Dakar 2014. Dangerous race in the Chilean desert

Sergey Dolya writes: “As you probably already noticed, we break the rules for the press and publish videos from the track. I hope we will be forgiven for this. After all, the races are constantly filmed by thousands of natives, and it's a pity to miss the opportunity when we have such a cameraman with us. But yesterday we outdid ourselves: we intervened in the race and blocked the track with a pickup truck in the middle of the most difficult section.

(Total 36 photos)

It happened quite by accident, to be honest. We came to the desert to photograph the racers and climbed onto a large spectator dune. Opposite was another sandy hill, on which the riders had to descend. Having estimated that we would get good shots with fountains of sand, we began to wait. Boris Gadasin (he rode with us) said that there was little cool in this - they go down and go down, what's wrong with that? Now, if we filmed how they climb, fall down in the sand and skid, that would be a decent shot. Boris even promised to take us to the middle of the dune by car, from where we stomp our feet to the top. We stood still for some time to determine where exactly to pass the special stage, then got into the car and drove off.

What we thought was a race track turned out to be a detour route for a couple of motorbikes. The real route passed just where we famously entered on a pickup truck. As soon as we got out of the car, the "head" of the race and the turntable with television people rushed at us. We panicked, not knowing which way to scatter, but everything worked out - Nasser Al-Attiyah (the famous Qatari racer) turned and swept a meter from our press car. Stefan Peterhansel whistled right behind him. The moment of our surprise was played all evening in the canteen of the biuvac on Dakar-TV: I didn’t see this video, but I hope that my face looked decent :)”

1. After the triumphant appearance, we had a long climb to the top. It was hard: clothes and shoes were clogged with sand, water was forgotten in the car, I had two cameras (one with a heavy 200-400 mm lens) and at some point I thought to throw everything to hell and drive down. Gathering our will into a fist, we finally got to the top and sat down in anticipation. Soon a flock of motorcyclists appeared: almost all of them climbed up and easily jumped over the scallop, but one got stuck. And then we broke the third rule - we helped the racer ...

2. The road from Calama to Iquique was as straight as an arrow.

3. The town next to which the special stage was held looked sad - desert and garbage

4. We drove to the coast between sandy hills. Boris said that it was here that the track of last year's Dakaae passed and, most likely, part of tomorrow's

5. Finally, the cramped labyrinths ended and the ocean spread out before us

6. According to forecasts, this point should be the most spectacular. At the same time, there were almost no spectators, and those who came, half consisted of fans of the teams. I must say, Chile is not as happy about Dakar as Argentina

7. By the way, here is the bivouac. Compared to the scale of the first days, the camp looks much smaller - half of the participants in the rally have already dropped out of the competition

8. Finish of the special stage Kalama-Iquique

9. And this is the same dune (or rather part of it), which we decided to climb. Boris had the intention to call right up to the very ridge, but with three passengers and a bunch of things he could only give a ride up to half

10. And so, as soon as we got out of the car, all the royal cavalry rushed at us. Number three hundred is Stefan Peterhansel, the most famous racer, whom we affectionately call Petya. I hope he didn’t swear too much when he saw our friendly company on his way

11. I admit, standing in the way of cars that are rushing under 160 km / h in the sand is quite scary.

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13. Shooting from a mountain is much more interesting.

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16. Very hard. Lyosha in crocs almost burned his feet on the hot sand. It is difficult to convey the height of the dune in the photo, look at the cars below to imagine the scale

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18. Finally, we climbed to the very crest. The rider on the quadric did not reach literally a meter to the top and began to descend

19. In the middle of the dune, he turned around and again began to climb diagonally

20. I almost drove on the heels of photographers

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22. Although everything that happened looked rather dangerous, high spirits reigned among the few photographers at the top.

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27. Motogon, which is stuck on top. Unsuccessfully pogazovav, he began to ask to be pushed and point to the slope of the dune. Dimka was closest to him, but he decided that the rider was asking him for directions and also began to wave towards the slope - they say, right, dude, go there

28. And then Lesha realized that his finest hour had come - with a camera and a tripod at the ready, he rushed to help the motorcycle race

29. Hero!

thirty.

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32. Enough extreme for today. We go down

33. On the way to the hotel we took pictures of the city. From the east it is surrounded by a huge sand dune.

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36. Now we will go along the coast. Look out for ocean pics!