THE PARIS-DAKAR RALLY, ADVENTURE & BIG CRITICISM

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the Paris-Dakar, a controversial rally whose first race started on a day like today in 1979.

The Dakar Rally or simply The Dakar; formerly known as the Paris–Dakar Rally is an annual rally raid organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation.

Most events since the inception in 1978 were staged from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal, but due to security threats in Mauritania, which led to the cancellation of the 2008 rally, events from 2009 to 2019 were held in South America. Since 2020, the race has been entirely in Saudi Arabia. The rally is open to amateur and professional entries, amateurs typically making up about eighty per cent of the participants.

The rally is an off-road endurance event. The terrain that the competitors traverse is much tougher than that used in conventional rallying, and the vehicles used are typically true off-road vehicles and motorcycles, rather than modified on-road vehicles.

Most of the competitive special sections are off-road, crossing dunes, mud, camel grass, rocks, and erg among others. The distances of each stage covered vary from short distances up to 800–900 kilometres per day.

The race originated in December 1977, a year after Thierry Sabine got lost in the Ténéré desert whilst competing in the 1975 Côte-Côte Abidjan-Nice rally and decided that the desert would be a good location for a regular rally, on the lines of the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally, the first automobile race to cross the Sahara Desert.

In 1971, ex-Cream drummer Ginger Baker used the unproven Range Rover to drive from Algeria to Lagos, Nigeria to set up a recording studio and jam with Fela Kuti. Predating the Paris-Dakar Rally the subsequent documentary is replete with such terrain, and documents the vehicle's endurance.

More information: Dakar

182 vehicles took the start of the inaugural rally in Paris, with 74 surviving the 10,000-kilometre trip to the Senegalese capital of Dakar. Cyril Neveu holds the distinction of being the event's first winner, riding a Yamaha motorcycle. The event rapidly grew in popularity, with 216 vehicles taking the start in 1980 and 291 in 1981.

The privateer spirit of early racers defying the desert with limited resources encouraged such entrants as Thierry de Montcorgé in a Rolls-Royce and Formula 1 driver Jacky Ickx with actor Claude Brasseur in a Citroën CX, in the 1981 race won by two-time winner Hubert Auriol.

In 1982, there were 382 racers, more than double the amount that took the start in 1979.

The 2008 event, due to start in Lisbon, was cancelled on 4 January 2008 amid fears of terrorist attacks in Mauritania following the 2007 killing of four French tourists. Chile and Argentina offered to host subsequent events, which were later accepted by the ASO for the 2009 event.

The ASO also decided to establish the Dakar Series competition, whose first event was the 2008 Central Europe Rally, located in Hungary and Romania, which acted as a replacement for the cancelled 2008 edition of the Dakar.

The 2009 event, the first held in South America with a respectable 501 competitors, saw Volkswagen take its first win in the Dakar as a works entrant courtesy of Giniel de Villiers.

The rally is held in Saudi Arabia since 2020.

When the race was held in Africa, it was subject to criticism from several sources, generally focusing on the race's impact on the inhabitants of the African countries through which it passed. Some African residents along the race's course in previous years have said they saw limited benefits from the race; that race participants spent little money on the goods and services local residents can offer. The racers produced substantial amounts of dust along the course, and were blamed for hitting and killing livestock, in addition to occasionally injuring or killing people.

More information: Hi Consumption

After the 1988 race, when three Africans were killed in collisions with vehicles involved in the race, PANA, a Dakar-based news agency, wrote that the deaths were insignificant for the [race's] organisers. The Vatican City newspaper L'Osservatore Romano called the race a vulgar display of power and wealth in places where men continue to die from hunger and thirst.

During a 2002 protest at the race's start in Arras, France, a Green Party of France statement described the race as colonialism that needs to be eradicated.

The rally was criticised before 2000 for crossing through the disputed territory of Western Sahara, which has been occupied by Morocco since 1975, without the approval of the Polisario Front independence movement, which considers itself the representative of the indigenous Sahrawi people. After the race officials gained formal permission from the Polisario from 2000 onwards this ceased to be an issue.

The environmental impact of the race has been another area of criticism. This criticism of the race is the topic of the song 500 connards sur la ligne de départ, 500 Arseholes at the Starting Line, on the 1991 album Marchand de cailloux by French singer Renaud.

In 2014, the Dakar rally was criticized for damage done to archaeological sites in Chile.

The move to Saudi Arabia for the 2020 Dakar Rally was under heavy criticism because of the situation of Human rights in Saudi Arabia and the position of women in that country.

Despite the criticism from human rights organizations against the choice of host country for the 2020 season, the Dakar Rally was organized in Saudi Arabia for another consecutive year. While it was being denounced as an attempt of sportswashing by Saudi Arabia, the organizers defended the decision.

More information: Snap Lap

The Dakar is not a game of destruction...
In the Dakar, whoever wants to take a chance.

Thierry Sabine