Jan 06 2009
The nondescriptive race
The “Paris-Dakar” race started on the 3rd of this month . You would think that it would start in Paris and end in Dakar… well, you’ll learn that the French don’t usually function logically: this year the race begins in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And doesn’t finish in Paris, or even in France, but no other place than Buenos Aires, Argentina. (official site)
That’s right! It’s going in circle.
It used to be an actual Paris-Dakar but after a lot of criticism, only the name stayed.
This competition is not extremely interesting. It used to be a big thing, covered almost 24/7 on network channels (la 5) la 5 and people would watch it to follow their favorite celebrity fulfill their hobby by crossing a horizon of sand and poor cities in the desert. And when it’s not a celebrity, it is a longtime dream of someone’s who took 5 loans and managed to get some sponsors to finally race and eventually get bitten by a snake.
Three of the main names I can remember from that race:
- Ari Vatanen is the best ever.
- Cyril Neveu who won several times and once fell off his motorcycle, broke his two ankles, but kept going until the finish line. (video)
- Hubert Auriol who was the first to win in two different categories, motorcycle and auto. He also presented Koh-Lanta, our version of Survivor for a little while.
A lot of relatively famous people participated to that race including Johnny and Balavoine. One of Johnny’s comment on the race back in ‘06 is something you should listen to, it’s very Johnny-like.
One day he arrived 1H15 after the first car and said to the journalist “well, if we hadn’t lost 1h15 minutes we would have been here 1h15 minutes earlier”.
Anyways, Balavoine (singer) died during the Paris-Dakar, hovering the race in ‘86. The helicopter crashed in a dune. He was very involved politically and against Mitterrand and some people didn’t believe it was an accident. I personally think that a lot of “coincidences” happened under Mitterrand, like for example Bérégovoy ’s sudden death… but that’s just me.
Here is a short video illustrating what kind of competition this is and how many types of vehicles participate to it this year:
