Gilles Tixador: “I already know that I’ll want to do it again”
Watch out here come the cops! Gilles Tixador, motorbike rider for the French national police hopes to be given bib number 22, the traditional number for members of the police. His passion for two wheels doesn’t quite run in the family. Nobody rode bikes in the Tixador clan but Gilles caught the virus at the age of 14 and bought his first bike, a Yamaha 450 TY, after earning money through little part time jobs. In his room he would read every possible bike magazine. And it was on those pages that he discovered the biggest of all rally raids: the Paris-Dakar. The young man first had to face the worries of his relatives, but the passion was well present and years went by without altering that passion. Gilles became a motorcyclists for the national police, a good opportunity to use his passion as a work instrument. On his tricolour bike, he’s more used to normal tarmac roads but his love of sand tracks and of rallies remains ever present. The call of the desert echoes in his police helmet. Today Gilles Tixador has already competed in 24 rallies (Tunisia, Atlas, Orient...), but has never yet started the mythical Dakar that he had dreamt of while reading magazines during his youth. Thanks to this 2007 edition of the rally, he intends on repairing this fault