Dakar Legends - Martine De Cortanze (1/3) - #Dakar2025 - Vidéo Dailymotion

Dakar

The 47th edition of the Dakar has set a date for the world's rally-raiders in Saudi Arabia from 3 to 17 January.    More information:  https://www.dakar.com   https://www.facebook.com/Dakar   https://www.twitter.com/Dakar   https://www.instagram.com/DakarRally   #Dakar2025    © Amaury Sport Organisation - https://www.aso.fr

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00:001979, the first edition, my first Dakar.

00:09Martine Descartes, 33 years old.

00:13December 26th, 1978, it was the day after Christmas

00:19and we all gathered at the Place de Trocadéro, ready to leave.

00:23It was quite chilly and a bit overcast.

00:26And what was very funny was that in the Parc Fermé for the cars,

00:31there were several female crews.

00:34Some of them thought they were going on safari.

00:37For some people, this was more like a holiday in Africa than a race.

00:47I've done quite a bit of gymnastics and I've done some running,

00:50trying to go a bit further and faster every time and I quit smoking.

00:57We left Trocadéro early in the morning and we arrived to Molay.

01:03And when we got there, they made us do the prologue in a mud bath.

01:09By the end, we were soaking wet and covered in mud from head to toe.

01:27And then we had to get back on the road.

01:30It was freezing cold.

01:32I remember stopping at a newsagent's and buying up a load of papers,

01:38whatever I could find.

01:40Then I stuffed them down my jacket to give myself another layer of protection

01:44because I was so cold.

01:50At nine o'clock the next morning, we boarded the ferry for Algiers.

01:55And that was when we started to measure the scale of this whole thing.

01:59When I loaded my bike onto the boat, it was like, this is it.

02:04It was too late for any second thoughts.

02:07The Dakar was underway.

02:14So we arrived in Algiers and we found out that the president,

02:19Aurel Bormédien, had died that day.

02:23So between the calls of the museum and the noise of all the crowds that had gathered,

02:29getting through Algiers was nothing like what we had expected.

02:34And it was slow.

02:36Very, very, very slow.

02:39We were tired and it was hard work just getting to the first bivouac.

02:45When we finally got there, it was even colder than it had been in France.

02:51I remember waking up with ice on my duvet.

02:54When I got up, I could hear it cracking beneath me.

02:59So we were heading into an African rally in Antarctica.

Dakar Legends - Martine De Cortanze (1/3) - #Dakar2025

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