“You find a different part of yourself doing stuff like this”

Even in the colourful world of the Dakar Rally, Lyndon Poskitt stands out from the crowd. Following a serious accident in 2013, the 38-year-old Englishman quit his job as an aerospace engineer and set up the project 'Races to Places' in order to pursue his dream of travelling around the world on a motorcycle. He has since covered over 180,000 kilometres and been to 57 countries, while his popular 'Races to Places' video series on YouTube has made him a cult hero in biking circles. Having already completed the Dakar once with a team in 2013, he returned in 2017 to tackle the notorious Malle Moto class - what he terms the "forgotten Dakar" - and managed a hugely impressive second place in the category. Never short of new ideas, Lyndon is back in 2018 with an ambitious new plan: to film and broadcast his own daily, behind-the-scenes videos and bring the Dakar 2018 experience to his 140,000 followers across social media. He has already raised most of the necessary funds with a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, while a feature-length film of his exploits last year is due for release in December. Between all of these projects he has also squeezed in some time to prepare for the rally itself, and says that winning in ‘Original’ would be a dream result. Whatever happens between Lima and Cordoba, Lyndon will be on hand to give the world a glimpse of what it really means to take on the Dakar.

"You find a different part of yourself doing stuff like this, I love it. There's no getting away from the fact that the Dakar is everything for me, and it's had a special place inside me since 2013. I think people following the race deserve to see more of it, so this time the plan is to do a daily feed and put videos out every day on YouTube. It's going to be stressful and require a lot of input from me, but we'll give it our best shot and I'm super confident we can pull it off. Getting to the end last time was an even bigger dream than finishing in 2013, and it really hit home how hard it is to do Malle Moto. I've learned a lot about how to be more prepared for it, so hopefully I can do a better job this time. The priority is to get to the finish line!"