On Track Off Road No. 194

“YOU REDISCOVER HOW FAR YOU CAN GO TO SURVIVE [IN
COMPETITION] AND IT IS NOT NICE BUT SOMETIMES YOU END
UP IN THOSE POSITIONS BECAUSE YOU HAVE MESSED-UP
OR MADE A MISTAKE. QUITE OFTEN YOU SEE WHAT YOU ARE
MADE OF...”
next turn. You might be on the borderline
of catching the next one through some
horrendous terrain and it increases your
chances of getting lost.”
“You end up looking down and thinking
‘s**t, why hasn’t it validated?’ and you
start to do a figure of eight looking for it.
Then you start going backwards. The goal
is to always ride with a good CAP. WPC
to WPC is really scary because you don’t
know where you are starting from. And
there is no way to know. You just have to
hope you have done good. Quite often
you’ll use references. If you know you
have a good CAP and you look left and
see a big dune peak then I claim it as my
reference and push like hell until I get
to a certain point and then take another
CAP reading and look for another peak.
That’s an ideal world.”
The explanation sounds tiring already.
“In a long stage with a lot of ‘off-piste’
then there can be up to a hundred waypoints,”
he adds. “Dunes are so up-anddown
and they look so similar. If you
think you are near where you should be
and there is no ‘opening’ on your dash
then that’s the worst feeling ever, and
you just want to start praying to every
single god that there is.”
Frequently images of the Dakar show
riders bunched within view of each other:
surely through the sand there are tracks
of rivals to follow?
“The first guy that sets off in a stage,
especially on sand, is at a huge disadvantage,
in general, because he’s the first
one to come across any situation and
wherever he goes he leaves a little black
line as a reference,” Sunderland admits.
“But now the level is so high that there
are many guys that can open a stage and
almost be uncatchable. There is also a
lot of strategy involved. There are some
riders who are better than others at navigation
and you can trust them more, so
DAKAR SECRETS WITH SAM SUNDERLAND