VOL. 56 ISSUE 2 JANUARY 15, 2019 P75
Little did 22-year-old Gualini
know, on the third day, his life was
about to change forever.
"The third day I see a car with a
sticker with a number and a spon-
sor. It was a magazine from France,
and after, I see a motorbike with the
number.
"I said, 'What is this?' 'Oh, it's
a race,' the rider told me. 'Which
race?' 'We start from Paris and we
go to Dakar,' he told me.
"I meet the first Paris-Dakar.
The [rider] said they will cross the
Tenere Desert. That was my dream.
Like a sailor crossing the ocean.
So, I jump in the convoy of the
Paris-Dakar, tell the military to f--- off,
and I cross the border."
The original Paris-Dakar, running from 1979 to
2007, was a far cry from the manicured South
American spectacle it is today. A 7700-mile (12,400
km) epic that originally ran from Paris to Algeria,
through Mali, then skating the outskirts of Maurita-
nia to Senegal (in later years the race route would
change and take in destinations such as Libya to
Africa's central northeast, Tunisia and the Demo-
(Above) Paris-
Cape Town, 1992.
After being hit up
the butt by the
works Peugeot,
Gualini smashed
his radiator. After
30 minutes of
repairs, he was
on his way and
finished the rally
10th overall.
(Right) Paris-
Dakar, 1988.
Gualini checks
the direction
in Algeria.
Navigation was
always one of his
strong points.
