McPint: ‘Dakar is the toughest race on Earth – it’s barbaric’
You can forget heavyweight boxing, those rich boys have it easy
Ihad a rant on Twitter the other day about Boxing after the Anthony Joshua fight. I watched the fight but I don’t see what the fuss is all about, I don’t think I was looking at what other people were looking at. I have respect for anyone that does 12 rounds with a great big athlete trying to smash your head in. Yeah you’re going to get a fat lip and a black eye, but it’s over in half an hour. In comparison, the trauma of racing the Dakar is going to be with you forever.
Dakar is barbaric, it’s pain, it’s mind over matter over for two weeks and thousands of miles. What people don’t appreciate is the preparation – you don’t just rock up at the start line with your KTM, a bag of pork scratchings in your rucksack and get going, do you? There’s a lot of work that goes in to it and there are a lot of people who re-mortgage their house and are £20, £30, £40K in before they even turn a wheel. And it’s a race where it could be over on day one, you lose concentration and you’re upside down – it’s a race where people die.
You watch the top guys on TV blasting through the dunes with a helicopter behind them and it looks so cool, but in reality most of the riders in it are in hell. I’ve been offered a ride to race Dakar and my heart says yes, but reality says no. Just to do it you’d have to be selfish in other areas of your life, it’s like trying to win a TT, you can’t have any distractions.
At the end of the day my passion is road racing, next up it’s enduro and speedway, but my priority has to lie with road racing, but I can’t road race forever – maybe I could race Dakar and be a navigator in a truck with Guy Martin driving.
‘YOU DON’T JUST TURN UP WITH YOUR KTM AND RUCKSACK’