Cristina Gutiérrez, winning driver of the Dakar Rally: “In a few years it will stop being news that a woman is winning”

Cristina Gutiérrez Herrero (Burgos, 32 years old) always dreamed of winning the Dakar Rally.

A week after achieving it, overwhelmed by the avalanche of congratulations and affection received from her since her arrival in Spain, she is still processing a victory that breaks another glass ceiling for women's sports.

“If you told me a few years ago that this was going to happen, I wouldn't have believed it.

I have always been very realistic and I have wanted to go step by step,” she explains in conversation with EL PAÍS.

“Feeling so much love from people is making me see the importance of what we have achieved.”

Normal.

She is the first Spaniard to win the legendary rally, the second woman to achieve it in any of its categories after Jutta Kleinschmidt in 2001. Precisely, following in the footsteps of the German pioneer, she will debut in the 2025 edition with an official car in the highest category from the hand of Dacia.

Gutiérrez, along with Pablo Moreno Huete, his co-pilot, said goodbye to the Challenger category – a kind of second division of the four-wheeled event – ​​with a victory at the horn.

The burst of joy, and tears, were inevitable after more than 20 minutes of suspense on the finish line.

He reached the last stage about 25 minutes behind the leader, who had a mechanical problem in the middle of the special and opened the possibility for the miracle.

Having stepped on the accelerator and ironed out differences when victory seemed like a chimera allowed him to reap the victory of his life.

“I dreamed about this since he was a baby,” she said excitedly in the Yanbu camp, where hours later she would lift her first Touareg in the middle of the Saudi night, on the shores of the Red Sea.

Cristina Gutiérrez, photographed this week in EL PAÍS.Moeh Aitar

“Very few people expected that I would reach this point,” he remembers now, after a crazy week, required by everyone after his resounding success.

To this day, she herself has maintained parallel lives as a dentist and a pilot, two professions of formidable demands, integrated through effort, stubbornness and a lot of sacrifice.

“She saw it as so difficult that she wanted to have another source of livelihood assured,” she admits.

The good news is that she will finally be able to focus on her career as an elite athlete.

Already before his Dakar success, Dacia offered him one of the three seats to compete in the premier category of the event in 2025. His teammates will be two motorsport legends: Sébastien Loeb, nine-time World Rally Champion, and Nasser Al-Attiyah, five-time winner of the Dakar by car.

“They have broken the regulatory structure of hiring the established driver, with the best results, and have decided to bet on me.

He has a lot of courage, especially because of the change in mentality that this represents.

It is only the second time it has happened in all of history, and our objective is precisely this, to have equal opportunities,” she highlights.

Gutiérrez found his main support in his family.

His father, a motorsport fan, let him try his brother's motorcycle whenever he wanted.

At four years old he had already gotten into one, and at six he tried cars.

At nine he started karting, but never competing.

“I was very embarrassed to be there.

If there had been someone else, a reference, I might have felt more comfortable,” he reflects.

Until she was 18, Cristina did not sign up for any tests.

But the one she did it to, she swept it away.

Some friends of hers encouraged him to try it out and in seven seasons she won six titles in the Spanish All-Terrain Rallies Championship (CERTT) with her brother as co-driver.

At that time, María de Villota's dramatic but inspiring story in Formula 1 had already served as an incentive to pursue her goals.

She also remembers her Christmases watching the Dakar with her parent, and as an adult, looking at the example of Laia Sanz in the motorcycle category.

“I would love for her to have the same opportunity, to be able to compete against the best,” she says about her racing colleague, who now also competes on four wheels without the support of an official team.

The car of Cristina Gutiérrez and Pablo Moreno, during a stage of the Dakar Rally.AFP7 via Europa Press (AFP7 via Europa Press)

Gutiérrez had to roll up his sleeves and suffer a lot.

On a couple of occasions, he was on the verge of throwing in the towel due to lack of funds and sponsors.

His eight participations in the Dakar, beyond this definitive victory, are a feat in themselves.

“It was like playing the Champions League without training,” he rightly illustrates.

It didn't seem to matter that she had been the first Spanish woman to finish in the car category in 2017, the year of her debut, and the first to take a stage victory in 2021. To finance her career, she scraped money from wherever she could and arrived just to do a couple of tests and compete in the rally.

When she finished January, her patients and dental braces were already waiting for her after her vacation.

The contract that she opens at the end of this month with the French brand is the first professional of her career, also the first that guarantees her more than a year of project and necessary and deserved stability.

The pilot from Burgos is optimistic about the emergence of women, and predicts that many more will be on the podium in the next editions of the Dakar.

“In a few years it will stop being news that a woman is winning,” she says.

It is the definitive victory that all the competitors have been looking for for years, and it is getting closer and closer.

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