Victory lap
We catch up with Harith Noah after his immense victory in the Rally2 class at the 2024 Dakar Rally
SHERCO TVS RALLY RIDER Harith Noah has made India proud, becoming the first Indian to ever set foot on the Dakar podium. The Kerala man topped his class in the 2024 Dakar and came 11th overall. We talk about how he trained for the Dakar, training on PlayStation games, tyre choices during the Dakar and why he doesn’t like knowing his results during the rally.
The feeling of victory
“It’s difficult to put into words. When I finished the last stage, that’s when I first came to know where I finished. And with all the results, which was first in the category as well as 11th overall, it’s crazy. It’s so intense and especially Stage 10, that’s what keeps coming to my brain when I think about Dakar and how I did, so, really great feeling and also when I got back, all the support and all the messages and stuff I got on Instagram once I started using that. So, a really nice feeling for sure.”
Preparing for this year
“In Dakar, it’s not just one year. It’s like multiple years of a lot of training. The fitness training was the same as every year. A lot of fitness training – which I’m pretty good at.
“My fitness is one of the best when you look at all the athletes. And this year I had support from Red Bull and I did quite some testing at Red Bull APC. It’s like an athlete performance centre and we focused on actually gaining weight for rallying. We thought it’s better to have more weight so the bike works better. So, that’s what we did in the form of once a month.
“So, that was a really good improvement because I did the test two times, once midyear somewhere and then once just before the Dakar. Other than fitness training, obviously bike riding is most important. Trying to improve my skills in the places I’m
not that great at throughout the year was always the most important, more than fitness even, because that’s where I’m lacking. And I started riding when I was 16, which is not that young. So I still have a lot of catch-up to do. Throughout the year I worked on speed, technique and navigation as well, not as much as I would have liked. I would have liked to do a little more. I just did one training session in Morocco on the bike and a few hours on the PlayStation. But yeah, it worked out pretty well. And yeah, I think I know more now about what I have to work on. And I’m looking forward to that process.”
Practicing navigation on a PS
“Yeah, so basically there’s this game called Dakar Desert Rally and in the newer version, I’m there in the game, which is pretty cool. You can ride me (laughing). So the navigation in the game, when you put it at the highest difficulty, it’s pretty realistic. The gameplay is really good, like the physics and all that stuff. But the navigation is maybe even more difficult than in real life because you don’t see where you came from because the lines disappear. But it’s good to just keep the mind working like that. So I try to do it pretty often, especially before the race, to keep my brain aware of looking at these numbers and all that stuff.”
Expectations for this year
“At the back of my mind, I knew that I finished 20th (in 2021) and I wanted to be better than that but for me, it was really important and what I try to focus on is just trying to live in the now and try to take it one kilometre at a time and try to do my best every kilometre with navigation as well as riding. Push it when I felt good and take it easy when I felt like it’s not my day or not my section in the stage. I tried to not bother about the results because at the end of the day when you finish the race – which is the most important goal because finishing is not so easy. So when you finish the rally and you know that you gave your best every day wherever you finish, if that’s the 18th or 25th you should be happy with it ideally because that’s all you have right, you can’t go faster than you can go. So that was my goal and that should be my goal next year as well because I feel like that works for me, trying to just do it day by day and try to focus on the present moment.”
I KNEW THAT I FINISHED 20TH (IN 2021) AND I WANTED TO BE BETTER THAN THAT
Staying focussed for the race
“I don’t use Instagram, someone else posts for me. I have this Instagram channel which I just post on, that’s the only thing I do. Every day my results were on my Instagram but I only wrote the caption about the day and then I sent it to someone and they posted it with the results. So I didn’t do any social media. And all the people that were close to me, I told them that they shouldn’t tell me, the team as well. Sometimes in between some people told me some things and as soon as I heard, I tried to stop them and after that, whenever I met someone I told them, “Hey, just letting you know, don’t tell me the results.” A news guy told me three, four days before the finish that he was interviewing me because I had won a stage in Rally 2, saying you are now second overall and he was going to say the minutes and I was like, “No, no stop, don’t tell me.””
On TVS Racing
“We are a team and we work together to do our best but at the same time, they give me my space and accept how I look at things, which is not the result, which is strange when you look at it from the outside. But at the same time, we got here with that, so it must be working. It’s a really good feeling to be associated with someone who understands me as a person but wants the same as me which is to be the best or be the best version of myself. So it’s super great. The support has been there 100 per cent throughout the year with training, with the bike, with the equipment and everything. Even the Sherco team and the TVS Sherco team this year here in Dakar supported me.” ⌧
Below left: Harith Noah finished 11th overall. Below: Fitness is one of Harith’s strongest suits. Bottom: Noah is the first Indian to have gotten to the podium