Medals and Bedouins: Olympians who have done rally raids

The Olympic Games are regarded as the pinnacle of sport. The Dakar Rally is regarded as the pinnacle of off-road motorsport.

While reading a roadbook and driving through deserts don’t have the same physical demands as swimming a hundred metres or navigating down mountain slopes, that hasn’t stopped the world’s best athletes from trying their hand at the iconic rally raid.

Nasser Al-Attiyah is far and away the most notable example. When the five-time Dakar winner and twice World Rally-Raid Champion isn’t blowing away the field with his driving prowess, he is blowing away targets with his shotgun in skeet shooting. The Qatari made his Olympic début at Atlanta in 1996, where he finished fifteenth, followed by a sixth at Sydney 2000, narrowly missing out on a medal at Athens 2004, and fifteenth at Beijing 2008. He finally broke through to win bronze at the 2012 London Games while a thirty-first in Rio in 2016 was his latest appearance. Al-Attiyah hoped to return for the ongoing Paris Olympics but did not make the final cut.

Before becoming the co-driver for Rebecca Busi in the W2RC, Sergio Lafuente raced the Dakar on a Quad with three stage wins and a pair of fifth-place finishes in 2012 and 2014 and is also a three-time Desafío Ruta 40 champion. Way before that, he finished twenty-sixth in the men’s light-heavyweight class at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics for Uruguay.

On the winter side, Andorra’s Albert Llovera was the youngest Olympian at the 1984 Winter Games in Sarajevo at the age of seventeen, where he placed forty-eighth in downhill alpine skiing but retired from the slalom and giant slalom events. The following year, however, his ski career came to an end due to an accident that resulted in a serious spinal cord injury. Still, his injury did not stop him from trying new things like competing in the World Rally Championship and eventually the Dakar in 2007. Llovera has raced a truck at Dakar since 2016, finishing seventeenth in class at the latest rally in January.

While he has yet to race the Dakar Rally, Italy’s Marco Aurelio Fontana is familiar with its original route from Europe to Senegal as well as doing cross-country racing on two wheels. The 2012 bronze medalist in cross-country mountain biking, he finished sixth in his maiden Africa Eco Race in January.

The Dakar is inherently a French rally as its organisers hail from there (the Amaury Sport Organisation is based in Boulogne-Billancourt, a commune of Paris) and it thus used to start in the country. To this end, more than a handful of French Olympians have gone on to race, especially in the rally’s early history.

Christine “Kiki” Caron, 1964 silver medalist in the women’s 100m backstroke at Tokyo and 1966 European Aquatics Champion in the same event, teamed up with Bernadette Sacy to race the Paris–Dakar in 1982 though they failed to finish. They also retired from the 1983 rally under more distressing circumstances when they and many competitors got lost in the Ténéré desert amidst a sandstorm, forcing them to walk long distances before being rescued by Tuaregs.

Also on the 1983 grid was Sylviane Telliez, a sprinter for Team France at Mexico City 1968, Munich 1972, and Montreal 1976 who claimed three European titles. She was worked with Nicole Dacquay on a Datsun Patrol, though they were unable to finish.

Jacques Anquetil was a legend who won the Tour de France (currently overseen by the ASO) five times in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Before that, he along with Claude Rouer and Alfred Tonello claimed bronze for France in men’s team road cycling at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. In 1986, well after his retirement and a year before his passing, Anquetil was approached by 24 Hours of Le Mans veteran Pierre Yver with an interesting proposition.

“My main sponsor, Jean de Mondésir, boss of Sovico (Florette), asked me to do a media stunt by taking retired cycling champion Jacques Anquetil as my co-driver in Africa,” Yver recalled in his memoir Pierre Yver, 30 Ans de Course. “I wasn’t very convinced. He was very sick! Even if Jacques turned out to be a very good companion. But I have to admit that the media stunt worked because the TV helicopters wouldn’t let us go. In fact, it made me more stressed because I told myself if I messed up, I didn’t want to be the one who killed the great Jacques Anquetil!”

Straddling France is the Principality of Monaco, whose royalty is no stranger to the Dakar. Before he was Prince Albert II, Albert Grimaldi entered the 1985 Paris–Dakar in a Mitsubishi Pajero alongside Jean-Pierre Marsan but failed to finish. From 1988 to 2002, he continued his family’s Olympic heritage by representing Monaco at the Winter Games in bobsleigh; Albert’s best outing was twenty-fifth with Gilbert Bessi in two-man bobsleigh at Calgary 1988.

Also in 1985, Belgian judokas Robert Van De Walle and Ingrid Berghmans shared a car. Van De Walle had won the 95-kilogram gold medal at the Moscow Games in 1980 then added a bronze in Seoul two editions later to go with his three European Championships, while six-time Women’s World Judo Champion Berghmans won the 72-kg gold in 1988. Unfortunately, their Range Rover ended up in a similar state to their opponents: rolled over and out.

France’s Marie-Claire Restoux, another judoka whose women’s 52-kg gold in Atlanta was sandwiched by a pair of world titles, finished twenty-sixth in the 1998 Dakar as the co-pilot of Sylviane Goutaland’s Nissan Patrol.

Elsewhere in the judo realm, Miklós Ungvári was the 2012 silver medalist in men’s 66 kg and a three-time European Champion before he linked up with Sándor Sebestyén and József Bognár for the 2014 Dakar Rally in South America. Ungvári, who described the race as “a childhood dream (that) will be fulfilled,” and the Uniqa Sandlander Team comprised the lone Hungarian outfit that year and finished forty-seventh.

Brigitte Becue of Belgium appeared in four Summer Olympiads from 1988 to 2000 with a best performance of seventh in the 200-metre breaststroke and eighth in the 100-m in 1996, while also notching four European Championships. In 2007, she directed Stéphane Henrard’s Volkswagen Buggy to a tenth overall at Dakar.

Besides Llovera, alpine skiing has produced a surprisingly considerable amount of rally raiders, including an eventual Dakar winner. Bernhard Russi, who won Olympic gold and silver in downhill skiing at Sapporo 1972 and Innsbruck 1976 along with a pair of World Championships, was intrigued by the Dakar-winning cars on display at the 1981 Geneva International Motor Show and asked Subaru, for whom he was a brand ambassador, if he could race it himself. After showing him the ropes over the coming months and enlisting mechanic Christian Simonett as navigator, he took part in the 1982 Dakar in a Subaru 1800 Super Station. Russi was classified ninety-first after running out of time, though he still physically reached the end in rather bizarre fashion as the Subaru’s engine blew 100 yards before the finish and coasted across the line.

“I thought before the race that I knew a little bit about what was happening here, but I think I was completely wrong,” remarked Russi to Radio Télévision Suisse while the race was in Mali. “It’s ten times harder, it’s ten times more worrying and it’s ten times harder for the equipment too.”

Easily the biggest case from the mountains is Luc Alphand, the only other Olympian with a Dakar crown to his name. Ironically, he never medalled at the Olympics in his three tries from 1988 to 1994, with his best finish being a fourth in Calgary in the combined event. While an Olympic medal eluded him, he won three FIS Alpine Ski World Cups in downhill, another in super giant slalom, and the 1997 overall. Alphand hung up his skis afterwards and immediately entered the Dakar in 1998, eventually going on to win the 2006 race for Mitsubishi. Despite retiring from driving after 2010, he remains involved in motorsport with a brief stint as the Silk Way Rally sporting director and currently Veloce Racing’s Extreme E manager.

Claude Brasseur would have joined Alphand and Al-Attiyah’s company since he won the 1983 Dakar Rally in Jacky Ickx’s Mercedes-Benz 280GE, but an injury prevented him from being with the French bobsleigh team two decades prior at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. Still, he carved out a career in cinema as one of France’s most well-known actors.

Frenchwoman Carole Montillet-Carles was already dabbling in rally raids before she ended her ski career in 2006. The 2002 Salt Lake City women’s downhill gold medalist and 2003 super giant slalom champion, she won the women-only Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles on a quad with Mélanie Suchet in 2004 and 2005, followed by four more victories in 2011 and 2012 in the 4×4 class and 2015 and 2016 in Expert. Upon retiring from skiing for good, she committed to rally for good and raced the Dakar in 2007 and 2009.

From Poland, Adam Małysz came from another ski discipline as one of the greatest ski jumpers ever. Although he never claimed an Olympic gold, instead notching three silvers and a bronze in 2002 and 2010, he is a four-time World Champion and World Cup winner. After concluding his career there, he raced the Dakar from 2012 to 2016 with a best finish of thirteenth in 2014; Małysz also won twice in the FIA Central European Zone Cross-Country Rally Championship.