Three little stories without which the Dakar marathon would not have happened

Five hundred and fifty six participants will take to the Dakar tracks this year, and about five million spectators are going to watch it live.
But none of this would have been possible without one enterprising sweet potato exporter from Africa, a motorcyclist lost in the dunes of the Sahara. and three short but very important stories.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Dakar was one of the centers of French colonial West Africa - even a deputy to the French parliament tried to be elected from here. And when the local republics became independent, Dakar remained an attractive piece of exoticism, where the locals continued to speak the language of Voltaire and Rousseau as if they were their own.

Coast to coast

The romance of adventure, deserts, elephants and dunes prompted Jean-Claude Bertrand, a planter and exporter of sweet potatoes and trees who knew Africa well, to organize a car race in Côte d'Ivoire in 1969 - the Bandama Rally! Named after a local river.

Jean-Claude Bertrand's next grandiose project was to organize an annual marathon on each of the five continents in turn, but this venture turned out to be too ambitious in terms of logistics.
Stretching the route from the former French colony to its metropolis was incomparably easier. And most importantly, without knowing it, Bertrand came up with a new rally-raid format - a prototype of the future Paris-Dakar. In addition, the start of the second Abidjan-Nice marathon was already attended by a man who was to glorify the race on African sands to the whole world.

lone hero

The sun, the unbearable heat and the endless yellowing horizon, the whole world now seemed to consist only of sand. Nature itself played with him like a cat with a mouse, squeezing out the last vital juices. Three days ago, the participant of the marathon “Cote d" Ivoire - Cote d "Azur" Thierry Sabin got lost in the desert, and had to come to terms with the fact that there was no more hope.

Starting to compete with his father Gilbert in the rally, he immediately began to fight for victories and luck still has not left him. When he tried his hand at endurance racing, he won the six hours of Spa and finished at Le Mans. When he undertook to organize an otocycle beach race to shake up the resort town of Le Touquet in winter, it turned out to be a competition that every French motorcycle racer knows today.

And now the final point of this story has come - Sabin got lost on a motorcycle in the Abidjan - Nice race. La Fin. Screen dimming. End!

The motorcycle, which had become useless, was lying somewhere between the desert of Tenere and Libya, in a place with the terrible name “Black Mountain”, and Thierry Sabin was slowly dying without strength and water, until the pilot of a small plane sent by Jean-Claude Bertrand descended from the very heavens to him. search for the missing member.

Winner takes all

The first Dakar was set up like a family party: a handful of helpers, a few friends, a wife, model Diane Thierry-Meg, and a sponsor, fruit juice maker Oasis. Knowing a lot about how to make the right impression, Sabin managed to work as a press secretary for the Le Corbier resort and the musical group "Il etait une fois", the Frenchman turned the familiar world of auto racing upside down.

The start of the new rally-raid took place not in some kind of Abidjan familiar only to bores and teachers of geography, but with noise and pomp in the center of Paris on Trocadero Square, opposite the Eiffel Tower. He finished the marathon after 10,000 kilometers in the resort town of Dakar, the capital of Senegal and the westernmost point of the African continent.

Among the participants - anything, from cars to trucks and without any division into offsets. As Abba sang back then: "The Winner Takes It All" - the winner takes it all. Moreover, motorcyclists immediately became the most massive and fastest class, between whom a heated struggle for victory unfolded.

By the sixth stage of the 1978 race, Patrick Schaal was in the lead, but he broke his little finger after a bad fall. Two hundred kilometers before the end of the race, the engine of Jean-Claude Morelle's motorcycle failed and the first, curiously slipping on the finishing ramp, was Cyril Neve, who did not win a single special stage during the marathon. After only ten years, “Paris-Dakar” already hosted 473 participants at the start and least of all resembled a family adventure. Medical and television helicopters circled in the air, equipment was transported between bivouacs on transport planes, broadcasts covered the whole world, and Jean Todt tossed a ten-franc coin to decide which of his charges would be ordered to slow down. In the fight for victory, Vatanen and Ickx were ready to crush their super-expensive Peugeot prototypes into African dust.

Having once slipped away from inevitable death, the main romantic of Dakar, alas, could no longer see this. On January 14, 1986, during another marathon, his helicopter fell into a sandstorm and crashed in the dunes of Mali. “A challenge for those who dared, a dream for those who stayed,” these words of Thierry Sabin are still the motto of the race. The combination of danger, extreme fighting and unforgettable adventure is what makes it so special.

The initiator of the Paris-Dakar race was the Frenchman Thierry Sabin, who in 1977 got lost on a motorcycle in the desert. He was saved by the natives, it seemed that one should rejoice and never return to the desert again. But Sabin was not such a person, he was so fascinated by the desert that he wanted to show its beauty to everyone. The extreme sportsman made a rally route that united the continents. The beginning is Paris in the center of Europe, the end point is Dakar in the very west of Africa. The Paris-Dakar route passed through Algeria, but then the political situation became more complicated, and the riders began to pass through Morocco or Libya.

The route of the famous rally, which is still considered the most difficult and prestigious, has changed more than once. And the changes were very serious.

• In 1989, the Paris-Dakar route passed through Tunisia and Libya, and a year later Tunisia was excluded from the route. From France they began to cross over to Tripoli (the Libyan capital);
• In 1992, for the first time in history, the race ended not in the city that gave it its name, but in Cape Town. The route went through the whole of Africa;
• 1994 - the route was made looped;
• 1995 also made its own adjustments: the start of the auto competition was given not in Paris, but in Grenada.

Unfortunately, the route of the incredibly interesting and difficult Paris-Dakar race often changed for security reasons - the organizers were afraid of terrorist attacks and did not want to take risks. Therefore, in 2000, the rally again had to end not in its native Dakar, but at the foot of the mysterious pyramids in Egypt. In 2008, the marathon was canceled for the first time, again due to terrorist threats.

Route 2015

Now the route of the Paris-Dakar race has completely changed. Only the name "Dakar" has survived from previous years. Now the entire route runs through South America, in 2015 the cars will start from Buenos Aires. The path will be 9,000 kilometers (it is worth noting that 5,000 are special stages), so that the riders, having passed through Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, returned again to Buenos Aires. On the map, this route looks like an almost perfectly even circle.

No matter how the Paris-Dakar track changes on the map, the spirit of competition, the courage and determination of athletes who are ready to take risks and overcome difficulties remain indispensable.

The Paris-Dakar Rally is a good example of a timely successful idea. Frenchman Thierry Sabin was one of the best racing drivers of the 1970s. The circumstances of his life were such that at a certain moment he managed to start a pendulum that has not stopped for the fourth decade.

Pragmatic Start

In the 1970s Europeans, who had nothing to do at home, are driving at full speed across the northern part of the African continent on two- and four-wheeled vehicles. These small races were known to a narrow circle of amateurs. But already then there were prize-winning places. Sponsors provided financial support, and administrators dealt with organizational issues.

The official history of the Dakar portrays the nascent races as driven solely by the enthusiasm of the riders. This is not entirely true: there was a lot of enthusiasm, but the commercial component was present even then.

Thierry Sabin was one of those "enthusiasts" who raced through the sands and rocks of Africa on a motorcycle. He was 28 years old. Participating in one of the rallies in 1977, he got lost in the African desert of Tenere, stretching across the territories of Niger, Libya and Chad.

History is silent about how miraculously he escaped. It is only known that the local nomads helped him. The very fact of returning from the African desert was extraordinary: Sabin became a well-known, as they would say now, media figure. He gets the nickname "rescued from the sands." Against the background of Sabin's heroic areola in the community of racers, their sponsors and administrators, the prospect of organizing a large-scale race, which by all accounts could attract the attention of a large number of people, looms.

The calculation turned out to be absolutely correct. By the end of 1978, a route with a schedule of daily tasks was prepared, participants were announced, and Thierry Sabin, as a "true pioneer" ("true pioneer"), begins to come up with exciting slogans. The most successful one is still used today: “Duel for participants. Dream for viewers.

Difficulties with the name

On what basis the Dakar race was called a "rally" is not entirely clear. The meaning of the word "rally" is a race on the track, which can also take place on short distances, and over long distances between cities and countries. However, the presence of a public road, any, not necessarily paved, is a distinctive element of this type of race. In contrast, the Paris-Dakar is all about endurance riding off-road (human and vehicle). To eliminate terminological confusion, they came up with the name "rally raid" ("rally raid" - "rally raid"), which began to denote an off-road race. But the complex term did not take root: they still use simply “rally”, although this is not true.

The race started from Paris for the first 6 years. Since 1985, the starting point of the rally has changed periodically. Various regions of France, Spanish cities and even the Portuguese Lisbon became the starting point. In this regard, the presence of Paris in the name has become irrelevant. Left a simple "Dakar Rally".

Africa is a restless continent. Low living standards, political instability, terrorism - these factors followed the rally throughout the African stage. The organizers of the Dakar were able to run the race along the initial route 2 times: in 1979 and in 1980. After landing on the African continent, the racers went through Algeria, Mali, Niger and further east through small African countries to the Singalese Dakar.

But already in the third race, in 1981, for safety reasons, the route begins to change: the race passes bypassing one or another country. In 1984, the route was laid with a significant deviation to the south, with a stop in Côte d'Ivoire. The difficult situation in Algeria has led to the fact that, since 1989, landings on the African continent have alternately been carried out in Tunisia, Libya and Morocco.

Despite minor changes in routes, the general direction of movement for 12 years lay from the northern coast of Africa to the south, to the center of the continent, and then to the western Atlantic coast. 1992 was revolutionary. The organizers abandoned the north-west detour and decided to host the world's first trans-African race. The participants of the rally drove the continent from north to south - from Libya to South Africa. The route, of course, was straightened as much as possible, but it still turned out to be long - more than 12 thousand km.

For safety reasons, since 1994, they have stopped riding in central Africa. They carefully pave the way along the western coast with a stop in relatively calm Mauritania and Mali.

The routes of 2000 and 2003 stand out. The first one has again become trans-African, only this time - from west to east. Racers traveled from Dakar to Cairo. In 2003, Sharm el-Sheikh became the destination.

The African story ended in 2008, when a few days before the start of the races, the French Foreign Ministry officially warned the organizers that their conduct along the proposed route posed a potential security threat not only to the participants, but also to several thousand spectators. The terrorists intended to carry out an attack in Mauritania, along which most of the way passed. There was no time to work out a new route: the race was cancelled.

American routes

Since 2009, the Dakar Rally has radically changed its location. From Africa, located near the European coast, it moves across the Atlantic Ocean to South America. They don't shoot, they don't take hostages, they don't blow up hotels. Organizationally, the event only benefited from the move. It has become more expensive and longer for European fans to travel.

Since you don’t really travel through the tropical jungle, less hot and more passable Argentina, Chile, Peru and a little Bolivia were chosen for the races. Today the South American Dakar is a well organized safe competition. However, crazy routes of 15 thousand km. remained in the distant 1980s.

Table 1. Routes, length and number of participants in the rally 1979-2016

	Route	Route length		Number of participating vehicles
		Total, km.	Of these, special stages, %	At the start, pcs.	Of them reached the finish line, %
1979	Paris - Algiers - Dakar	10 000	32	182	41
1980		10 000	41	216	38
1981		6 263	54	291	31
1982		10 000	60	385	33
1983		12 000	43	385	32
1984		12 000	49	427	35
1985	Versailles - Algiers - Dakar	14 000	53	552	26
1986		15 000	52	486	21
1987		13 000	64	539	23
1988		12 874	51	603	25
1989	Paris - Tunisia - Dakar	10 831	61	473	44
1990	Paris - Libya - Dakar	11 420	75	465	29
1991		9 186	63	406	43
1992	Paris - Libya - Cape Town (Trans-African)	12 427	50	332	51
1993	Paris - Morocco - Dakar	8 877	50	153	44
1994	Paris - Spain - Morocco - Dakar - Paris	13 379	33	259	44
1995	Granada (Spain) - Morocco - Dakar	10 109	57	205	50
1996		7 579	82	295	41
1997	Dakar – Niger – Dakar	8 049	81	280	50
1998		10 593	49	349	30
1999	Granada - Morocco - Dakar	9 393	60	297	37
2000	Dakar – Cairo	7 863	64	401	56
2001	Paris - Spain - Morocco - Dakar	10 219	60	358	39
2002	Arras (France) - Spain - Morocco - Dakar	9 436	69	425	31
2003	Marseille - Spain - Tunisia - Sharm El Sheikh	8 552	61	490	38
2004	Province of Auvergne (France) - Spain - Morocco - Dakar	9 507	49	595	27
2005	Barcelona – Morocco – Dakar	9 039	60	688	31
2006	Lisbon - Spain - Morocco - Dakar	9 043	53	475	41
2007		7 915	54	511	59
2008	Canceled for security reasons
2009		9 574	50	501	54
2010		9 030	53	362	52
2011		9 605	52	407	50
2012	Mar Del Plata (Argentina) - Chile - Lima (Peru)	8 393	50	443	56
2013	Lima - Argentina - Santiago (Chile)	8 574	48	449	67
2014	Rosario (Argentina) - Bolivia - Valparaso (Chile)	9 374	56	431	47
2015	Buenos Aires - Chile - Buenos Aires	9 295	51	406	51
2016	Buenos Aires - Bolivia - Rosario	9 075	53	354	60
AVERAGE:		10 040	55	402	41

How are the Dakar races

This is the freest race in the world. Anyone can participate, on any vehicle, from a motorcycle to a truck. Despite the fact that automotive corporations use the rally to the full as an advertising platform, the organizers have always welcomed those who wish to participate "from the street". The amateur spirit of Dakar is still alive. Anyone can apply to participate. But such “eccentrics” are becoming less and less every year. Perhaps people have become more pragmatic. Perhaps the Dakar time is passing.

The rules of the Dakar race are minimal:

• All participants in the race must strictly follow the given route and complete daily tasks.
• The average length of the route is 10 thousand km. About half of them are occupied by the so-called "special sections": sand, mud, grassy soils, rocks.
• The entire route is divided into daily continuous stages. The length of each is up to 900 km.
• As a rule, one day in the middle of the rally is the "rest day" - there are no races.
• Routes for motorcycles, cars, trucks and quad bikes vary in difficulty and length. The winner is set in each mode of transport.
• The South American race lasts 15 days (the African ones were 22 days each);
• The month of the event is January.

Dakar winners

For almost forty years, the Dakar race has developed some trends that are characteristic of sports competitions. In particular, participants and teams representing a particular country specialize in certain vehicles. Accordingly, in each of the four types of race there are leaders who win most often. For example:

• Russian teams are usually the best in truck races (of course, in KAMAZ trucks);
• the French traditionally lead on motorcycles (do not forget that the founder, Frenchman Thierry Sabin, was a motorcyclist);
• on cars are also often the best - the French;
• Argentines usually take the lead on ATVs.

Below is a summary table of the representatives of the countries most often winning in Dakar.

Table 2. Countries that were the best in the rally from 1979 to 2016

What about Thierry Sabin?

He took an active part in the organization of these races for 9 years. In 1986, during the rally, he and several others flew in a helicopter over the Malian desert. As a result of a sandstorm, the helicopter lost control and crashed. So, the desert allowed him to survive at 28 so that he could create the best and largest race in the world. But she took his life at 37.

The Dakar Rally can surely be called the most famous and “patriotic” in Russia, the success of which the whole country, and not just motorsport fans, is proud of. It is in this marathon for survival that KamAZ trucks show their power and reliability to the whole world, forcing them to respect the domestic auto industry. Russian trucks literally “do not notice” their rivals, taking the “gold” of the podium almost every year.

The victory is especially prestigious because of the many thousands of kilometers of the race and its conditions, when roads change directions, sand dunes become mud puddles, and the sweltering sun brings torrential downpours. The ideological inspirer and organizer of the “Paris Dakar Rally” was the Frenchman Thierry Sabin, who almost died during the “Nice-Abidjan” in 1977. A motorcycle racer lost in the desert was accidentally discovered by the Tuareg tribe three days later. This prompted him to work out the route of the new African continent - dangerous and difficult, with a minimum number of roads and a maximum number of natural obstacles.

The debut season of "Paris-Dakar" took place in 1978, and took place on December 26 in Paris, from Trocadero Square. The finish point chosen was Dakar, the capital of Senegal in West Africa, which the pilots reached three weeks later, passing through Algiers, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. 182 racers reached the starting line (90 on motorcycles, 80 on cars and 12 on trucks), but only 74 reached the finish line. Drivers covered about 10 thousand kilometers, more than 3 were special stages.

The division of equipment into classes of auto, motorcycle and cargo occurred from the second (January 1980) year, so the award podium in 1979 turned out to be one. It went entirely to the motorcycle racers, and the “gold” and the title of the first Dakar champion (originally used as a common abbreviation for the rally-raid) were won by the Frenchman Cyril Neve, who rode the Yamaha XT500. His compatriots, “motorists” on the Range Rover V8, also distinguished themselves, winning the victory for the only time in the history of the tournament with a trio of a pilot, navigator and mechanic. In the future, the functions of the latter were taken over by other crew members. The "cargo" category received an official winner in the 80th. It was the Algerian team on the Sonacome, a truck of the Algerian automonopoly, created as a branch of the French Berliet.

The mass failures of the participants of the debut rally, which turned out to be “for survival”, did not embarrass the auto world, gathering even more people who wanted to try their hand next year. Traditionally, it started on January days in Paris and ended in Dakar, but since 1995 (due to public protests about the massive accumulation of equipment that creates a transport collapse in the city), the French capital has given only two starts (1998 and 2001). It was replaced by the Spanish Granada (1995, 1996, 1999) and Barcelona (2005), Arras (2002), Marseille (2003) and Clermont-Ferrand (2004) from France, the Portuguese Lisbon (2006, 2007) and even Dakar itself (1997 and 2000).

The finish line has also been moved several times. In 1992, the Paris-Dakar crossed the whole of Africa, finishing in South Africa, in Cape Town, not far from the Cape of Good Hope, the extreme southwestern point of the African continent. In 2000, drivers were driving from Dakar to Egyptian Cairo, and in 2003 from Marseille to Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt). In 1994, the race was "circled", starting and ending in Paris, in 1997 doing the same with the capital of Senegal. In total, for the entire time of the event, the stages were accepted by 29 countries.

The last season of the "classic", West African "Paris-Dakar" was 2007. The threats of al-Qaeda terrorists, who demanded the cancellation of the race and killed four French citizens in Mauritania in December of that year, were taken seriously by the organizers. They decided to move the competition to Latin America until the “normalization of the situation” (in fact, for an indefinite period, given the activity of various terrorist groups), refusing to hold the 2008 rally.

Description

Rally Dakar differs from other rally tournaments in its format, where the champion is determined at the finish line, based on . Stages are not calendar-stretched weekends with the summation of points, these are daily races, with breaks for sleep and repairs in clearly indicated places. Considering that it is required to drive up to 10,000 km, a significant part of which are “special sections”, and “tracks” are famous, the task for many drivers and “iron horses” becomes overwhelming.

In some seasons, less than half of the starting crews come to the finish line, so it is not surprising that the race has received the status of a "rally marathon". It attracts professional racers and "amateurs" who dare to test their strength in sports competition on the verge of possibility. The latter, the majority is recruited, and often up to 80% of drivers have nothing to do with. A pleasant annual tradition has become the participation of female pilots and famous people, representatives of both sports in general and show business and politics.

The organizers are responsible for technical support and security of the competitions, leading the races, equipping places for food, repairs and rest, if necessary, for mass entertainment events. It is estimated that about 1.5 tons of food is eaten and about 6 thousand liters of water are drunk during the day of the rally. Gasoline for equipment, about 15 tons for all participating crews, also goes in a “caravan” along the route, and the purchase of local fuel is prohibited. About 15-20 thousand people are responsible for the safety of the rally-raid, including employees of the host countries.

Over the decades of the Dakar, at least 13 thousand pilots managed to successfully complete the entire race, proving their high level and received as a reward gold medal, officially confirming high achievement. Separately, it was calculated that more than 60% of the starting riders could not reach the finish line, leaving the race.

The main prize in the rally is a one-kilogram Golden Bedouin figurine, a stylistically made of gold bust of a desert dweller wrapped in traditional clothes. The importance of the very idea of ​​off-road conquest is emphasized, and not the financial benefit of a place in standings. It is also supported by motorists, submitting a large number of applications for participation in each season, as a result, spending more than earning in the race.

Technique and categories of participants

Rally "Dakar" is held for 4 types of vehicles:

• motorcycles
• ATVs (since 2009)
• trucks

They are divided into internal categories with their own digital and letter numbering, depending on the degree of modifications to the vehicle, a wide range of which is allowed by the rules. In this way, “fireballs” modified by amateurs or factory teams, and quite common equipment found on public highways, come out.

Motorcycles

Production models (approved for operation on ordinary roads) with one or two cylinders and an engine capacity of up to 450 cubic centimeters are allowed for off-road use. They are divided into categories:

• Elite - members only sports organization Amaury Sport Organization
• Super-Production - general group of motorcyclists
• Marathon is the main condition, during the rally it is impossible to change key components and assemblies of motor vehicles

ATVs

Separated from moto, they formed two subcategories:

• Single-cylinder, with any two-wheel drive and engine up to 750 cc. cm.)
• 3.2 - cylinders - 1 or 2, drive - allowed and "full", engine - up to 900 "cubes")

Cars

Vehicles up to 3.5 tons in weight compete in three classes:

• T1 - "serial" SUV models that have been modified and tuned
• T2 - "factory" cars, without special modifications
• Open - "buggies" and other equipment that falls under the weight limits

Trucks

The most diverse group, and one of the categories does not even take part in the medal standings:

• T4.1 - trucks must be "factory" sample, without changes and improvements
• T4.1 - finalized and modified representatives of the class
• T4.2 - "techs" of support services, as fast and improved as possible, but aimed not at winning the race, but at helping other crews
• T5 - trucks of the technical divisions of the teams, "tournamentally" not participating in the rally-raid

Regulations and features of navigation

According to the regulations, the distance of the Dakar Rally is divided into daily stages of 700-900 kilometers, including "liaisons" (usually roads and public paths) leading to or from "special sections". Credit points are awarded for the speed and correctness of passing the latter, being calculated after each race and adjusting the position of the participants in the standings.

Depending on the place, the position of the drivers at the start of the next day is determined, where the system of temporary odds is used. Riders start individually, at 2-minute intervals, from motorcycle categories to cargo classes. From the beginning of the second ten of the tournament, the time between the starters is reduced to 1 minute.

The size of the handicap of all stages is unchanged and cannot be increased or decreased, in contrast to the "test" time of passing the "special stage". It can be changed by the organizers by imposing penalty minutes for errors on the course, "refueling" at local gas stations and assistance in navigation. Time can also be "subtracted" (compensated) in case of force majeure. For example, if a race car driver stopped to help a broken opponent, as per the rules, each participant must act.

It has its own characteristics and navigation - the route of the entire rally-raid is kept secret. Crews before the race itself receive information about the next stage, moreover, only the data of landmarks and control points (sometimes combined with mobile refueling and technical assistance stations) without indicating their GPS coordinates.

The movement along the route is carried out using the Unik II navigation device, which shows the direction to the next checkpoints. The difficulty is that the rider must be within a certain radius of them in order for the device to catch the signal. In emergency cases, with the help of a special code, you can open the GPS-map with the location of all "test" points, but "hints" are punished with a penalty time.

The organizers monitor the implementation of navigation requirements by the participants using the IriTrack GPS tracker, tracking their location in real time. It is also used for emergency communication with the crew, in particular, in emergency and especially dangerous situations. Secret control points are also used at the "special stages", fixing the appearance of each athlete.

Russia in the Dakar Rally

We began to compete at the Paris-Dakar in 1991, immediately winning the silver and bronze of the truck podium. The team "", created in 1988, which had practically no experience in international performances and was nicknamed the "Blue Armada" by the fans for the color scheme of the cars, distinguished itself. The first "gold" of the rally-raid was won in 1996 by Viktor Moskovskikh on the KamAZ-49252, which brought two more victories, but already under the control of Vladimir Chagin. The pilot from Perm subsequently became a record holder, having won a total of 7 champion titles in the cargo class - in 2000, 2002-2004, 2006, 2010-2011.

In total, the KAMAZ-master team has 15 Dakar gold medals, 13 of which were obtained after 2002. The history of the race knows no other such total dominance of one brand of car. The reorganization of the team from Russia, which rejuvenated the squad after Chagin ended his career, did not help the rivals either. Eduard Nikolaev, who became a 3-time rally champion, showed himself to be the leader of young pilots.

Legends of Dakar

In addition to Kamaz, different years the Paris-Dakar was periodically dominated by several automakers that produced especially successful cars, brought by mechanics to almost perfection. It is possible to note 4 championships in a row, from 2012 to 2015, of the BMW concern and its British representative MINI All4 Racing, which exhibited 11 cars that successfully reached the finish line.

Citroen, whose ZX sports prototypes won in 1991 and 1994-1996. The French Peugeot took "gold" four times in a row on the "" and "405" models in 1997-2000, but stopped paying enough attention to the rally raid from victories in the "zero", leaving for a long time in classic auto racing and triumphantly returning in 2016 with Peugeot 2008 DKR. In 2017 and 2018, the 3008 DKR brought the auto giant's total wins to seven.

The most titled Dakar SUV is reasonably considered, the modifications of which brought the manufacturer 12 championship titles. The first "golden" season was 1985, and in 1992-1993 the Japanese took away the titles from Citroen, which was considered the favorite. Complete dominance began in 1997 and ended in 2008, with the cancellation of the Africa Rally. For eleven years, the car became the best in its class 9 times, losing in 1999 and 2000.

The Austrian KTMs have kept everyone away from the championship title since 2001, having won it 17 times in a row. Neither Yamaha (9 awards of the highest standard), nor BMW and Honda, 6 and 5 titles respectively, can compete with them. However, Yamaha is making headway in a relatively new ATV category, having won every season since 2009.

Incidents

The status of Dakar as a “survival marathon” has a very real justification - every season there are new incidents and tragedies. According to some reports, over the years of the event, about 70 people died - participants, technical staff and spectators. The death rate among motorcyclists is especially high.

Events at the rally sometimes affect politics, as in 1982, when Mark Thatcher, the son of the Iron Lady, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappeared in the desert. He, the navigator and the mechanic were looking for "the whole world" for 6 days. The event received a huge public outcry, the military was involved, whose plane found the crew 50 km from the highway. All were safe and sound.

In 1986, the Paris-Dakar took the life of its founding father, Thierry Sabin, who died in Mali in a helicopter crash during a sandstorm. The pilot, two representatives of the media and a guest of the competition, French singer Daniel Balavoine, crashed with him. But the name of the ex-motorcycle racer forever remained in history, and his undertaking was successfully continued.

A series of tragedies stands out in the 1988 season, which brought the death of 6 people: three racers crashed on the stages, a Malian girl was hit by another driver, and a team of videographers - a mother and daughter in Mauritania. In addition, the participants were accused of organizing the fire and the ensuing panic, during which three people died.

Five people, including a 5-year-old girl from Senegal, crushed by a maintenance truck, died in 2005. Among them is Fabrizio Meoni, an Italian motorcycle racer, two-time rally-raid champion. After terrorist killings and statements by al-Qaeda supporters, and the transfer of Dakar to South America, crossed the ocean and "survival status". The first victim of the new-old rally already at the second stage of 2009 was the Frenchman Pascal Terry - the body of the pilot was found only three days later. In 2010, during the starts of the race day, a spectator was crushed to death, and in 2012, Jorge Boero, a motorcyclist from Argentina, crashed.

In 2013, near the border of Peru with Chile, a head-on collision between a Land Rover support crew and two local taxi cars killed two strangers, and seven people ended up in a clinic with various injuries. In the same year, and also head-on, Thomas Bourgin, a 25-year-old motorcyclist from France, collided with a Chilean police car. The debutant of the rally-raid did not survive.

The third stage of the 2015 season also ended in death, when the body of Michal Hernik, a motorcycle racer from Poland, was discovered. His bike had no visible damage from the accident, the driver himself was without a helmet and signs of violence, and an autopsy showed dehydration as the cause of death.

Dakar on TV

Many articles have been written about the most famous rally raid and even more reports have been shot, riders give interviews, and viewers share their impressions. There is a lot of video material, from which one can single out the “documentary” filmed by Discovery Channel in 2006 Race to Dakar(“Forward to Dakar!”), where the main character was the British actor Charlie Boorman in a BMW F650. She is considered the best and has an IMD rating of 8.2 points, surpassing even some Hollywood blockbusters.

The 7-episode documentary is considered a must-see for those wishing to take part in and tells about all the stages of preparing a pilot for a rally, starting with medical tests and paperwork. He shows the viewer the events from the "first person", explaining all the subtleties and nuances of the race, showing the complexity of the route, passing through deserts and stone impassability under 50-degree heat, followed by sub-zero night temperatures.

This term has other meanings, see Rally (meanings). Pet ... Wikipedia

Rally (English rally, literally ≈ rally, collection), 1) complex motor sports competitions for the accuracy of observing a given traffic schedule along a specific road route; additional high-speed competitions included in the program ... ...

The London Sydney Marathon was held in 1968 and became one of the key rally raids in the history of motorsport, it is called the first marathon. The original race was planned as a one-time sports ... ... Wikipedia

I Rally Zemfiry Konstantinovich, Russian revolutionary, writer and public figure. From 1879 he lived in Romania, where he took Romanian citizenship under the surname Arbore. II Rally (English rally, ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Race route map ... Wikipedia

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Type multipurpose bomber Manufacturer Potez First flight 1924 ... Wikipedia

Potel Chabot History of the company In 1820, the confectioner Potel and the chef Chabot decided to create a company dedicated to home delivery of ready-made meals. And very soon all of Paris learned about them. The royal court appreciated their skill, the Empire paid tribute to them, ... ... Wikipedia

- (Renault, Regie nationale des usines Renault), French state-owned automobile company, the largest in the country. Produces cars, trucks and sports cars. The headquarters is located in Boulogne Billancourt (a small town ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

This term has other meanings, see Ader. Clement Ader Clément Ader ... Wikipedia

Coordinates ... Wikipedia

Books

• The secret of the glass crypt, Yulia Nelidova. 1907 Former lawyer Emil Gershin, who returned from a long trip to the Himalayas, will have to unravel the mystery of Dr. Inozemtsev's death. To do this, he must face...
• The secret of the glass crypt, Nelidova Yu.. 1907. Former lawyer Emil Gershin, who returned from a long trip to the Himalayas, will have to unravel the mystery of Dr. Inozemtsev's death. To do this, he must face...