RALLYING ROUND ON A DATE WITH THE DAKAR
I have, after some thought, decided not to enter the Dakar Rally next month.
Here’s why. This was my method for a day out in Spain with Red Bull KTM star Sam Sunderland, the only British rider to win the notoriously tough event.
Start. Ride slowly, looking carefully at road book, but still get lost at second waypoint. Sigh, backtrack, reset odometer and continue. Encounter steep rocky section. Sigh. Somehow get up it without killing myself. Look up to where Sam is already a distant speck on the horizon.
Now here’s Sam’s method during the Dakar.
Get up at 3am and ride at up to 100mph for around 13 hours a day across rough ground and sand while simultaneously following the road book and diverting around countless obstacles, then working out a new compass heading to get back on track for the next waypoint. Repeat for up to 14 days.
It’s a bit like running an ultra marathon every day for two weeks while doing Mensa tests. And even before we started, we had to go to the gym for an hour of rowing, cycling sprints plus strength work.
Now, as a former international volleyball player, I was once in the gym every day, but it’s been a while, so I emerged wobbling slightly to find our bikes waiting for us – two light and agile KTM 450s.
But first we had to paint the road books, the scrolls of paper contained in a Perspex box on the handlebars with horizontal grids containing a kilometre figure for where you reached a waypoint, a diagram of which way to turn there, and a disturbingly large number of signs saying Danger!!!
Sitting with Sam, I went through each waypoint with marker pens, highlighting the turn directions in green and the dangerous bits in red. That done, off we went, and after making a complete mess of navigating at the start, I got steadily better and faster but, as I say, I don’t think I’ll be entering next month’s Dakar, being held in Saudi Arabia for the first time.
However, winning the Dakar hasn’t been Sam’s biggest challenge. That was when he was riding between stages in Argentina and stopped at a red light. A woman handed him her baby for a photo, then got swallowed up by the crowd surging forwards for autographs as the lights changed.
She did, you’ll be glad to hear, get it back. ■■Follow Sam at redbull.com/ gb-en/athlete/ sam-sunderland
Sam takes Geoff out on KTM 450s