Night falls in Riyadh – at 6 in the evening it is completely dark – and for the first time in a week Dani Vilà (Capellades, Barcelona, ??29 years old) goes to bed at a decent hour… and rested. A luxury, coming from where he comes from: surviving half the Dakar running bareback, with what he’s wearing. Like the pioneers of 1978. Such are the Originals, the 24 Dakarians most faithful to the adventurous spirit of the rally, who race, on motorcycles and quads, in the unassisted category.
Little is said about these outstanding physical and mental resistance, monopolized by the Dakar headlines by the names and brands of the favorites. The originals – a category created in 2015, heir to the motorcycle malles (a term similar to porters) – live in the anonymity of the caravan, they are the punks of the bivouac, those who have no comfort: no equipment, no mechanical assistance no masseuse…
If it is already hard to endure a 600 km stage, in whatever vehicle, multiply by six days, 4,000 km covered, the accumulation of fatigue, lack of sleep, mental wear and tear on the machine. In the case of Vilà, a Yamaha Raptor 700 quad that he owned, which cost him 30,000 euros. The treasure of him.
“The hardest part is riding conservatively, holding back all day… I’m not used to it,” he explains from the bivouac, after spending the whole day (the motorcycle stage was canceled) working as a mechanic repairing his quad.
“I am not afraid of the race, but I do have a lot of respect for it. In the inscription you sign death…” –slides, as if nothing had happened, this industrial mechanic specialized in electronic control units, with 16 years of experience riding quads, since he was 13.
What do you mean by “sign the death”?
–That you assume the possibility of dying. This is not just another rally. Every second you play it.
Vilà was crazy about going to the Dakar since 2015, but he couldn’t participate due to lack of budget. “And one year that I had it, I broke my femur,” explains the Catalan rider, who inherited his passion for quads from his father, Josep Maria, who raced as an amateur. “We started out making roads, through Capellades, through El Bruc, persecuted by the Mossos…”, recalls Dani, who dedicated himself professionally to quad-cross racing with the imperative need to win: they only paid him for victory achieved.
In October, when he returned from the rally in Morocco, he was given the best news of his life: Motul, sponsor of the Original category, invited him to participate with the drivers without assistance. “I didn’t know if I wanted to do it, the Original is very hard. The truth is, I don’t know if they were doing me a favor or a bitch. But when the firm offer came I ate it with potatoes”, explains Vilà, who has saved the 17,000 euros that registration costs.
He is the first Spaniard to race in the original quad, and being a rookie. In the category he is accompanied by two other Spaniards, already seasoned, Javi Vega and Joan Pedrero, both on motorcycles.
In exchange for gratuity, Vilà lives the Dakar in the wildest way: he sleeps in a tent, on the ground, he does not have a team of mechanics, but instead has to fix his vehicle “with a toolbox and the spare parts provided by Motul” at the end of each stage, its only logistics.
“You are very drawn, it is what I have worse; with wet boots every day. But, on the contrary, competing like this is good for me to learn to respect the race, forcing me to be very careful, and it helps me to gain experience for future editions”.
For now, Vilà has emerged unscathed from the first half of the Dakar. In stage 1 he had a fall, “a little scare” that served as a warning. In the 2, “a real hell” of stones “to bore”, he stopped twice to help fallen pilots -and they did not replace the hour and 5 minutes used-, but ended with the satisfaction of “having lived the true spirit of Dakar ”. In the 3 he saw the “danger up close” due to the bad conditions of the terrain, the floods, the rain and the cold. In race 5 he believed that he had to retire due to an engine failure a few meters from the finish line, but he managed to get out the next day.
Although he was the last classified in quads (14th), even though he was 62 hours late (45 of them penalties), Vilà was a satisfied man, for whom the objective “is to finish every day”. Finishing the rally on the 15th “will be like a victory”.
Complete it or not, “the most handsome thing” that is carried are “the values ??and the maturity that you can get, which is unique”. His Dakar debut is a first step towards his great sporting challenge: “My dream is to win the Dakar on a quad, but with an assistance team. I know that I need a minimum of 60,000 euros, but it is not impossible. The problem is that I don’t know how to sell myself…”.
