Zzziiip" - a zip is opened. "Zzziiip" - a second one. Five o'clock in the morning. The first cyclists peel themselves out of their sleeping bags. "Pffft ..., pffft" - the air is squeezed out of a sleeping mat in the neighbouring tent. Outside, a balmy wind has been carrying the drums of a wedding party to the campsite in Fès all night long. A powerful male voice sings along. The same steady rhythm for minutes, until it slowly increases, women join in, trilling with their tongues, and everything stops abruptly. Headlamps flash in the darkness, a cock crows the dawn. The dark curtain of night rises for the longest stage on the way from Paris to Dakar: 179 kilometres from Fès, the third largest city in Morocco, to just before Midelt, a small town in the Middle Atlas.
Five weeks earlier, 22 cyclists and six companions had started in Paris. Dakar in Senegal was still unimaginably far away. What does 7,200 kilometres in the saddle feel like? Everyone at the start had an idea, but no idea. Nobody expected the kind of hailstorm that pelted down on the group in the mountains of Andorra, forcing some to buy ski gloves so that they could continue. In Granada, the cyclists would have needed paddle boats. At the end of September, a depression flooded the city with 150 times more water than usual.
Most of the time, however, the sun was shining for the group. On this morning on the outskirts of Fès, it is also making its way through the night. At 5.30 am, the cyclists are sitting at beer tables, sipping tea or instant coffee, spreading cinnamon-powdered bread with jam or peanut butter. Eat another banana or would you prefer muesli? The 29th stage will be long and is peppered with 2,230 metres of altitude! "I'm not going to survive today," says Canadian Alan Lunt, at 73 the senior of the participants, who gets on his racing bike and starts with the first riders at 6.30 am. The slower riders are allowed to start up to an hour earlier so that they don't reach the day's finish too long after the stage winners. In Alan's group, racing bikes are in the minority, many are on trekking bikes, there is a cross bike and a travelling racer. Nobody in Alan's group is bothered by the fact that their time is stopped. Their goal: to arrive!
The five leading the overall standings follow an hour later. Leisurely. Strength is measured in the mountains - although after five weeks the rankings already seem to be set in stone. The youngest, 25-year-old Eric Voutaz, has opened up a 52-minute gap in the Pyrenees on his Swiss compatriot David Imboden, who is three years older, followed by the Belgian Dirk Franckx (47), John Faulkner (53) from New Zealand and the Finn Kari Oksman (47). "The pace wasn't that fast in the first week," recalls David, "but the second week was amazing! I thought we'd never last ten weeks! In the third, everyone slowed down again." Dirk Franckx: "I was the strongest at the start, Eric still had to learn the ropes. Now he's even faster than David on the climbs. Well, they're both 20 years younger than me. They're getting stronger, I'm getting weaker." The lean postman, a runner who has only been training on his racing bike for a year, hunches his shoulders. Sometimes, however, he manages to stick to the younger ones like a limpet right up to the finish line.
Eric, from the French-speaking part of Valais, then explains in broken German: "No mountains, makes no sense for Attack today." The young bank employee did not know his compatriot David, who lives just one valley away in Valais, before Paris-Dakar. Organiser Wilbert Bonné had told them about each other. "Then we met up in February and went on a ski tour," says David. Now they are a team, grow beards and reach the finish together. "Who was first today, you or Eric?" asks one of them. "We arrived together," replies David. "We're a couple." He pauses, realises he should have said "team" and adds with a grin: "Please don't tell my girlfriend."
The daily how-did-it-go ritual is followed by a shower, a change of clothes, pitching the tent, putting in the sleeping mat and sleeping bag and that's it. Bagged soup is ready, bread, fruit, water, coffee and tea. Some write in their diaries, others read or look at their photos. Around half past five, chef Ed Deelen from Holland serves dinner: Couscous with chicken, fruit salad - depending on what the markets have to offer. Organiser Wilbert Bonné begins as he does every evening: "Hello, everyone!" - "Hello, Wilbert!" replies the group. Wilbert summarises the previous stage and gives tips for the next. Only the washing up is still to be done. A list hanging on a converted fire engine shows who is on when. Two of these vehicles accompany the cyclists and transport equipment, drinking water and food. "The worst thing," says Bob Tindle (64) with a grin, "is when you reach the camp completely exhausted and realise that you have washing up duty today." Alan Lunt is glad he doesn't have to pick up a tea towel today. The 73-year-old from near Montreal was exhausted when he climbed into the broom wagon halfway through the stage from Fès. "Mountains are just not my thing. I had imagined a flatter Paris-Dakar," explains the pensioner, who raced as a young man. He originally wanted to ride as far as Dakar, but now decides to get off in Marrakesh. "Mauritania is too dangerous for me, there have been kidnappings. My embassy advises against travelling there and explains that it doesn't help Canadians there. That was my last extreme cycle tour," he says resignedly.
But dangers lurk on the long journey where you wouldn't expect them: in the form of a bend that throws a participant out of the race in Spain; in the form of a crazy Moroccan who attacks the paramedic Didier Fobé with a knife and injures his hand so badly that he has to go home; or in the person of a car driver in Morocco who overlooks a cyclist on the open road and almost runs him over.
"Why are we doing this to ourselves: cycling away from home for ten weeks?" asks Erik Loy, a man in his mid-fifties from Norway. "We don't have an answer. Except that we don't just want to sit at home in front of the TV. You have to make a decision. Ours is called Paris-Dakar. Most of us are between 40 and 60 years old. Maybe we want to prove to ourselves that we still have some strength left in us." Cycling as a fight against ageing and death? "There's something to that, after all, what we do here is pretty monotonous: get up in the dark, switch off your head, pedal all day and crawl into your tent at eight o'clock, dead tired. But over time, you internalise this rhythm. You need it to keep going!" says Erik. "Yes, but there's no time to look at anything," says Edwin from Holland. "I've already forgotten what happened last week." The Swiss don't seem to mind the monotony. "We also see a lot while cycling," says David, "plus there are sections without timekeeping and rest days." The software developer seems happy with the race, which he wanted to do once in his life. His boss had nothing against it and he was allowed to take unpaid leave.
Hannelore Grill didn't have to ask anyone for a holiday. The 60-year-old Swede is unemployed. In 2002, she took on the sponsorship of a little girl in Senegal. When a friend told her about Paris-Dakar, the mother of four children, who has been riding a racing bike for ten years, was keen to visit her sponsored child on her bike. "Many sponsors never have contact with the child. But the children want to know who is supporting them," says Hannelore. "I used to write letters. Now I cycle there. I want to motivate others to take on a sponsorship or, if they have one, to visit the child." The little Swede is a bundle of energy: as a test to get her knee, which was only operated on in the spring, used to the strain, she cycled from Stockholm to the start in Paris. She likes to laugh loudly: Only once is there not much to hear from her - when a heavy cold forces her to ride the stage in a fire engine for a day. The next morning, she seems to be fit again. "Did you sleep well, Eric?" she asks. "Good sleep in the mountains," says Eric, nodding. The group had set up camp at an altitude of 1,200 metres, on the edge of the Skoura oasis, directly in front of the backdrop of the High Atlas. The tents stand on the flat roof of a kasbah, a Berber castle built from clay. At night, countless stars twinkled clearly out of a black sky.
Today, the last climb into the High Atlas awaits before the descent to Marrakech. The race group tackles the 60 kilometres to the foot of the mountains quickly. Everyone takes turns in the lead and those who started earlier are quickly overtaken. Nomads herding camels and sheep watch the cyclists. Eric doesn't stop at the refreshment point, where one of the fire engines is waiting. David hurriedly fills his bottles, frantically stuffs a banana into his pocket and fights his way back up. Dirk and Kari, who are in next place in the classification, let the Swiss riders go up to the 2,260 metre high Tizi-n-Tchika Pass. Shortly before the finish below the pass, they caught up with John, who had been riding alone for a few days and had started an hour earlier. The 53-year-old New Zealander, winner in 2007, is angry with the organiser and wants to quit in Marrakesh. "I planned Paris-Dakar with a coach," he explains. "The weeks in Europe were supposed to be training for me so that I would be in top form for the difficult stages in Morocco's mountains. But in the first few weeks, Rob (organiser Rob van der Geest often rode along on his racing bike, editor's note) helped to make the race fast. That helped the leading group. He also knows the route and doesn't waste time getting his bearings."
It's a day off in Marrakech. Sleep in, visit the city, haggle for souvenirs in the bazaar. Some have laptops with them, write emails, upload photos to the computer. Others phone home. David's girlfriend comes to visit and they stay in a hotel for two nights. And your girlfriend, Eric? "My girlfriend: Vélo!" says Eric and laughs. Early in the morning, David returns to the camp. It's dark, five o'clock. "Zzziiip" - a zip is opened. "Zzziiip" - a second one. Cyclists peel themselves out of sleeping bags. "Pffft ..., pffft" - the air is squeezed out of the cells of a sleeping mat. Four more weeks until Dakar. The desert awaits.
EpilogueAll remaining cyclists in the race reached Dakar, the classification remained unchanged: Eric Voutaz won in 235:42 hours; David Imboden needed 52 minutes more. Dirk Franckx finished third, twelve hours behind. Hannelore Grill was able to visit her Senegalese godchild, 13-year-old Fatou.
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