RUST magazine: RUST 2018 Dakar Preview

Dakar Route
BOLIVIAN MARATHON
On the sixth day the riders will arrive in
La Paz in beautiful Bolivia, where they will
have their well-deserved rest day. It’s been
a few years since the event has had such a
dramatically difficult start and it is unlikely
we’ll have a clear favourite by the halfway
point as experience and careful riding,
rather than all-out speed or attacking, will
be the approach for the opening five days.
On the plus side, most of the specials in
the opening week of the rally are relatively
short… under 400km! But, just in case
we haven’t lost a third of the field by the
rest day, the organisers have decided to
treat the competitors to a horrendously
challenging marathon for stages seven and
eight. This means zero assistance from
their teams, even for the factory riders, and
a remote (usually quite basic) bivouac.
And how on earth do you make the
marathon even more difficult? Well, you
make the second leg the longest special
on the whole rally! The run from the now
infamous Uyuni to Tupiza will total 498km
of competitive kilometres. The riders could
well struggle to keep their concentration as
high altitudes and exhaustion start to fry
their brains.
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