The Dakar is once again in mourning. Died this Sunday after a fall, the Portuguese biker Paulo Gonçalves, 40, is the 25th competitor to die on the famous and therefore fatal rally-raid since its creation in 1979. All were men.
Bikers paid the heaviest price, with twenty dead. The sad precedent dates back to 2015 in Argentina with the disappearance of the Polish pilot Michal Hernik, visibly victim of hyperthermia (heat stroke) and dehydration.
In total, more than 70 people lost their lives during or on the margins of the event. Race for the first time in Saudi Arabia, after crossing Africa and South America, the Dakar did not escape the curse. He had dark years in 1986 and 1988, with seven deaths each time. In 1986, a helicopter crash cost the lives of Thierry Sabine, founder of the Dakar, and singer Daniel Balavoine.
Bikers, very exposed
Patrick Dodin was the first participant to die on the Dakar in 1979. The French biker had fallen while he was trying to fix his helmet by going to the start of the Agadez-Tahoua stage in Niger.
We must go back to 1988 to find traces of the first competitors to lose their lives without being in the hands of a handlebars, still in Niger. Kees Van Loevezijn, the Dutch navigator of Van de Rijt, was killed instantly after being ejected from the assistance truck after swerving at more than 180 km / h and several barrels. The following day, Patrick Canado, René Boubet's teammate in a Range Rover car, would die in a collision with another competitor.
In 1996, in Morocco, the explosion of a military machine, perhaps a mine, will be at the origin of the fatal accident of Laurent Guéguen aboard his truck.
Paulo Gonçalves is not the only top driver to have died during the Dakar. In 2005, the Italian biker Fabrizio Meoni, double winner of the event (2001 and 2002), also had a fatal fall in Mauritania.
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The last French competitor to die, in 2013 in Chile, the biker Thomas Bourgin died in a traffic accident after hitting a car of Chilean riflemen.