Françoise Elby, an artist and early Dakar Rally competitor, has passed away at the age of 85. She had been hospitalised due to serious injuries sustained in a traffic accident last November.
Born in Paris but of Hungarian descent, she grew up around art before briefly trying to pursue finance as a teenager. By the 1970s, looking for something more thrilling, she became a horse rider and took part in equestrian and steeplechase competitions. Elby became acquainted with Paris–Dakar Rally founder Thierry Sabine while selling a horse, who then introduced her to motorsport.
“I loved Africa but didn’t want to go back, having often had problems with the authorities,” recalled Elby in her autobiography. “The bans on filming and photography, theft, difficulties at customs, the small but many roadblocks on the runways, the hours spent trying to get a passport, as always happens to everyone.
“This great race in Africa was part of another world. I felt very small compared to the huge machine that was this race. But apart from the violent beauty of the continent, I was not motivated enough to endure the trials there. There was no question of me even thinking of participating.
“One afternoon in July (1982), the great chef came with his team to work at my house, he had come with Christine Caron, who last year had participated in the big event with Bernadette Sacy. They won the women’s category and it was a good race. Suddenly, looking at me, Thierry said the fatal phrase: ‘I’ll see you doing that’ when talking about the Paris–Dakar! It all started at that moment.”
Elby made her Dakar driving début in 1983, where she was the highest finishing woman in forty-sixth; she drove a Toyota Land Cruiser BJ40 with Josiane Daussy as co-driver. The following year, they raced a Land Cruiser HJ60 to a fifty-first overall. Serge Fiquet became her navigator for the 1985 edition in a Mitsubishi Pajero, though they retired from the race.
The 1986 race saw her partner up with Mariana Simionescu, a Romanian tennis player who later raised a child with two-time Dakar champion Jean-Louis Schlesser. After their Pajero’s chassis broke in half during the sixth stage, Simionescu was offered to return to the bivouac with Sabine but declined; his helicopter crashed that flight, killing him and all on board.
Elby’s final Dakar was in 1988, where she failed to finish in a Mercedes-Benz Unimog truck with Elysabeth Krilov and Jean Gazel by her side.
She continued to run various desert rallies and other events in Africa before returning to France in the 1990s. Elby picked up art once again, painting icons for convents and artwork in countryside, but remained connected with those in the motorsport industry. In 2008, she began organising reunions for former Dakar competitors; former winners Schlesser, Luc Alphand, and Hubert Auriol were among those in attendance.
Her service will take place next Thursday, 22 August, in Fontenay-sous-Bois.