The route of this race is laid out across Argentina and Chile. It is expected that the total length of the rally raid will be about 9,000 km, including nearly 6,000 km of high-speed special stages. "Basically, the new route will go over sand, as that is the usual surface for Dakar, but there will also be new types of surfaces never before encountered in our races," said rally director Étienne Lavigne.
The Dakar Rally, whose participants until the mid-1990s started in Paris, and later in Marseille, Clermont-Ferrand, Barcelona and Lisbon, always took place on the African continent. However, in 2008, the 30th anniversary race, scheduled to start on January 5, was cancelled at the insistence of the French government one day before the start due to terrorist threats against the participants and organizers of the rally raid. For the first time since 1978.
In the history of Dakar, of course, there had been emergencies before – participants fell victim to accidents, bandit attacks, or died unable to withstand the harsh conditions of the race. But the competition was never cancelled because of this.
Everything changed on December 24, 2007, when four French tourists were killed in Mauritania, through which most of the rally raid route passes. On the eve of the Dakar start, the French government stated that it had information about planned terrorist attacks aimed at the race participants. As a result, the competition organizers had to take an unprecedented decision – to cancel the race.
"The reasons for the cancellation are so serious that even the huge losses incurred by the rally raid organizers were not taken into account when making this difficult decision," said Semen Yakubov, head of the Russian team KAMAZ-Master, which has won the Dakar multiple times. Is it worth mentioning that sales of KAMAZ increase significantly after such rallies? But not everyone agreed with him. Some participants called the cancellation of the race a "disgrace," while others demanded a refund of the money they had spent on preparation. And even despite receiving compensation, some of them are unlikely to find the funds to start in 2009 – the losses from the cancellation run into hundreds of thousands of euros.
Such a sharp reaction from the participants forced the Dakar organizers to hastily look for options to hold a similar event already in 2008. As a result, ASO decided to launch the Central Europe Rally ahead of schedule, its route passing through Hungary and Romania. Many teams, deprived of the opportunity to start at Dakar-2008, have already agreed to attend this event.
According to the organizers' plan, this competition was supposed to be the first in a new series of races under the auspices of Dakar, whose launch was scheduled for 2009. However, the cancellation of the rally raid prompted the French to hold this competition a year earlier. But this measure is temporary. And most importantly, it did not solve the main problem – where to hold Dakar-2009?
Immediately after the announcement of the cancellation of the Dakar-2008 rally, various proposals began to appear about where exactly the race could be moved the following year. The rally raid organizers themselves, according to them, considered three options – in Africa, Australia, or Central Asian countries, including Kazakhstan. There were even rumors that Russia would host the rally: the organizers of the St. Petersburg – Beijing rally raid, scheduled for June 10-28 of the current year, have already invited the racers of the canceled Dakar to their race. In its format, this rally raid indeed greatly resembles the famous marathon – 10,000 km must be covered in 17 days.
The situation became clear in mid-January, when ASO received a letter from the government of Chile, proposing to move the Dakar Rally to South America. The Chileans argued that the Atacama Desert could be a worthy replacement for the Sahara.
The organizers liked the idea and they officially agreed to "move" to a new continent. However, in this case, as experts note, a number of difficulties arise, the overcoming of which determines the future fate of the legendary competition.
One of the key problems is transportation. If earlier most participants (mostly Europeans) could drive to the starting point in Lisbon on their own, now it will be more difficult and expensive. Delivering people, and especially heavy equipment (particularly trucks) and gear from Europe to Argentina could significantly impact the teams' budgets. Therefore, it is possible that the costs of this journey could become an insurmountable obstacle for some teams and individual racers.
Another problem lies in the route itself. In South America, there simply are no vast deserts like in Africa. "No serious team will go to a rally marathon where there is no sand – the cars are specially prepared for that. Moreover, the sandy landscape looks very advantageous, which invariably attracts journalists and ordinary fans," asserts Semen Yakubov. Therefore, the organizers will have to plan the route so that most of it goes through sandy areas.
For their part, the authorities of the African states through which the Dakar route traditionally passed still have not given up hope of the legendary marathon returning to their continent. Representatives of Mauritania and Senegal stated that in the future they will make every effort to ensure the safety of the organizers and participants of the race.
Whether we will ever see Dakar vehicles on the shores of the legendary Pink Lake again is difficult to say now. At least in 2009, this definitely will not happen.