2010 Dakar Rally (Displaced)

Televisual Spectacular or Supreme Carnival of (bad) Karma?

dakar_1

The Christmas and New Year period means a lot of different things to many different people. But for a bunch of offroading lunatics in every automotive genre, it means a couple of weeks of hard toil, sickening adrenalin rushes and questionable ethical conundrems.

Yes, the Dakar Rally may be one of the global televisual highlights of the inter­na­tional motor­sport calender around this time of the year, but there is an undeniable aesthetic and moral diffi­culty in thrashing one’s fuel guzzler through pristine natural envir­on­ments populated by excru­ci­at­ingly poor people.

It may be, as in all things Motorsport, that there are a myriad of ways to justify the event. Each year the rally brings much needed focus and revenue to local economies; car and bike companies use the race as a testbed for endurance, fuel consumption and other techno­logies that will eventually trickle down to production models and thereby increase the possib­ility of a sustainable motoring future.

It’s undeniable that these easily spinn-​​able justi­fic­a­tions don’t detract from the fact that untrammeled off-​​road, point-​​to-​​point freedom is an increas­ingly rare privilege of the super wealthy and the companies they run.

But each year, stone me if we don’t want to go in one of those massive wheeled, über-​​powered trucks.

So, wether or not you believe this sort of global traveling circus is cricket or not, you can follow the action and battle with your demons via the Dakar Website.

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Do you have an opinion on this post? Have we forgotten anything we should have mentioned or made an error? Whether you want to pat us on the back, or vehemently disagree, we'd love to hear what you think - enter your comments below:

  • http://dr1665.com DR1665

    Dakar is perhaps the single greatest spectacle of motor­sport left in the world. While an increas­ingly litigious society has effect­ively prohibited any actual routes from Paris to Dakar, and xenophobic religious lunatics have forced the event to be run on a third continent entirely, there is no other race on earth like Dakar. F1 oozes technology, pomp and circum­stance on the finest prepared courses ’round the world, but it is Dakar, where man and machine go where they were likely not meant to go, get stuck, dig out, persevere and overcome adversity that truly inspires. It is the ultimate extension of the freedom repres­ented by the motor vehicle.

    As for the uncon­scionable thought of taking advantage of the weak and powerless along the route, consider the efforts of Mark Jennings-​​Bates and Mick Extance of rally4life.org. They are currently training to be ready to enter a Bowler Nemesis in the 2011 Dakar while raising $4M for charitable organ­iz­a­tions in the region which focus on providing clean water and sanit­ation. How exciting is it to imagine a rally team in a snarling Bowler Nemesis clawing its way through the dunes as a means to saving some 200,000 lives?

  • bobhardie

    This is a splendid event and the “so called do gooders” who knock it are to be pitied. When it suits us we use pristine land for our own purpose, but we only see critisism of these sporting/​testing events. We use(exploit) poorer peoples for our own benefit when it suits (cheap clothes). CO2? It.s small fry compared to our reluctance to use nuclear power

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