Bye bye Dakar, but hello African Race. Emperors new clothes, anyone?
WE were the first last year to tell the world of the secret plans to replace the cancelled Dakar rally with a new event through Argentina and Chile and now Dakar legend Hubert Auriol has confirmed the creation of the ‘Africa Race’
Auriol said that both organisers and competitors were keen to keep the event in the African continent and, despite security fears, the new Africa Race will go ahead.
He told reporters: “It will be an international rally and the first edition of it will take place in winter 2008/2009. It will begin in an European city and it will finish in Dakar taking in and riding through Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal. We wanted to reconstruct the Dakar but at the same time we still wanted to make it different from what went before. Today a new era, a new test begins.”
