UNIBET

Living ten years in the embargo, or just the previous sentence, read about the decade before, sounded like an oxymoron. So, suppose, something in the spirit of sweet salt, dry rain…

Now, no surprise, because that’s reality, geography despite that. For a few years, Dakar has been “lying” in South America, and today it rains and rains in a race that was supposed to humiliate the dry and “endless” Sahara. But he is not surprised at the recurring questions: Is this still Dakar? And is it the rally that Thierry Sabine had drafted in the late 1970s after surviving for three days in the desert?

The Ancient Greeks say that not. That it’s just a deal with a famous name, almost sacrilege. That Dakar belongs to the desert to end at Pink Lake in the Senegalese metropolis.And everything else is a substitute. Race Africa Race, which runs on the tracks of the original Dakar, but which after years remains a trucpodnik, a bit underground racing. The second group – really much more numerous – objects: Dakar is a brand. The synonym of harsh racing, perhaps the most difficult motoring business in the world, is the noise in which realms it is going. Moreover, in the South of America, the rally was stiffening, so returning to the roots was something romantic, but in fact it was a step back.

For example, Michal Burkoň, manager of the Barth Czech team in Buenos Aires, said: “Dakar is more varied here. It’s so much more demanding for teams, which makes sense. We have to deal with unexpected situations.If it was simple, everyone can drive it. ”

One likes to remember the past. And so the witnesses like to equip pioneer times when Karel Loprais et al. they reached the goal, heated the pork in their own juice, fried the roach, because the preserves from the organizers had their neck. Then the car was repaired by the truck for almost the whole night, and then they were lying down in the sleeping bag for a few hours.

Now the horsemen come to the bivouac, give the cars to the mechanics who will “build” a new car overnight. They go to a candle to their own chefs and sleep in a caravan on a bed of ghosts.The navigator Josef Kalina, who had experienced the winning Dakar with Loprais and those in America over the last 30 years, says today: “The riders are used to a feudal criminal.” To learn that Dakar does not even have a vacation now, but they have something to do easier. So, for years, the organizers are proposing to restrict the ensemble that accompanies pilots. For Dakar to come back a bit to his DNA.

He knows he will fail. Firstly, for the participation of mechanics, the teams pay the starting fee, so the organizers do not give up million of revenue – yes, Dakar is a functioning business! And this is the time. At Loprais’s times, everyone has also repaired the car at home in the garage, and nowadays even the usual exchange of bulbs needs years of practice.And while Loprais used to go to the campsites with the “ache”, the goulash was stirring in the kettle, today he would prefer to go out of the “cottage” to the pub. And there they remember the taste of a tin can.

So it is with Dakar. It’s engaging to listen to romantic stories from African years, but the time is different. He is more professional, he demands different demands. More than the Zikmund-Hanzelk’s desire for adventure requires physical readiness, concentration. It is about team-play, other terrain, another – rather versatile – skill of a rider. In something, the African and South American eras do not differ. Dakar’s humiliation continues to attract admiration.And no matter if you’ve been “wading” through the Sahara or rain streams.