As of January 1, the 45th edition of the dakar rally in Saudi territory, as has been happening since 2020. The international competition of cars, motorcycles, quads, trucks and prototypes It had, since its first edition, innumerable accidents in different sections of the circuit carried out in different countries. But the distinction of “The Dakar”, compared to the rest of the rallies and races, is the high number of deaths in its 44 years of existence. It is estimated that from the first start, in France, at the end of the 1970s, to the present, a total of 72 people have lost their lives directly or indirectly.
In 1979, the pilot thierry sabine I push the call Paris-Dakar Rally, as an annual motor sport challenge in which two continents would be united through a circuit traveled by cars and motorcycles. The opening of the first edition would take place in the French capital and the tour would end in the Senegalese town of Dakar. As the years have passed, the venues and countries involved have varied. The completion of the African journey occurred in 2008 due to the constant terrorist threats from Al Qaeda, for which this edition was suspended.
In search of new territories, the competition was renamed the Dakar Rally. The arrival of the rally to the South American continent remained for ten years, mostly taking place on Argentine soil. However, since 2019 the race has moved to the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia as the main headquarters. In all these various circuits, a total of twenty-seven competitors died, with the particularity that twenty-two of them were motorcyclists. Even the same founder of the meeting, the French thierry sabinedied in the 1986 edition.
In January 2021, the French pilot Pierre Cherpin He died five days after suffering a head injury from a fall during the seventh stage of the Dakar Rally. Until now he has been the last fatality that occurred due to the demanding competition. Previously, to Cherpin, the last victim until then had been the Dutch motorcycle racer Edwin Straveron January 24, 2020, days after the end of the test, after suffering a fall on the penultimate day of the test in which a vertebra was broken.
Of the total deaths, the only Argentine to lose his life was Jorge Martinez Boero. The motorcyclist died in 2012 after a fall with his vehicle two kilometers from the finish line of the timed special of the first stage, near the Necochea district of Buenos Aires. In the records, the first deceased was the motorcyclist Patrick Dodin, in the first edition, who died after going off the track in the African country of Niger.
The pilots are added to the fatal payroll: Bert Oosterhuis (1981), Jean-Noel Pineau (1983), Yasuo Kaneko (1986), Giampaolo Marinoni (1986), Jean Claude Huger (1988), Jean-Pierre Leduc (1997), José Manuel Pérez (2005), Fabrizio Meoni (2005), Andy Caldecott (2006), Elmer Symonds (2007), Pascal Terry (2009), Eric Palante (2014), Michal Hernik (2015) and Paulo Gonçalves (2020), among others. On the technical assistance side, Franco Druetta and Andrea Carisitres IVECO team, in Algeria (1981) and charles cabanes (1991), Citroen service truck driver, who was shot dead in a Mali army ambush.
In turn, on January 14, the most serious accident in the history of the test occurred when five people died when a helicopter crashed in the town of Gourma, in Niger, including the creator of the test, Thierry Sabine, as well as the French singer Daniel Balavoinethe journalist Nathalie Odentthe swiss pilot Francois Xavier Bagnoud and the Luxembourg television technician Jean-Paul Le Fur.
However, 1988 was the second most tragic year in the test, with the death of six people. The Dutch Navigator Kees Van Loevezij he was killed when his DAF truck rolled over six times in Niger. The French Patrick Canada He crashed his Range Rover into a competitor from Mercedes. Days later, a 10-year-old girl was struck and killed by a vehicle crossing an alley in the Malian city of Kita. Finally, a Mauritanian woman and her daughter were run over by a press car between Mauritania and Senegal.
The list also includes passers-by, tourists, spectators and people outside the competition of shots who lost their lives due to different circumstances. It is estimated that the latest technologies in sensors and security equipment would result in fewer fatalities in the self-proclaimed “Most dangerous rally in the world”. At the moment, the statistics show the opposite.
by RN
Image gallery
