40th edition - #21 - 1986: The Dakar in mourning - Dakar 2018

The man who imagined the Dakar, who created it, carried and fed it… was gone. Taken by the desert, that is sometimes cruel to those who love it. In the early 1980’s, Thierry Sabine shared his passion with more than the closed-circle of motor racing enthusiasts, attracting among others show-business celebrities. French singer Daniel Balavoine, who also regularly got involved in humanitarian projects, saw the Dakar dunes as a new way to transmit his vision participating, for example, in water pump installation projects in African villages. On January 14, 1986, both as well as JDD journalist Nathaly Odent, radio technician Jean-Paul Le Fur and the pilot Francois-Xavier Bagnoud perished in a helicopter accident. Without its guide, the Dakar was shaken but didn’t waver. Thierry’s father, Gilbert Sabine took over and got the show back on the road.