7,915km, six countries, some 187 cars, 250 bikes, 88 trucks, 10 helicopters, 20 planes, 28 organisational vehicles, 11 catering trucks, 77 catering staff. 1.5 tons of food, 54 doctors, support crew, an awful lot of bottled water . . . and the desert Justin Hynesreports
"I succumbed to the desert as soon as I saw it."
So said French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, of his time flying planes on the mail route between France and the Senegalese outpost of Dakar. For the French nothing much has changed. The desert in which so many of their imperial ambitions perished still exercises a magnetic attraction, a pull which reaches its peculiar apogee in the madness that is the Dakar Rally.
Last Saturday in Lisbon, 525 teams from the major motor manufacturers tooled-up. High-tech expeditionary forces made up of crazed individuals and their almost home-made buggies who had succumbed to the same draw that sent de Saint-Exupery into the boiling, gloopy west African skies in a machine made of creaking metal, wood and paper.
The originator of the Dakar, Thierry Sabine, was a man of like mind. Summing up the adventure he conjured from an almost disastrous mishap in the Sahara in 1977, when he found himself lost on another event, the French rally driver said simply: "A challenge for those who go. A dream for those who stay behind."
Of course, Sabine's dream of a marathon trek from the French capital through Spain, across the straits of Gibraltar, through Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and Senegal has suffered some in the years since its inception a year after he was rescued from the deep desert, and in the years since his death in a helicopter crash in 1986.
While the first event departed from the Place Trocadero in Paris, with 170 competitors setting off on a 10,000km journey to the famous finish on the beaches of Dakar, the current incarnation of the race goes nowhere near the French capital. Instead the rechristened event, the Dakar Rally, currently kicks off in Lisbon, though that is due to change from 2008.
But while the event is a shorter 7,915km this year, the challenge has hardly lessened. From the early "soft" stages in Portugal and Spain, it begins to harden in Morocco, skirting the mysterious Rif region of the north before heading through the Atlas mountains from Er Rachidia to the former Foreign Legion outpost of Ouarzazarte.
From there to Tan Tan, the route gives competitors their first taste of real dune seas before heading towards the long, long stages of western Mauretania and the big ergs (dunes) of the deep desert.
And the usual suspects have all turned up again to pit their wits against the terrain. Chief among them is last year's winner in cars and former downhill skier Luc Alphand, and team-mate and also former winner Stephane Peterhansel. Both are in Mitsubishis and it's hard to imagine anyone threatening the dominance of the Japanese team. The main threats are VW and BMW. The former has South African 2006 runner-up Giniel de Villiers to take the battle to Mitsubishi, but they also have a wild card - maybe a trump one - in the shape of former WRC champion Carlos Sainz.
The Spaniard, so clever, cultured and careful on the world stage looks to have just the right temperament for the Dakar, perhaps more so than last year's celeb WRC competitor Colin McRae.
But if VW falter, then BMW look set to pounce with the X3. Qatari driver Nasser Al Attiyah has already picked up the Middle East Rally championship title this year, so he looks like a good prospect for the Dakar. He's joined by Jutta Kleinschmidt, the event's most famous woman competitor, and extreme skiing champion Guerlain Chicherti (ninth last year) as BMW, like Mitsubishi, trust to multi-disciplinary talents.
In the 245-strong motorbike category last year's winner Marc Coma is again hot favourite to win, though the previous year's victor, Cyril Depres, is also being heavily tipped. The rub? Both are riding for KTM and have equal machines.
The challenge is, as always, awesome. Almost 8,000km, through six countries (Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and Senegal) over 16 days. Just the figures for the event are astounding. As well as the competitor vehicles, 28 organisational vehicles will make the trek to Dakar, accompanied by a further nine support trucks, 10 helicopters and 20 planes to ferry all the equipment needed for each night's bivouac across west Africa.
There are 11 catering trucks, 77 people dedicated to those vehicles with 55 serving and 22 cooking the 1.5 tons of food eaten each day, 77 per cent of which is bought in Africa. Every day of the event 12,000 50cl bottles of water are consumed. But perhaps the most telling statistic of them all is this: this year the Dakar Rally will be aided by the services of 54 doctors, effectively one for every 10 participants.
Dakar is a dangerous business. There are always injuries. Sometimes the worst happens and people die. In 1988 six were killed, three local people and three racers. In 2005 two motorcycle racers, Jose Manuel Perez and Fabrizio Meoni, lost their lives and last year Australian KTM rider Andy Caldecott was killed in his third Dakar, following an accident in Mauritania.
But that is the attraction. Although it is attracting more and more foreign involvement (70 per cent of entrants this year are non-French), the Dakar Rally still has echoes of the French colonial magic that was cast on the spellbound de Saint-Exupery in the days he fell in thrall to the desert.
It's something as basic as the need to be challenged, the will to take on something elemental, something as vast and unpredictable and uncaringly cruel as the Sahara. And as de Saint-Exupery himself concluded there is some salvation in merely meeting the challenge itself.
"What saves a man is to take a step," he said. "Then another step. It is always the same step but you have to take it."