Friday, January 11, 2008

Officials want to keep Dakar rally alive next year, but unsure where

PARIS - Officials are determined to keep the Dakar Rally alive despite the cancellation of this year's race across the Sahara desert because of terrorist threats.
"We will do everything" for the 2009 rally to take place, French sports minister Bernard Laporte said on RMC-Info radio Thursday.
He argued for the rally to remain "on the African continent, without which there would be no Dakar (rally)."
But Patrice Clerc, the head of organizer ASO, was more cautious.
"We will not let Africa go," he said in an interview with the sports daily L'Equipe published Thursday. "We will go very soon to Africa to talk of the future. But we will not play with security. The planet is vast enough to do 8,000 to 10,000 kilometres in 15 or 20 days in sandy zones."
He said other desert zones in Africa or on other continents could serve as an alternate route. The Chilean government plans to submit a proposal next week to the ASO expressing interest in hosting the race.
Laporte plans to meet managers of the ASO Friday afternoon "to speak about it, to find solutions," he said.
He called it "the world's most beautiful rally" and "an integral part of the French and African sports heritage."
The race was cancelled last Friday because of threats from al-Qaida-linked militants, a day before the roughly 550 competitors were to embark on the 16-day, 9,270-kilometre trek through remote and hostile dunes and scrub from Europe to Senegal in west Africa.
It was the first time that the 30-year-old rally, one of the biggest competitions in automobile racing and formerly called Paris-Dakar, was called off.

Source: The Canadian Press

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