The Explorers' Club
№ CCCXXIII - The "Gentle Giant," Robert Wadlow (1918-1940).







This Week in Motorsport
Rally Monkey
Dakar Rally
34th running
Saturday, 5 January-Saturday, 19 January 2013

The Dakar Rally is underway, a grueling two-week test of man & machine that traverses 5,300 miles in South America, across Peru, Chile, & Argentina. The N.B.C. Sports Network has been providing daily summaries, & have watched them with great interest. The Dakar is a rally raid or cross country rally, as opposed to the road rallying that comprises the World Rally Championship & the many lower international & rallying series of which it is the pinnacle. Road rallying takes place on roads. They can be dirt or gravel roads, snow or ice roads, or stretches of "sealed surface" tarmac. Rally raids take place cross country, where there are no roads. The views that I have seen have been stunning, as the competitors have driven & rode up, down, & around enormous sand dunes; over boulder fields that look utterly impassable; & in the shadow of the Andes Mountains, before climbing up one side of those intimidating peaks & down the other. Suddenly, the W.R.C., which I have oft described as glorious madness, seems much less mad. The almost impossibly long dash across the wilderness takes its toll: Four hundred forty-nine "bikes," "quads," "cars," & trucks began the Dakar, but by the rest day following the first week of competition only three hundred thirteen remained in competition.

The Dakar Rally was originally the Paris-Dakar Rally, a race from Paris, France to Dakar, Senegal. The route changed over the years, but continued through Europe & North Africa from 1979 'til 2008, when jihadist terrorists in Mauritania threatened to slaughter competitors, signalling the end of the traditional Dakar. The race has been run in South America since '09. There are four broad classifications of vehicles: The "bikes" are motorcycles, the "quads" are what we Americans call A.T.V.s (four-wheeled All-Terrain Vehicles), the "cars" are everything from cars like the Mini Countryman to light trucks like the Hummer H3 to dune buggies, & the trucks are large trucks, tractor trailers without trailers, & they are without doubt the oddest racing machines I have ever seen. As long as I've been vaguely aware of the Dakar, which is much longer than I've been a fan of motorsport, I've wondered how competitors in such as event would keep from getting lost in the wilderness. The answer is threefold. One, they use maps & G.P.S. tracking devices. Two, they follow one another's tracks, with the first man out on course being at a disadvantage compared to his fellows. Three, they get lost, & lose time finding their way back to the prescribed route. All this takes place with television & medical evacuation helicopters thundering overhead & in the era of the Global Positioning System; it is difficult to imagine what navigation must have been like, especially for the bike & quad riders, in the era before satellite positioning. (There are two men in every car & three men in every truck, but the riders ride alone.)

The Dakar is breathtaking. I stumbled upon the N.B.C. Sports Network's coverage whilst searching the future television listing for coverage of the W.R.C. (the '13 season of which begins this weekend, with the classic Rallye Monte-Carlo). I was instantly enamored of the Dakar & look forward with anticipation to the second week of the grueling challenge. Though I cannot in honesty vouch for Future Mike, at this moment my firm intention is to make watching the Dakar an annual tradition, akin to but distinct from Le Mans.

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Robbie Williams & Rupert Everett, "They Can't Take That Away from Me" from Swing When You're Winning (T.L.A.M.)

Sonntag, 13 Januar
Sufjan Stevens, "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders" from Illinois (T.L.A.M.)