“Whatever comes, comes”

Sand from the desert has been a part of Lorenzo Maria Fanottoli’s life since he was a child. Born and raised in Ghana by his Italian parents, he stayed there until he was 9 years old before moving back to Italy, at least until he left school. At 19, Africa’s call was stronger, and he went back there to work in his family’s construction business, first in Ghana and then in Nigeria. He immediately started riding motorcycles, helped by a family of bikers, and the sand and dunes became his everyday life, in addition to motocross. In 2022, he took part in his first Dakar, but the journey was interrupted by a bad crash. He injured his collarbone and had to give up. Following a couple of surgery, he is back this year with the strong aim of reaching the finish line.

L-M.F: “Regarding my career, I always did some enduro races and some local races in both Italy and Africa. I’ve been living in Ghana and Niger for the past ten years. I started doing rallies two years ago with training, and then I participated at the Andalucia rally last year in April, which lasted only three days because I broke my ankle. Then, I went to the Rallye du Maroc in October, which was quite okay. We were able to finish it as we needed it to qualify for the Dakar and we finished P17 in Rally 2, so it was not bad. Then, I went to the Dakar last year. It started pretty well, I was around 40th or 30th, but, on the third day, I had a bad crash, and I broke my collarbone. It took me out of the race quite immediately. So, I’m going back this year. The shoulder is better. I needed a couple of surgery during because it was quite damaged. It was broken in seven parts. The last surgery was in July, so we’re good. We did the test in Tunisia for two weeks. I was in Tunisia for the last two weeks for some training. The shoulder is fine, everything is fine, and we are fully ready. This year seeing what happened in 2022, the goal is to finish, to get to the end and then we’ll see how it goes. I won’t be going to look at the classification or whatever. Whatever comes, comes. But the first goal for this year is to finish, then we’ll see.”