The Olympic Video games are thought to be the head of sport. The Dakar Rally is thought to be the head of off-road motorsport.
Whereas studying a roadbook and driving by means of deserts don’t have the identical bodily calls for as swimming 100 metres or navigating down mountain slopes, that hasn’t stopped the world’s finest athletes from making an attempt their hand on the iconic rally raid.
Nasser Al-Attiyah is way and away essentially the most notable instance. When the five-time Dakar winner and twice World Rally-Raid Champion isn’t blowing away the sphere together with his driving prowess, he’s blowing away targets together with his shotgun in skeet capturing. The Qatari made his Olympic début at Atlanta in 1996, the place he completed fifteenth, adopted by a sixth at Sydney 2000, narrowly lacking out on a medal at Athens 2004, and fifteenth at Beijing 2008. He lastly broke by means of to win bronze on the 2012 London Video games whereas a thirty-first in Rio in 2016 was his newest look. Al-Attiyah hoped to return for the continuing Paris Olympics however didn’t make the ultimate lower.
Earlier than turning into the co-driver for Rebecca Busi within the W2RC, Sergio Lafuente raced the Dakar on a Quad with three stage wins and a pair of fifth-place finishes in 2012 and 2014 and can be a three-time Desafío Ruta 40 champion. Manner earlier than that, he completed twenty-sixth within the males’s light-heavyweight class on the 1992 Barcelona Olympics for Uruguay.
On the winter aspect, Andorra’s Albert Llovera was the youngest Olympian on the 1984 Winter Video games in Sarajevo on the age of seventeen, the place he positioned forty-eighth in downhill alpine snowboarding however retired from the slalom and large slalom occasions. The next yr, nevertheless, his ski profession got here to an finish attributable to an accident that resulted in a critical spinal wire damage. Nonetheless, his damage didn’t cease him from making an attempt new issues like competing within the World Rally Championship and ultimately the Dakar in 2007. Llovera has raced a truck at Dakar since 2016, ending seventeenth at school on the newest rally in January.
Whereas he has but to race the Dakar Rally, Italy’s Marco Aurelio Fontana is accustomed to its unique route from Europe to Senegal in addition to doing cross-country racing on two wheels. The 2012 bronze medalist in cross-country mountain biking, he completed sixth in his maiden Africa Eco Race in January.
The Dakar is inherently a French rally as its organisers hail from there (the Amaury Sport Organisation is predicated in Boulogne-Billancourt, a commune of Paris) and it thus used to start out within the nation. To this finish, greater than a handful of French Olympians have gone on to race, particularly within the rally’s early historical past.
Christine “Kiki” Caron, 1964 silver medalist within the girls’s 100m backstroke at Tokyo and 1966 European Aquatics Champion in the identical occasion, teamed up with Bernadette Sacy to race the Paris–Dakar in 1982 although they failed to complete. In addition they retired from the 1983 rally underneath extra distressing circumstances after they and plenty of rivals obtained misplaced within the Ténéré desert amidst a sandstorm, forcing them to stroll lengthy distances earlier than being rescued by Tuaregs.
Additionally on the 1983 grid was Sylviane Telliez, a sprinter for Group France at Mexico Metropolis 1968, Munich 1972, and Montreal 1976 who claimed three European titles. She was labored with Nicole Dacquay on a Datsun Patrol, although they have been unable to complete.
Jacques Anquetil was a legend who received the Tour de France (at the moment overseen by the ASO) 5 instances within the late Nineteen Fifties and early Sixties. Earlier than that, he together with Claude Rouer and Alfred Tonello claimed bronze for France in males’s staff highway biking on the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. In 1986, nicely after his retirement and a yr earlier than his passing, Anquetil was approached by 24 Hours of Le Mans veteran Pierre Yver with an attention-grabbing proposition.
“My most important sponsor, Jean de Mondésir, boss of Sovico (Florette), requested me to do a media stunt by taking retired biking champion Jacques Anquetil as my co-driver in Africa,” Yver recalled in his memoir Pierre Yver, 30 Ans de Course. “I wasn’t very satisfied. He was very sick! Even when Jacques turned out to be an excellent companion. However I’ve to confess that the media stunt labored as a result of the TV helicopters wouldn’t allow us to go. In truth, it made me extra pressured as a result of I instructed myself if I tousled, I didn’t need to be the one who killed the good Jacques Anquetil!”
Straddling France is the Principality of Monaco, whose royalty isn’t any stranger to the Dakar. Earlier than he was Prince Albert II, Albert Grimaldi entered the 1985 Paris–Dakar in a Mitsubishi Pajero alongside Jean-Pierre Marsan however failed to complete. From 1988 to 2002, he continued his household’s Olympic heritage by representing Monaco on the Winter Video games in bobsleigh; Albert’s finest outing was twenty-fifth with Gilbert Bessi in two-man bobsleigh at Calgary 1988.
Additionally in 1985, Belgian judokas Robert Van De Walle and Ingrid Berghmans shared a automobile. Van De Walle had received the 95-kilogram gold medal on the Moscow Video games in 1980 then added a bronze in Seoul two editions later to go together with his three European Championships, whereas six-time Girls’s World Judo Champion Berghmans received the 72-kg gold in 1988. Sadly, their Vary Rover ended up in an identical state to their opponents: rolled over and out.
France’s Marie-Claire Restoux, one other judoka whose girls’s 52-kg gold in Atlanta was sandwiched by a pair of world titles, completed twenty-sixth within the 1998 Dakar because the co-pilot of Sylviane Goutaland’s Nissan Patrol.
Elsewhere within the judo realm, Miklós Ungvári was the 2012 silver medalist in males’s 66 kg and a three-time European Champion earlier than he linked up with Sándor Sebestyén and József Bognár for the 2014 Dakar Rally in South America. Ungvári, who described the race as “a childhood dream (that) might be fulfilled,” and the Uniqa Sandlander Group comprised the lone Hungarian outfit that yr and completed forty-seventh.
Brigitte Becue of Belgium appeared in 4 Summer time Olympiads from 1988 to 2000 with a finest efficiency of seventh within the 200-metre breaststroke and eighth within the 100-m in 1996, whereas additionally notching 4 European Championships. In 2007, she directed Stéphane Henrard’s Volkswagen Buggy to a tenth total at Dakar.
Moreover Llovera, alpine snowboarding has produced a surprisingly appreciable quantity of rally raiders, together with an eventual Dakar winner. Bernhard Russi, who received Olympic gold and silver in downhill snowboarding at Sapporo 1972 and Innsbruck 1976 together with a pair of World Championships, was intrigued by the Dakar-winning vehicles on show on the 1981 Geneva Worldwide Motor Present and requested Subaru, for whom he was a model ambassador, if he might race it himself. After exhibiting him the ropes over the approaching months and enlisting mechanic Christian Simonett as navigator, he took half within the 1982 Dakar in a Subaru 1800 Tremendous Station. Russi was categorized ninety-first after working out of time, although he nonetheless bodily reached the tip in moderately weird vogue because the Subaru’s engine blew 100 yards earlier than the end and coasted throughout the road.
“I assumed earlier than the race that I knew slightly bit about what was occurring right here, however I believe I used to be utterly mistaken,” remarked Russi to Radio Télévision Suisse whereas the race was in Mali. “It’s ten instances more durable, it’s ten instances extra worrying and it’s ten instances more durable for the gear too.”
Simply the largest case from the mountains is Luc Alphand, the one different Olympian with a Dakar crown to his identify. Paradoxically, he by no means medalled on the Olympics in his three tries from 1988 to 1994, together with his finest end being a fourth in Calgary within the mixed occasion. Whereas an Olympic medal eluded him, he received three FIS Alpine Ski World Cups in downhill, one other in tremendous large slalom, and the 1997 total. Alphand hung up his skis afterwards and instantly entered the Dakar in 1998, ultimately happening to win the 2006 race for Mitsubishi. Regardless of retiring from driving after 2010, he stays concerned in motorsport with a short stint because the Silk Manner Rally sporting director and at the moment Veloce Racing’s Excessive E supervisor.
Claude Brasseur would have joined Alphand and Al-Attiyah’s firm since he received the 1983 Dakar Rally in Jacky Ickx’s Mercedes-Benz 280GE, however an damage prevented him from being with the French bobsleigh staff 20 years prior on the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. Nonetheless, he carved out a profession in cinema as one in all France’s most well-known actors.
Frenchwoman Carole Montillet-Carles was already dabbling in rally raids earlier than she ended her ski profession in 2006. The 2002 Salt Lake Metropolis girls’s downhill gold medalist and 2003 tremendous large slalom champion, she received the women-only Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles on a quad with Mélanie Suchet in 2004 and 2005, adopted by 4 extra victories in 2011 and 2012 within the 4×4 class and 2015 and 2016 in Professional. Upon retiring from snowboarding for good, she dedicated to rally for good and raced the Dakar in 2007 and 2009.
From Poland, Adam Małysz got here from one other ski self-discipline as one of many biggest ski jumpers ever. Though he by no means claimed an Olympic gold, as an alternative notching three silvers and a bronze in 2002 and 2010, he’s a four-time World Champion and World Cup winner. After concluding his profession there, he raced the Dakar from 2012 to 2016 with a finest end of thirteenth in 2014; Małysz additionally received twice within the FIA Central European Zone Cross-Nation Rally Championship.
