Madness in the Desert: Paris to Dakar

In 1977, during a motorcycle endurance race,

French racer Thierry Sabine got lost

for several days in the Libyan desert,

almost dying from exposure.

Remarkably, he was seduced by the experience.

Determined to return,

he came up with the idea of a rally from Paris across the entire

Sahara, to Dakar in Senegal.

He could not have imagined that ten years later,

his mad idea would become the biggest,

most lethal motor sport event in the world...

..with crazy drivers and crazy vehicles

taking huge risks...

..and that he and many more would be dead.

Anybody with any sense probably wouldn't have started it,

because it's obvious that that'll be a problem.

It could have been the last days of my life.

The epic Paris to Dakar effortlessly captured humanity's need

for endeavour and freedom,

becoming a beacon for eccentric adventurers.

Battling huge dunes across the Sahara's

9,000 kilometres of shifting sands,

like its founder, Sabine, the entrants came to love the desert

and its extreme challenge.

That's been the best part of my life.

My first contact with the desert

was a love contact.

Was a love contact.

If you get the opportunity to drive across the Sahara desert,

you've got to take it.

But when international exposure

catapulted the rally into the biggest motor race

in the world,

it became a victim of its own rapid success.

Shrouded by controversy, overwhelmed by corporate interests,

it claimed over 60 deaths,

including innocent bystanders.

It's a crazy race. I want to stop.

It's finished for me.

As the organisers battled to keep the adventure alive,

the rally would finally come up

against the harsh reality of African politics.

This is the story of how one man's dream

became the biggest motor sport event in the world...

..and how the West took on the continent of Africa...

..and lost.

'On etait la dernierement dans la Grece pour les derniers preparatifs.'

At 9,000 kilometres,

the Paris-Dakar was the biggest rally ever conceived,

starting on the streets of Paris

and skirting, in stages,

the entire Sahara in three weeks.

It would be the harshest event

its competitors had ever undertaken.

In the beginning, it was a big adventure,

an adventure between friends.

We did not know where we were going.

Gathered at the Trocadero on Boxing Day, 1978,

was a ramshackle group

of enthusiasts and adventurers alike.

None of them had any idea what they were about to experience.

None of them were aware that the founder only expected one of them

to finish his event.

As the competitors rolled out of Paris

towards the port of Marseille,

everyone of them was using a normal

production bike, car or truck,

some slightly modified.

None of them were specially prepared for what lay ahead.

Would they be able to handle such an extreme challenge?

As the competitors disembarked the ferry in Algiers, Thierry Sabine

handed them a road book of his research

of the course.

The real adventure had begun.

The road books say, "Straight on, on the main road.

Then they say, "Some holes,"

they say, "Jump,"

they say nothing!

And so the leaders say, "At this village,

"take the direction to..." another village.

But if you go there, there is no road signs.

The course was broken into long stages,

some over 600 kilometres, against the clock...

..camping each night as a group in what were known as bivouacs.

The organisers did not provide food or fuel,

which had to be bought locally.

MUSIC: "Comment Te Dire Adieu" by Francoise Hardy

Every day we'd discover something,

including discover the food,

discover the hotels,

discover everything.

We discovered Africa.

This is a time you had the first Indiana Jones movie coming out.

Nobody talked about adventure.

You didn't have exciting things to do.

I think Thierry invented this rally

for many reasons, but the essential point

was to be able to bring a whole bunch of people

out somewhere they did not know,

where they had never been,

and in a rather hostile environment.

He did that in order for people to discover themselves,

to make people realise, "How far can I go?

"Can I go beyond that limit?

"When will I break down?"

I'm not talking about just mechanically,

but psychologically.

One of the first competitors to sign up for the rally

was endurance motorcycle racer and part-time air hostess,

Martine De Cortanze.

On her regular flights to Southern Africa

she could see clearly

the massive scale of the desert she was to cross.

When I flew over the Sahara,

I just looked down and said, "Wow!

"This is big."

The Sahara is 9 million square kilometres,

straddling 12 countries.

An explorer once walked across it

and took nine months.

It is one of the world's most hostile places.

There are few, if any, roads.

Amongst dunes that can rise to 185 metres,

there are sand holes that can swallow cars whole.

Away from these, the surface is often so rough,

it rips your tyres apart.

There was no rescue service in the desert.

If you got stuck, you were on your own.

We had probably 400 kilometres or so

to start really being in the desert,

then it happens.

Control started it - "Five, four, three, two, one, go!"

And then...desert.

Wow!

And suddenly, I felt

like in my garden.

My first contact down on the ground

with the desert

was a love contact.

Was a love contact.

# When the sun

# Comes out... #

I wasn't scared.

I wasn't frightened.

I had nothing negative.

I was happy, happy, happy

to be there.

Really happy.

And I went, "Vroom!"

It was an entranced love of one life for Africa.

And I thank Thierry for that.

# And my man has gone and left me

# In the rain... #

Navigating in the desert is almost impossible

because the sun is the only reference point,

often obscured by vicious sandstorms,

where you struggle even to see your own hands.

Nobody had ever attempted a race on this scale before.

As the dwindling competitors crossed the Tropic of Cancer towards Mali,

some had already gone beyond their limits.

Most had already forgotten about racing against the clock

and were trying to survive.

Out of the 181 starters,

only 74 experienced the thrill of racing along the beach

into a tropically flooded Dakar.

The winner was Cyril Neveu...

..on his motorbike.

The rally was deemed an unqualified success,

despite one motorcyclist dying when he fell off

whilst not wearing a helmet.

The pioneering attitude of the first ParisDakar continued.

Anyone could enter.

In 1981, a Rolls-Royce was entered.

Women, including the famous actress Iris Berben,

competed alongside the men.

And slowly the event began

to gain cachet,

even glamour.

Some competitors even fantasised about winning.

Still, Sabine was more circumspect.

When asked in a press conference who he thought would win,

he replied, "the desert."

There are no signposts in the Sahara.

Your life depends on your ability to navigate.

People that can drive racing cars cannot necessarily find their way

through 1,000 kilometres of uninterrupted sand.

In 1982, the race was still little known outside France.

But it was about to be propelled into the international limelight,

gaining instant front-page exposure.

Anne-Charlotte Verney was a celebrated track racer.

When she proposed entering the Paris-Dakar,

her manager teamed her up with an up-and-coming racing driver

who already had some success at the Le Mans 24 Hour track race.

His name was Mark Thatcher.

Charlotte came up to me and said,

"Mark, do you want to do the Dakar?" I sort of said, "Yeah, OK,"

and forgot about it for four months.

Then she rang up one day and said,

"Can you come over for the press conference?"

So I arrived over there and signed the contract

and went straight to the press conference. That was pretty much the preparation.

Got a bit more serious after that,

but that was in November

and I arrived in Paris two days before New Year's Eve.

Verney was an established professional driver,

so Thatcher was chosen to be her navigator.

Having flown light aircraft,

he did bring some experience to the team.

For him, a crack at the Paris-Dakar was an opportunity not to be missed.

For his team, getting the son of a prime minister was a PR coup.

Obviously, she'd be a lot happier if I took up chess,

but naturally it's every mother's prerogative

to worry about their sons,

but she trusts my ability

and I don't want to hurt myself any more than she does.

The sponsor said,

"It will be good if you want to make an operation together.

In winter, I don't have any race,

So I say, "We can do the Paris-Dakar."

Mark said, "That's perfect,"

so we do it. I was driving

and he was my co-driver.

Unfortunately, three days into the desert,

the back axle broke.

They could not establish exactly where in south Algeria they were.

If they weren't on the right route,

any search would most likely fail.

# Finding a good man, girls, is like finding a...

# Needle in a haystack

-# What I say, girl?

-Needle in a haystack... #

There's no news tonight of the whereabouts of Mark Thatcher,

his fellow driver, Anny-Charlotte Venney,

and their mechanic.

Reports of sightings today are now being discounted.

REPORTER: Any news you've had of your son?

I'm afraid there is no news.

We weren't lost per se, it's just that the car

became completely immovable.

We had been travelling in convoy

with two other of the team cars as well.

When we stopped,

we worked out where we were,

all six of us worked out where we were.

It's a thing I could not understand - he could not find where we were.

With all the machine he had,

he said, "I can't find it."

That's the only thing that made me angry.

All of us were in the car.

There were three sets of road books

and a lot about how we would get round dunes

and all this sort of thing,

so I think pretty much it was a collective view.

Bearing in mind,

when we stopped, the two other team cars were there.

I don't see how that really bears up.

The eyes of the world were now focused on the Paris-Dakar.

Verney, Thatcher and Garnier had been lost for five days.

It had become a major international incident.

If the son of the British prime minister was to die,

the outcry could affect the rally's reputation.

'Denis Thatcher has flown out to Algeria'

to help in the search for his son Mark,

missing on a car rally in the Sahara desert.

The prime minister and her husband are said to be very concerned.

My father decided he was going to go

and take more of a hands-on attitude to this,

and actually flew down to Algeria.

When it's 40 degrees outside, it's very difficult.

At the end, we drink the water of the radiator.

I was really going to limit water consumption

to almost emergency ration level.

When you have nothing to eat, it's not so important.

I think, two days more, we will be dead.

Thatcher and his team-mates were lucky to be

rescued by the Algerian military.

But the year after, Sabine would change the course,

taking the rally into even more inhospitable terrain,

demanding more from the competitors and their machines.

The Tenere is in the heart of the Sahara.

A huge 4,000-square kilometre region of endless sand,

stretching from Chad in the east to Niger in the west.

In this featureless landscape, there is nothing

to stop the winds whipping up sand

at speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour.

These 6,000 metre-high freaks of nature

can be terrifying,

engulfing entire cities and stripping paint from cars.

In 1983 in the Tenere,

the rally would be overwhelmed by a huge sandstorm.

It would be a reminder of why the Paris-Dakar could become

a frightening undertaking

and why the competitors were always at risk of getting lost

in such a vast, remote wilderness.

And in the middle of this, we had a sandstorm.

And you can't see more than the end of the room.

So you have to slow down.

And, once again, pray.

It's scary because you see nothing

and you know in the desert

you can't fix your eyes on something

because you have no trees, nothing.

Suddenly all the tracks get off.

And you lose your way.

The navigation at that time was very difficult.

Over the length of the 200 kilometre stage,

a small nine-degree error in your compass reading

could take you 30 kilometres off course.

When I arrived,

I nearly prayed,

because I thought I would never get out of this storm,

of this track,

and the organisation had a big problem.

Sabine had a potential catastrophe on his hands -

40 competitors spread over the most inhospitable desert in Africa.

When the wind lightened

and he could finally get his helicopter in the air,

he was left chasing shadows.

For those lost, it was potentially fatal.

It took four days for all the 40 competitors to be saved.

Most carried on towards Dakar.

And the sandstorm in the Tenere became an adventure

against which all others would be measured.

Its increased notoriety and exposure

meant sponsorship and its associated money

was now pouring into the rally.

Entries were two and a half times of the first event,

testimony to the beauty of Thierry Sabine's vision

and the discovery

of what was effectively an unregulated playground.

In 1986, Sabine announced

he would be providing water pumps

to some of the poorest villages along the route.

It was a humanitarian gesture, highlighting

his connection to the region.

But it would be his last.

Sabine was still the race's figurehead,

but struggling to delegate.

From organising in Paris

to helicopter rescues in the desert,

Sabine was hands-on.

On January 14th, 1986, it all came to a head.

Whilst Sabine was in his management helicopter

overseeing the event,

it was engulfed by a sudden sandstorm.

Deep in the Malian desert,

the helicopter spun out of control and crashed into a dune.

Sabine was instantly killed,

along with four others.

The wreckage of the white helicopter, named Sierra,

was scattered over 400 metres.

I was arriving around half an hour after.

I have seen all the parts of the helicopter...it was over.

And Thierry was in a plastic bag.

So sad, I prefer you don't say it,

because it was horrible.

I have to say some of it is almost blocked out in my memory.

Of course, it's shocking.

You don't expect that, especially not when you're young.

When you're young, everything goes for you.

He was too low.

When he start, he was doing that...

I don't know how you say it in English.

I think, "Once, he is going to touch the floor."

He had bad luck.

No-one was sure who was actually flying

the helicopter at the time of the crash,

Francois-Xavier Bagnoud,

a fresh-faced pilot on his first job for the rally,

or Sabine himself.

I knew him even when he was 13 or something like this.

He always, always, always did stupid things.

He never knew what limit was.

He had an incredible number of crashes with cars

and that's why he never did a better career as a rally driver.

He finished so few races.

When you don't finish, you don't win.

It's some kind of a shame,

because I think Thierry could still have done many big things.

While the bodies of Sabine and the other victims

were repatriated to France,

the race continued on to Dakar.

It was thought it would be a fitting memorial to Sabine,

but most found their heart wasn't in it.

Out of the 131 motorcycle entrants,

102 would fail to finish.

Of these, two would die - one hit by a car

and another when his liver was ruptured by a brake lever,

whilst a third rider would be left in a coma...

..for 24 years.

The race had lost its innocence.

I think for a very long time,

I kind of closed myself in and stayed in for a long time.

As time goes, you put all your feelings where they belong

and you tend to appreciate that you have had

this long and wonderful time

with a person like that.

That is so much more important

than that very brief moment of loss.

Incredible, he was so funny.

It was a very nice part of my life.

For sure, I loved him.

But I tried so many times to say, "Thierry, don't get crazy.

"Thierry, pass your motoring licence.

"Thierry..."

Completely loss of time.

Sabine's ashes were eventually scattered by a tree

in the Niger desert,

and his father, Gilbert, took over organising the event.

Many wondered whether the rally could survive the loss

of its charismatic leader,

whether the rally's original spirit had died with him.

In 1987, the arrival of Peugeot

would challenge the very nature of what Sabine had created.

The heyday of the amateur adventurer was over.

Peugeot had earned their place in French motor sport history.

A huge factory team, they and their drivers dominated

the World Rally Championship during the early '80s.

'The tortuous nature of the roads, the long special stages

'and the unfortunate accidents

'make this event tough, tiring and very difficult.

'It takes ice-cool nerves.'

But lax rules and technical excesses in world rallying

had led to a series of fatal accidents,

including the death of three spectators.

The Group B cars, as they were known,

were banned from the World Rally Championship.

Rather than mothball their cars,

Peugeot decided to take them to Africa.

The exposure Peugeot sought required nothing less than a win.

The driver they turned to

was former world champion Ari Vatanen,

still in recovery from a near-fatal crash.

I was still in an extreme depression

and I thought everything was finished in my life.

I could see no life, no light, no hope

and then, when I came out of the darkness,

like the wakening up out of a nightmare,

then suddenly I was testing a car

in the most beautiful part of the Sahara.

My past came back to life.

Peugeot took their World Championship-winning 205 T16

and modified it for the rigours of the desert.

Two shock absorbers on each wheel strengthened the suspension,

and the chassis lengthened to accommodate eight times

the fuel of a standard road car.

Few amateurs could have afforded a car of this standing.

Have you done any testing with this Peugeot?

At the end of October,

we were in Niger for a couple of weeks

and the car seems to be very good, and very strong.

If it can make it to Dakar somehow,

they would finish in a nice place but it's a long, long rally.

Ari's return to competition got off to a disastrous start

in the showcase Paris prologue.

Suspension failure and a crash into a bank

left him requiring the help of spectators

to get him over the line.

Peugeot had the resources to repair the car.

Nothing would stop them from entering the Sahara.

It's enormous, it's vast, it humbles you.

Or, if you go in with overconfidence, it belittles you.

You come out of the Sahara a different person

because you don't rule the Sahara, you don't dictate your terms,

the Sahara dictates its terms on you.

You feel total liberty,

but you can pay the price

for your liberty.

You don't know where the parameters are, where the borders are.

You don't know how far to go in your liberty

and when you should back off.

Only if you arrive at Dakar,

you know if you've got your bets right or wrong.

The landscape is staggering.

In the morning, at the start line,

the sun is rising

and you see that desert in front of you,

and the world is yours in a way.

I'm a lucky boy.

'The Peugeot lion of Ari Vatanen was preparing to pounce.

'The Finn proved he'd put his early troubles well and truly behind him

'by completing the tough 700-kilometre stage

'six minutes quicker than anyone else

'and the 205 Turbo was really coming into its own.'

Peugeot had dominated rallying by an inspired car,

the meticulous planning of Jean Todt

and huge backup resources.

They took a similar approach to the Sahara.

The desert became their workshop.

The Peugeot team was the most powerful the event

had ever encountered.

'With a plume of luminous dust streaming out behind him,

'the lion of the desert drives out of the dawn

'and even further into the lead.'

'Only 2,000 kilometres to go.'

Is it a machine that's beatable, this Peugeot steamroller?

No, the Peugeot might be a problem,

but the biggest problem is Jean Todt, as far as I'm concerned,

because his organisation is excellent.

And he's just proving that.

It's absolutely spot-on.

He has just covered every point.

When you come back from the darkness I was coming from,

and go into the Sahara,

I had the feeling as a human being, nothing could stop me.

Vatanen's was a personal triumph,

but for the Paris-Dakar it was the dawn of a clinical professionalism.

For some, Peugeot's approach

and sheer scale of resources

had spoilt the event,

arguing it was now just about winning.

Everyone would have to go faster to keep up.

Thierry Sabine had been a passionate racer

but he also loved Africa.

He saw the rally as an opportunity to combine both.

Some questioned whether this was still possible,

and whether the rally's current relationship with Africa was justifiable.

If somebody said to me,

"I experienced solitude in the desert,

"so I'm organising a thousand people to go, would you like to come?"

I'd say, "No, I wouldn't."

Because there won't be any solitude.

It stops being the desert if you take a lot of people there -

it's not deserted any more.

The Paris-Dakar was a vehicle

to pass the message,

to open people's eyes.

Otherwise, those countries don't get any publicity,

they don't get any airtime.

If there are regulations governing

the use of these cars

on French or European roads,

so effectively they're banned from Europe,

I think there's a moral issue

that if something is illegal in Europe,

why do you export it to Africa?

'For Guinea, this is quite an invasion.

'These are the first new vehicles they've seen here

'for some 15 years, since the French pulled out.

'For the spectators a none-too-gentle request

'to get into line.

'A timely reminder

'that this is Africa.'

While debate over the moral issues of the event rumbled on,

in 1988 it celebrated its tenth anniversary,

attracting a record 603 teams.

With them came a new breed of super truck.

Ever since the first rally,

the mechanical support trucks had been fighting to keep up with

the racers they supported.

So it was decided to create a separate category.

Now trucks could join in the fun.

But DAF and their new prototype, the X1, would take things yet further.

"Let's try two engines. Let's try two engines with two turbos.

"Let's try two engines with three turbos."

And it just goes on and on.

'Tipped to win is one of two monstrous twin-engined brutes,

'each with six turbochargers

'and the acceleration of a sports car.'

Chris Ross was a 24-year-old working for DAF's British partners, Leyland.

He was selected to be the mechanic

supporting Dutch drivers Theo van der Rijt

and Kees van Loevezijn.

Me mum's a bit worried.

She's a bit worried about the safety aspect.

She would have good reason to be.

Instead of being a celebration,

the tenth Paris-Dakar hit a new low.

DAF and Chris Ross were involved in the first of a series

of tragic accidents.

More intense racing in more powerful vehicles

had perhaps made this inevitable.

In northeast Niger, on the ninth stage of the rally,

the competitors lined up, 20 abreast.

It would be a spectacular mass start for the media.

It was a day when they called it a "mass start,"

in order to give it some kind of sensational aspect.

Basically, it's all for the cameras.

You're going off hell-for-leather and everybody does it.

The red mist comes down and everybody wants to be

going fastest.

We had a factory Nissan driver

next to us who just wouldn't back down,

so he was going faster and faster, we were going faster and faster.

We were more and more off-track,

we hit these rocky outcrops,

about 18 inches high.

If you did it slowly in that vehicle, it would have been fine.

But you did it at high speed, and you went into a rolling motion.

There was an immense thud.

It was like the corner

of a metal object

being stabbed into the ground really hard.

Noise, dust, darkness.

And then, still.

Quiet.

I couldn't see anything, I thought I was blind.

I put my hand down and my leg was in the wrong place.

At the knees, it was bent in the wrong direction.

From the impact,

Chris Ross and driver Theo van der Rijt

were flown straight to hospital,

Van der Rijt with a broken arm and a cracked vertebrae.

Co-driver Kees van Loevezijn

was thrown 50 metres from the wreckage.

His neck was broken.

The truck's cab was crushed flat.

The inside of the cabin was completely filled

with roll cages,

except you don't imagine that kind of crash case -

that a ten-ton vehicle will crash

at over a hundred miles an hour and hit a sudden stop.

So whether you tested the crash scenario

to that level is another story.

DAF withdrew from the race immediately

and Chris was repatriated to a hospital in the Netherlands.

They didn't know why I was losing blood.

My small intestine had come adrift

and was actually pumping the blood

and poison into my system.

Two weeks later, they discovered I'd broken my back.

One of the vertebrae was cracked

and was actually in danger

of collapsing outwards,

which would have left me paralysed, but luckily the physiotherapist

noticed and confined me to bed then.

The death of Kees

was an awful thing.

It took some getting over at the time

because he was a good friend.

But I think

if you enjoyed the experience,

even the downside

holds some memories...

..and some positivity comes out of it.

My first and only experience of a Paris-Dakar

ended on day nine...

..of a 21-day race.

Despite the DAF tragedy,

the 1988 rally continued south.

Four more deaths followed,

including two local people, one a child.

The tenth anniversary rally was turning into a nightmare.

A Dakar-based news agency questioned the ethics of the race,

suggesting the deaths of the locals were seen as "insignificant."

Africa and its people were starting to pay a heavy price.

Are you going to do Paris-Dakar again?

No.

This year was terrible -

too difficult, much stress.

In spite of its troubles,

the Paris-Dakar had become a huge success.

Covered on TV and in the world's press,

it was now a global event.

The big manufacturers

had brought cut-throat competition and kudos.

Amateurs looking for eccentric adventure could still enter

but it was now a race and it was now a brand.

Competitors still slept in tents at makeshift camps

but it was no longer a ramshackle affair.

Top mechanics were flown around by plane.

The event was now a major fixture on the sporting calendar,

and could not be ignored.

North African leaders woke up to the opportunity to use

the rally for promotion,

Colonel Gaddafi inviting the race to pass through Libya in 1989,

where he gave free petrol to competitors.

Also in 1989, a new technology would be unveiled that made

being lost in the desert impossible.

What the Paris-Dakar lost in adventure, it gained in safety.

There is a military technology that allows you to

pinpoint your position anywhere in the world.

The global positioning system, or GPS for short,

would seduce the latest crop of Dakar competitors.

The spirit of the Dakar was not too much information

and go from A to B, and the fastest can win the race.

In a landscape that has very few reference points,

and one of those, sand dunes, is constantly moving, a device

that can pinpoint your exact position soon becomes indispensable.

People, some of us, have what we call the nose.

They don't need a map or indication, we say, we go there,

and most of the time it is a good road.

That is something that has been totally killed by the GPS.

My first Dakar, I was completely lost. I walked the night,

six or eight hours to find a small village. It was like an adventure.

After, with the GPS, it was a completely different race,

it was really a race of speed.

It is normal, it is in life,

the only thing that doesn't change is the relationship of humans, you know.

And you mustn't forget it.

The big thing, we don't lose anybody any more in the desert.

We have a GPS and know exactly where we are.

GPS had forever changed man's relationship with the desert.

Competitors could now enter the wilderness of the Sahara

safe in the knowledge they could be found, should they break down.

However, one thing a GPS couldn't do

was give you any information

about the political landscape you were driving through.

No nation will be permitted to brutally assault its neighbour.

The American Defence Secretary Dick Cheney has announced plans

to call up thousands more reserve troops

to support the Gulf operation.

As the competitors were getting ready

for the 1991 edition of the Rally,

NATO and Iraq were getting ready for war.

With the route passing through the pro-Iraqi state of Mauritania

and Libya, the volatile Chad, Mali and Niger,

the rally was now on a collision course

with North African political unrest.

Joel Guyomarc'h and his veteran co-driver Charles Cabannes

were driving Ari Vatanen's support truck.

After six days and 5,000 kilometres of desert driving, they entered

an area of Mali where Tuareg rebels were in armed conflict

with the government.

After several days of anti-government unrest

in the West African state of Mali,

the army and police say they have seized power.

Cabannes's killers were never found,

but with a Tuareg uprising in Mali's east,

and a government under pressure from its citizens in the west,

the rally had come face-to-face with a country on the brink.

Questions were being asked

if this was really a suitable place to hold a sporting event.

Any answer would come too late for Charles Cabannes's family.

There was no minute's silence to mark Cabannes's death.

And the next day, under a military escort,

all the competitors travelled through what was left of Mali.

John Watson Miller was one of Britain's best off-road bikers,

and was part of the racing convoy.

In the bivouac and the Rally

you are protected totally from the outside environment,

you do not know what country you're in,

you just concentrate on your racing.

When I was on the road on my own, I encountered, basically, a war zone.

The next country they were to visit was Mauritania,

now siding with Iraq in the Gulf War.

For an Englishman, John Watson Miller,

this was not the best place to be heading.

It was certainly flagged up to me,

the dangers of me going into Mauritania, but I had a mission

and my mission was to become the first Englishman to finish the rally.

I was prepared to die trying to do it, it was that important to me.

Later, Watson Miller had a gun held to his head by armed militia.

Fortunately, he could speak French.

They demanded my papers, and that's when a gun was taken out to me.

I was just very aware of, "I mustn't show them my passport.

"And I mustn't give them any idea that I am English".

It was too quick to have time to think about it.

The time to think about it was when I was walking back to my bike.

And that, as I say, was the longest 20 or 30 yards I have ever walked.

In the end, John Watson Miller broke both legs in separate crashes

and never finished the race.

First to Dakar was Ari Vatanen in his Citroen.

A record-breaking fourth win for him.

In the motorcycle category, Stephane Peterhansel took victory,

marking the rise of a new star.

But 1991 had been a bad year,

with another fatal crash killing Francois Picquot.

Danger had always been part of the event.

It's what made it attractive to some.

This ethos was the legacy of the race's founder.

With all of the difficulties surrounding the Rally,

the next time they were confronted by a serious threat

they airlifted all of the competitors over the problem region.

The rally was gaining a notorious reputation

and had claimed 29 victims in just 13 years,

including motorcyclists, truck and car drivers,

African bystanders, journalists, two pilots and the founding organiser.

But on this race you always share

between the fascination of this race,

but also the reality of this race

and sometimes the reality is not very nice.

But...

you need to find your way on what is more important,

the fascination and the adventure or the risk of the accident.

And for me,

the fascination of this race was always stronger than the other thing.

By now, the event had been bought out

by a French sporting dynasty, ASO.

Based in Paris, the Amaury Sporting Organisation

owned both the Tour de France and Roland Garros,

the home of the French tennis open.

They employed the Dakar legend Hubert Auriol

to dispel the storm clouds that were forming around the event.

Entries were now down by nearly three quarters

since its mid-'80s heyday.

Many thought the spirit had become compromised.

Hubert Auriol had won the Paris-Dakar three times,

and an incident when he had ridden on with two broken legs

was part of the rally's folklore.

Jean-Claude Killy, head of the ASO,

saw in Auriol someone who could rescue the event.

He told me,

"Here are the keys of the house, you know what you have to do".

You know, when you get those words, it is a kind of,

how could I say it, it is unbelievable.

The first thing is the dream.

You have the marketing side. It is easy, because it was my dream,

so it was easy to share my dream with the others

because I was issued from the inside, you know.

Auriol set about attracting more private entrants

and putting a sense of adventure back into the event.

He took it to Egypt, South Africa and back to Niger.

Auriol restricted big budget teams from exploiting new GPS technology.

The result was a victory for Jean-Louis Schlesser's buggy,

the first time a private team had won in over a decade.

Yes, it was a very important victory

because what makes the race is the fight,

if you don't have the fight there is no interest for the media.

He kept driving his buggies, he kept the kind of freshness on the race,

he has a private team and it's a private team against factories.

That's important,

because that was the story of Dakar since the beginning.

When we beat the big company I was very happy, in fact,

for all of the team, you know? For my mechanic.

And all of the tricks and with my co-pilot helping,

we remind all the small special things we did to win, you know,

and at the end with the sum of the good things, you are the winner.

FRENCH COMMENTARY

Jean-Louis Schlesser's maverick approach and dominance

was too much for the big factory teams,

causing Mitsubishi frustration in 2001.

New safety regulations were introduced

and the glamour of the Rally restored under Auriol's leadership,

but the death toll continued,

one in each of the next three years.

But with the ASO

came a resolve to make the event more commercialised.

This was causing problems on the ground

as the local population

was used to making money when the Rally came to town.

Development expert Emmanuel Gregoire was in Niger

doing a field study when the bivouac descended on Agadez.

In the year Gregoire was in Agadez, the organisers

built a wall around the bivouac, alienating the local people

and preventing them from interacting with the competitors.

Long gone were the days when competitors brought their own food.

The organisers argued they needed guaranteed supplies

for the now 2,500 entourage at a predictable cost,

so jetted them in themselves.

Was the wall symbolic of a culture clash?

Could both sides ever profit from the exchange?

Over the years, the locals have been trying to make enough money

in one week to survive for one whole year.

Would the now commercialised event continue to be welcomed

if most of the Africans were only expected to sell

trinkets on the starting line?

For others, like the French Green party,

the ethos was being questioned.

In spite of the increased professionalism,

the Paris-Dakar managed to maintain its notorious reputation

as the most extreme Rally challenge.

Even World Rally champion Colin McRae could not tame the desert.

In 2005, five more would die, including a young local girl.

Serious questions were being asked

whether this could continue for much longer,

including heavy criticism from the office of the Pope.

Unfortunately, things would get considerably worse.

The event had always struggled to divorce itself

from the politics of the continent through which it passed.

As 2007 dawned, Islamist terror groups

were operating along the Rally's proposed route.

After the horrific slaughter of four tourists in Mauritania,

Al-Qaeda then threatened to murder the Rally's competitors.

It was the final nail in the coffin

and ended the Rally's African adventure for good.

I was really sad, not only for us, for the drivers,

and the riders, but also for the African people.

In the 28 years that the event was run in Africa,

almost 10,000 teams had entered,

clocking up almost a quarter of a million miles.

Over 60 people were killed,

racing around the second largest and hottest desert on the planet.

Its demise brought to a close

one of the biggest human challenges ever conceived.

There is this whole thing about Africa.

Once you get it under your skin, it really belongs to you

and you want to go back, you want to enjoy it again and again.

It is really a challenge on your motivation

during all of the year,

and I don't know what I will do when I stop the Dakar.

When you see a young shoeless boy

with his glowing eyes and then you see this parade of cars

going by or even stopping, that gives him, that makes him dream.

There are many elements to the Dakar

and if I'm a footnote in its history, that is fine.

All the people who raced in this very first Dakar,

we are very tight together.

And even if we were not friends at the beginning,

we finished all friends.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd