this years Dakar that goes no where near Dakar is uffering from an amazing rate of attrition, after 4 of 15 days almost a quarter of the bikes are out many riders sufering highspeed crashes ( brilliantly captured by Eurosport)
why having spent 30k on a bike the same to enter and the same to cover expences circa 100k for an amateur.. would you go so fast you crash out.. surely theres sommat in that .. to finish first , first ya gotta finish.. or are they all due back at work on monday?

Go hard or go home!

it is a race, no one remembers who came second.

Crashes are part of racing, so yes you have to finish to win but if you take it too easy you lose. The trick is to go as fast as you can without breaking anything, often easier said than done.

And if your sponsors have paid your expenses they are going to want a return, ie media exposure, ie win a stage, overall, crash spectacularly etc.

Well I’m a big fan of the Dakar and have watched it avidly over the years..

Moral to the story of any participants is ride hard. They’re all of the same opinion, go hard or indeed go home trying to go hard. It’s just the way they think.

Charlie Boooooringman did it last year and bailed out, the small documentary following him gave just a teeny insight as to the harshness of the event. It really is an epic.

Burp’idge.. I must get home.

Charlie Boooooringman did it last year and bailed out, the small documentary following him gave just a teeny insight as to the harshness of the event. It really is an epic.

I like the bloke, think he’s genuine and all round ncie guy from what I’ve seen. Read the book and watched the documentary and hats off tio him for what he managed to do along with his team mates. I think for a lot oft hem they just want to finish but with strict times to get back by you would want to go hell for leather I suppose

Was it last year? I thought it was about 4 years ago he tried it (or even more) or has he had another stab?

And didn’t he only bail due to broken bones?

EDIT: It was 2006

EDIT EDIT: I have a signed copy of his book of that race – my wife booked him as a speaker and got a copy when she spoke to him afterwards. I am terribly excited about having it. 😉

Racing innit? The way to race is right close to the edge as you can get – otherwise you’re not going fast enough, and someone else will be going faster.

The downside is small margin of error, hence big crash when you get it a bit wrong.

This is why I was not a big fan of that big haired motorbike fella that got killed a few months back – sure he was fast, but he was always crashing – the reasons he was so damn fast was that he was TOO close to the edge, and we all know how that ended up, poor fella.

i m a racer but i think in sommat that is 10000k long you dont win on the first day and some lads are proving that just by hanging in there and riding at 80% and moving up the field steadily..

i’d want to get some bang for my buck not a broken collar bone.