Leaving nothing in the tank

Dakar 2021 | Stage 1 | Jeddah > Bisha
January 3 ^rd 2021 - 09:35 [GMT + 3]

Heading into his first Dakar, Amaury Baratin is much more ambitious than the average amateur in the most famous rally raid on Earth. He intends to go flat out from beginning to end.

Amaury Baratin was among the first competitors to go through the technical and administrative scrutineering on Friday. He may be an amateur, but he has no time to waste. "I'm not here for a walk in the park", says the biker from Paris. "I want to have fun and, for me, that means going fast." Do not mistake his words for empty bluster. The 47-year-old biker from Paris is no spring chicken. He knows what is at stake —he just does not want to pretend he is someone he is not. He is willing to take risks. When it comes to racing, he knows it well and has always taken the same approach. "I spent fifteen or so years racing on the tracks of the enduro world championship", he explains. "I've also competed on the racetrack, for example, in the TT and in Macau. When I started the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the thought that I had to drive conservatively to make it to the finish couldn't have been further from my mind. I've always given it my all, and here in the Dakar I will put in the exact same effort to rise from 100th to 99th place overall as if I were running second and fighting for first place." This born competitor, a tough-as-nails biker who spends the rest of the year running Espace Horizon, one of the biggest motorbike dealerships in the Paris region, only recently discovered off-road racing. "It was 2018 and I'd taken a trip to Namibia with Laurent Cochet. I was carrying my wife and our luggage on a BMW 800 and I felt completely out of my element on the gravel. I must say, until then, riding on gravel is not something I'd do on purpose…" It is true, however, that he had always had a Dakar start in mind. "When I got the feeling that endurance racing had nothing else to offer, I started thinking about off-road racing. Having to start from scratch and going back to the bottom of the learning curve is great." Amaury is tackling his first Dakar after a few test runs that included participating in the Merzouga Rally and winning the Africa Race in the category for bikers racing without support. As an experienced mechanic, he should be all right doing maintenance work on his KTM at the bivouac every evening, especially if everything goes according to plan and he gets to the camp ahead of schedule.