And seven, and eight, and nine…! Shouting and smiling, that´s how the team receives Nani at his arrival at the stage finish in Nema. We are at the camp, the special stage has finished for the overall leader and to prove that he still has strength left, Nani jumped off the bike and made some press-ups. The 736 kilometres of the special stage on Mauritanian grounds, one of the poorest countries of the African continent are now left behind.
Nani has strengthened his position in this special, but the Dakar, as those who have participated several times say, has two faces: it may be smiling at you today but not tomorrow. Conscious about it, nobody in the team wants to talk about victory, not even about Dakar. We are here, living the present and fulfilling our tasks the best way we can, considering the hostile surroundings.
We had an 800-kilometre liaison today, another 800 km yesterday and we had to spend the night at an improvised camp at the roadside. Yesterday´s stage was a marathon stage and that means assistance forbidden until today, Friday. That forced us to make 1,550 kilometres in two days to reach Nema, still in Mauritania, to meet Nani, Isidre and Marc. On one of the two Nissan Patrol GR specially prepared for this hard rally you´ll find David, Esteve´s mechanic, better known as “Pelut (Spanish for hairy) due to his long hair, Alejandro, Marc´s mechanic, Manel Nani´s mechanic, and Jordi, the physiotherapist.
Travelling in the second car are the Italian Roberto, De Gavardo´s mechanic, Giorgio, father of the Chilean rider, Jordi Arcarons, team manager, and David, the press responsible. While the riders play the leading role in the race, the assistances make their own race, hard and complicated as well. A lot of kilometres, not much sleep, hurry and endless hours of work. While the riders are at the special stage of the day, the assistances start from the same bivouac and travel to the final point of the stage, where they will arrive sometimes earlier and sometimes later than Nani, Esteve and Coma. Once there, the mechanics dismantle the bikes and fix apparently impossible things to let everything ready for the next day. While the riders check the road book, they are taken care of by the “Physio” Jordi, then they have dinner, and that´s basically it. Nights are short, but the three of them try to sleep at least four to five hours.
Although very close in time, it was just two days ago when we experienced the tough stage from Tan Tan to Atar, leaving Morocco to enter Mauritania, the hard day on Wednesday seems to be a memory from the past. The Dakar has a tremendous rhythm and doesn´t leave you almost time to take a short breath. But Tan Tan Atar will with no doubt stay forever in the memories of all those who lived the stage, riders and assistances.
You only needed to read the road book to get scared: 701 kilometres special for the riders with 354 liaison, and 1,040 for the assistances, sometimes travelling on the same route as the special stage. Given the fact that it was such a long journey, we had to leave the camp in Tan Tan late at night on Tuesday. At one o´clock in the morning we were already on the freeway heading for the only passage from Morocco to Mauritania, a mined pass, heavily controlled by Moroccan troops.
We arrived there after four hours, we put our sleeping bags on the floor and used the three hours we had to wait to get some sleep. At seven o´clock we moved forward to the Moroccan frontier to wait for our turn. First the bikes, then the cars and finally the trucks. And after all of them, approximately at one o´clock in the afternoon, green light for the assistances. Before us, another twelve hours travelling: first fast tracks through the Mauritanian desert, then slower sections, narrow paths and finally a surprise, already at night. Following the indication of the road book, most of the assistances ended-up in a sea of dunes where many of them got stuck. The car with the team´s mechanics was lucky and escaped through a side-way but we got full into the dunes and only the expert hands of Arcarons at the steering wheel hindered us from spending the night in the dunes with the tyres sunk in the sand. After reaching the camp long after midnight and seeing what the stage had done to the race, with one third of the bikes, cars and trucks trapped in the Mauritanian desert, we all realised that the threats of Zaniroli, Sports Manager of the race and designer of the route, saying that this would be one of the hardest Dakars ever, were true.
Now it is already midnight in Mauritania and tomorrow, after the cancellation of the following two stages due to safety reasons in Mali, we will travel to Bobo-Dioulasso, in Burkina Faso, were we´ll enjoy a well deserved break. On Tuesday, the race will get back to its incredible rhythm and won´t stop until Dakar. We´ll be there on Sunday, January 18th.
