This Sporting Life: Prince leads way as Dakar rally veers from straight and narrow

Published on Sunday 4 January 2009 20:33

THERE is no denying that the Dakar rally is more than just a little bit different. A motor race where amateur enthusiasts not only compete alongside professionals, but generally outnumber them, in cars and trucks and on bikes. Where a Qatari prince can beat home a former world rallying champion and pre-race favourite. And don't read too much into the name – the Dakar rally will not venture anywhere near the Senegal capital but instead be contested on an entirely separate continent.

Originally known as the Paris-Dakar rally, it was first held in 1978, a year after Thierry Sabine got lost in the desert and figured it would be a good place to hold a race. Paris has only featured occasionally as the starting point since 1995 but Dakar has been the final destination in all but four stagings. However the complete cancellation of last year's event, due to the fear of escalating violence after the murder of four French students in Mauritania by terrorists linked to Al-Qaeda, prompted a rethink and a move to South America.

This year's race began on Saturday in Buenos Aires and will loop round into Chile and back to the Argentine capital for its conclusion on 17 January. Qatari prince Nasser Al-Attiyah will be hoping he can last the full 9,500 kilometres after winning the first stage, beating out Carlos Sainz, twice the world rally champion. Al-Attiyah, though, has a pedigree of his own, winning the Production World Rally Championship – run over the same stages as the main WRC – in 2006.

Al-Attiyah was impressed by the level of support for the Dakar racers between Buenos Aires and Santa Rosa, the route for day one. "I have never seen so many people around a race," he said. "There were more spectators than we are used to having in the (Production] World Rally Championship. Thank God the crowd was well controlled and we had no problems.

"It was a fairly easy route but still quite fast. However, it didn't feel like I had to push it to the limit during the race. Driving with so much passion around you, it's great."

Rallying is the prince's primary pastime, though it would be fair to say he is a natural with a gun in his hand as well. A former Asian champion in skeet shooting, he narrowly missed out on a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, finishing fourth in the clay pigeon event. In 2006, Al-Attiyah was appointed an ambassador for the United Nations' Global Sport Fund, which provides grants to projects that use sport to prevent drug use and criminal behaviour among young people.

A Dakar win would raise his profile even higher, but even within such an unpredictable and gruelling event, the expectation is that Sainz will be battling with Stephane Peterhansel, the 2007 and therefore reigning champion, for the title. Frenchman Peterhansel is bidding for his tenth victory in the Dakar race, three of which have come in a car and a further six on a bike.

"I was behind him for about 250 kilometres (on Saturday]," admitted Sainz. "The truth is it was impossible to pass him."