January 4, 2010

The Best Sports Event You’re Not Watching

The Dakar Rally, currently being contested in the wilds of South America, about as far from Dakar (and Paris) as you can get. This is the second year in Argentina and Chile for the rally, and so far it shows no signs that the absence of the Sahara will hurt the competition.

Devoted readers of ECB will recall that the Dakar topped our list of Toughest Races in the World. For the rest of you, the Dakar Rally is a 14 stage race in trucks, cars, ATVs and motorcycles across over 9,000 km (5500 miles). That’s like running the Indy 500 every day for 11 days straight. Except you’re on a motorcycle riding over mountains and sand dunes.

In college, Russell and I followed the Paris-Dakar Rally by watching the 2AM airings of British television coverage.

Lucky for you, Versus is now running half-hour recaps each day with highlights of the stage. That’s just enough coverage to follow the rally, see all the amazing visuals, and not get overloaded.

For fans of other forms of racing, you may recognize a couple names: Robby Gordon (of NASCAR semi-fame) is driving a Hummer (which at Dakar qualifies in the “car” class) and Carlos Sainz (former World Rally Championship winner) is in a VW.

Do yourself a favor, check out the videos above and set your DVR to record a few of the recap episodes. You won’t regret it.

This post was not sponsored by Versus or the organizers of the Dakar Rally. But if they want to send us some money, we’ll take it.

1 Responses:

TJ said...

I'm really disappointed after finding out that the actual post did not live up to what I thought the title was leading to.

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