Dakar Rally
Living so close to the route of the Dakar offers us the opportunity to watch it up close albeit from the Spanish side of things. With few or no barriers between you and the competitors, it's possible to touch them as they pass you by if you're a) stupid enough to do it and b) brave enough not to invoke the wrath of the competitor as they pass you by. We've always picked vantage points after the checkpoints where the competitors are not in such a rush to get to the end of the stage. One might argue that you don't get to see the real race, but you get to talk to the competitors and Spanish TV has always had good coverage of the event.
It has to be said that the best vantage point we've ever watched it from was at the checkpoint in Antequera in 2005. The course was run through the town with the rest of the Sunday traffic which was a great spectacle. One Spanish guy, 900 years old pulled up to the traffic lights on his little moped, fly screen bigger than his scoot, cigarette butt hanging from his mouth and a face like it had been chewed on. His olive mats were slung over the back of his moped and he was sat waiting like the rest of the traffic for the lights to change to green, not a care in the world. He didn't even flinch at the two KTM's sat either side of him, talking to each over his head. This was the same year that the late great Colin MacCrae took part.
On the same narrow street earlier in the day a mother pulled her car up outside her house to unload her car full of kids and all the shopping she'd just been to collect. She cared little about the T4 trucks that were patiently waiting behind her car.
The following year we watched it from Malaga Port and the Race to Dakar team pulled up next to us!! My 15 seconds of fame was recorded on their DVD - yes, that's me running up to Charley asking him if he'd had a good day racing. What a nice bunch of blokes they were, even after a really crappy stage, they had the time and made the effort to talk to the spectators.
Of course the 2008 race will go down in history as the first one ever in it's history to be cancelled. Once again, the terrorists won. ASO may well have taken a lot of flack for the cancellation at the eleventh hour, but unconfirmed reports said that the insurance underwriters had pulled out which would have left the organisors with little choice but to cancel the event. And so it seems that will be the last opportunity we have for some time to watch the race live since in 2009 it will be moving to Argentina and Chile.
Photo Gallery :: Dakar Rally
