2010 Dakar Rally may be in danger?

Autosport, the main Portuguese motorsports publication has been releasing some news lately concerning the 2010 Dakar Rally and the fact that the race may be cancelled.

The reasons pointed for an eventual cancelation of the rally are:

-The H1N1 Flu (Argentina and Chile are two of the countries with the biggest numbers of cases), a local governor has already prohibited the caravan of the rally to go thru is state.

-The enormous financial difficulties of the Amaury Group (owners of the ASO). It looks like they have 121 million Euros in dept from past editions of the race. It's said the group is trying to sell the rights of the Dakar Rally to concentrate exclusevly on the Tour de France bike race.

-The low number of racers wanting to go to South America next year. The deadlines for teams to submit teir entries has been postponed to the end of September, 3 months later than what was supposed originaly.

-The big teams are going away, some of them are choosing the Africa race.

This is not to say that the race wont go on, but it doesn't look great for next year...

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Barb on September 20, 2009 at 9:10am

Wow, thanks for the update.

Permalink Reply by TOG on September 20, 2009 at 9:32am

the VS network is no longer on DirecTV, so that could prevent a few sponsors from coming on board . Not knowing the numbers of directv customers who actually watched the Dakar Rally on VS, but still, it sucks that DirecTV customers cant watch it.

Permalink Reply by Mike Kenyon on September 20, 2009 at 9:55am

Count me as one then (DTV customer)

Permalink Reply by Mike/WC77 on September 20, 2009 at 10:07am

Wow, seems like the rally has a black cloud following it.
Back to central Europe?

Permalink Reply by Bruno on September 20, 2009 at 11:10am

I would say Africa Race, the big teams are already looking at it. It's basicly the old Dakar route.

Permalink Reply by Wheaton56 on September 20, 2009 at 12:27pm

i heard a funny thing yesterday,

500 pleaple have died from the H1N1 flu since last year, and 3600 have dies from the regular flu in the same time.

Permalink Reply by laura_a_Robbyfan on September 20, 2009 at 1:19pm

I also can not believe we are now receiving instruction from the White House as the proper way to sneeze and cough. How many people to this day are still infected with TB? Seems as though Dakar people might be grasping for any and all excuses. Lets just hope they don't wait till the day of the event to cancel.

Permalink Reply by David Neth on September 20, 2009 at 1:54pm

Seriously, let us know now and not the night before like a few years ago.

Permalink Reply by David Neth on September 20, 2009 at 1:59pm

Bad news, but thanks for letting us know. I guess we have to think about alternatives now. Africa seems like the most likely candidate but maybe Silk Road? Either way they have to race somewhere to satisfy the sponsors (and all of us).

Permalink Reply by Pathfinder7 on September 21, 2009 at 10:32am

This is not sounding great and I' pretty sure Robby can't be happy about it! He will, however, land on his feet as he always seems to do!

Permalink Reply by Bruno on September 21, 2009 at 11:24am

Agreed. Dakar is not in South America, it's in Africa. I never really understood the real reasons they ran away from the African continent. The Africa Race ran there this year without any problems and will have a sronger field next year with most of the Dakar Truck teams, KTM in the bikes, etc.

Permalink Reply by Shop Goddess on September 21, 2009 at 1:34pm

The reason the 'officials' gave was that there was a direct threat from Al Qaeda, (which has gained a real stronghold in Africa) against the race itself, and they killed a few people to get their point across. I don't think anyone wanted to be responsible for security in an area and for an event that is impossible to control.