist - Niki Lanik (updates)

Niki Lanik is the official sports celebrity of Scientology.  Many if not most Scientologists would put him as the favorite sports person on Facebook.

It is so laughable.  If you haven't noticed, Scientologists can't criticize other Scientolgists, unless they get approval from the church.  This is part of the love bomb treatment in exchange for money.  If you start criticizing, you may criticize senior members of the church, have your own mind, start to doubt, and then find out the reality about Miscavige or even Hubbard.

This is the same as evolution without natural selection.  Evolution, which LRH sort of believed in, would have failed without criticism from nature.

I would have done with him if not for his recent press release.  Without specific cause for it, it just sounded like retirement announcement.  This looked like one last PR exercise for the cult before he becomes useless or even detrimental.

Niki would distance himself from Scientology when he's doing public relation exercises on "human rights".  The whole of Youth for Human Rights International is such a PR organization.  (But recently it turned into a money making pyramid scheme in India.) 

In fact his parents are both OTVIII, the highest status of spiritual achievement in Scientology.  The whole family would have spent much more money on the church than what they currently live in - a lousy farm house near St. Hill, the spiritual headquarter of Scientology in England.  It's not bad at all, but for the value of the house, you can't get a decent family house in any decent city in the South East of England.

He became a church celebrity even when he was driving the cute Clio, in national races.  The church of Scientology was so happy that they made an official video for that - Niki driving the little Clio.

The problem began when he went on to drive a Porsche, in the 3rd class amateur European race GT3.  His Porsche team performance took a nose dive hit that year.  All because he was the main driver, taking part in all the rounds of races!  But because he took part in all the races, he got all the merger points that the team has, and more than other Porsche teams that split the driving among drivers.  Therefore he got the Porsche cup.

The whole thing seems to be a setup, didn't it?  And 3rd class amateur racing teams need not much money to buy favors from.  With no track record on international races, Niki became the star driver of a team using Porsche road cars.  Just by letting him drive in all the races, he was guaranteed to win the Porsche cup beforehand.  The cup and Porsche doesn't mean a thing for racing fans.  But it is something to write on press releases that are not outright lies.

I would expect that was the end of his racing career.  He managed to get into another team, also using Porsche cars.  But his performance got worse.  I don't know why they let him drive other than that he got some "sponsors".  But the sponsorship was just enough to let him drive a token few races.

His racing career would have ended in 2010.  But the funny thing happened in 2011.  He was called in short notice to drive in a GT3 endurance race, to replace Arnoud Peyroles, who was just too tall for the two other drivers.  The Team manager Ingo Leipert can verify: "The three registered drivers didn't harmonize from point of view of their total height. This is a big problem since the seat cannot be adjusted in the Lamborghini."

So Niki got to drive one more time, a Lamborghini, and made an official PR video for that.  The team didn't complete the endurance race, meaning the car failed.

Now the gossip column begins.  The follow are not pure speculations but I do not have full evidence, or too lazy to present them properly, to support my opinion and observations.

With no luck in Europe, fat chance in America, Niki approached the amateur racing circuits in Japan and even Taiwan.  I wouldn't say he's that bad, but he wouldn't have got any church sponsors driving a Nissan.

A bad racing driver isn't a bad thing.  But he and his organizers would have been jailed in US and EU, for breaching rules of advertising standards.  Many Taiwanese students thought that he is a formula one driver, and brought his expensive signed pictures and posters.  Treasure them guys.  These memorabilia are not sold anywhere else in the world for that price, because it would be illegal the way they convince people to buy them.

In case you are curious about him after early retirement.  Since he will have little to inherit, he got himself a beautiful, rich, much taller, and much older girl friend.  I'm happy for them.  But to be mean, I think she loves young boys, has Snow White complex, and has fetish for tiny dwarfs.  It's all good.  Nobody deserves to be disposed of silently without sorrow.  She will be his passport to America, via a boy friend visa.  He started selling off his belongings in UK by the way.

ps My multi-language intelligent input software is getting too clever.  It played hide and seek with me after upgraded to Linux kernel 3.0.  All my work and therefore home computers have to be EN by default.  So you won't be seeing ZH for a little bit more.