The Real Stories of the Dakar Rally - Kellon Walch

Kellon Walch recounts his first marathon stage. Getting Some Gas

Kellon Walch was a factory rider in 2005 for the KTM Red Bull USA Team. He is competing in the 2024 Dakar rally co-piloting for Mitchell Guthrie. Currently, American Ricky Brabec is leading the rally, hopefully he can pull it off again. I’ve been helping these two for years so it is fun to watch.

Kellon recounts his experiences in a wild stage of the 2005 Dakar Rally while it was in Africa.

“This was my first marathon stage and the seventh of the 2005 Dakar rally. It was the longest stage of the rally, and we would have no mechanics or outside assistance. “It is better to take the gas than to ride looking for gas” – Scot Harden. During a marathon stage, the racers’ bivouac is separate from the others, and we must immediately put our bikes in the parc ferme (closed park). The ASO brings our tents while the mechanics and other crew drive to the finishing bivouac, many kilometers away. The special test from Zouerat to Tichit was apparently the longest stage in the history of the Dakar. I remember looking at the board and seeing the special test of 670 km, and thinking to myself, man, this is crazy.

The morning of the special test, I started in the tenth position. The dirt was damp at the start, which I thought strange. After an hour, I worked my way to the front and caught the lead pack, thinking, “I am good now.” Neither I nor anyone else could fathom a massive sandstorm moving through the Sahara desert. Our field of view was no more than a hundred yards. No amount of tear-offs or Rain-X (TM) would help, and losing your goggles would undoubtedly end your day. This place was becoming crazy. As the saying goes, we were not in Kansas anymore. We later learned that the plume could be seen from satellite images spanning hundreds of kilometers.

As the day progressed, the dunes were relentless and never-ending. I was just so happy to be riding with the lead pack. During the second and final fuel stop, I was in a good spot, and I was next to Giovanni Sala, a veteran Dakar racer and one of the nicest people from Italy you would ever meet. It was chaos at the fuel stop, and they gave us fuel, but only a few liters. I vividly remember Giovanni (Gio) Sala arguing with the officials that two liters of fuel was insufficient to finish the stage. The ASO officials looked at us and said in French that they did not have enough fuel and offered no explanation. As an aside, one needs to understand the ASO and the people who run it. Most are volunteers, only speak French, and are very good at caring for their own when times are tough. Also, things are often better than they make them out to be.

Gio was nice enough to tell me what all the arguing was about since I was a young, inexperienced American who spoke no French. The sand storm had wreaked havoc on the ASO’s ability to bring gas to the fueling stations. Hundreds of competitors and assistance vehicles were stranded throughout the Sahara desert dunes.

I was sitting there thinking, oh well; there goes my Dakar, not knowing what else to do, when suddenly Gio went to the fuel cans, grabbed one, and threatening anyone who tried to take it from him. Gio is a big man, and the officials did not object. He filled his gas tank. I remember watching him fill his bike and him looking at me. He went back and grabbed another gas can and gave it to me. I am sure that he felt sorry for me as I was clueless.

I filled my bike, but by the time I was finished, Gio and the lead pack had taken off. All I could see ahead of me was the sandstorm. Terrified, I quickly looked at my road book and rode in vain to catch the lead pack. Unfortunately, the winds were so strong the tracks from the lead pack were invisible. I then found myself riding over my head and trying to navigate the El Mrayer dunes. I hit a dune way too fast, and with my luck, it was a dune with a massive witch’s eye.

A “witch’s eye” or “blow hole” is a ravine or depression in the sand and one of the most dangerous obstacles while navigating sand dunes. Due to the high winds, a witch’s eye can drastically change in depth and size in short periods, and some can be the size of a car or as big as a swimming pool. Needless to say, a witch’s eye can end your Dakar in a single moment.

I launched off the top of the dune and flew to the other side as it started to go up. It’s always concerning when you have time to actually think about crashing. I could not see the bottom of the dune while still flying through the air. When I finally landed, my body predictably launched forward, and heard the thug of my helmet hitting the roadbook. I flattened myself on the face of the dune, my face bleeding, broke the mouthpiece of my helmet, and remember seeing stars momentarily. I was a bit nauseous, and doc always said that you likely sustained a slight concussion when that happened. This was one of two incidents where my life passed before my eyes in the Dakar Rally.

Incredibly, I gathered myself and rode out of the giant witch’s eye, making circles as if riding backward up a drain hole. By this time, I had lost the lead pack and finished the special test alone. I hoped for a smoother ride to the finish but had to navigate a hundred kilometers of the gnarliest camel grass I’d ever seen. Riding through camel grass is akin to riding through unevenly spaced, sharp, hard, 3-foot whoops on a 500-pound rally bike. Riders must weave through randomly placed mini-dunes with hard centers. Camel grass is a shear test of patience and endurance; one stage had over 3 hours of camel grass. Riding smooth and consistent is the key to camel grass and how much energy you conserve depends on your speed and the lines you choose.

The final portion of the nearly 700 km special test ended with a colossal dune passing that fed into a giant canyon which took us to the finish. And to make things worse, the navigation at the end was not straightforward! I arrived at this point just before sunset and remember thinking, how in the heck are the rest of the competitors going to find this path when it is dark? I finished 10th overall that day at 9 hours and 36 minutes.

As I rode across the finish and into the bivouac, I remember the media stopping me and asking how it felt to win my first stage of the Dakar rally. I told them I was pretty sure I didn’t win because I had lost quite a bit of time between the last gas stop and the finish. I was the virtual leader most of the day because I caught the lead pack. That might be why Gio and the rest took off so quickly from the last gas stop because they knew I would win the stage if I finished with them. Whatever the case, that’s racing.

Chris Blais made it in 12th overall, only a short time after I did. Scot Harden finished the stage riding for 11 hours. I was pleasantly surprised to see my teammate when he walked into our makeshift tent. We were unsure if he would make it, so many riders were still out there.

Even with everything that happened, I was lucky that Giovani helped me because I would have run out of gas and ended up staying the night in the Sahara desert. Sitting in the bivouac, we heard that most competitors were still out in the dunes, and only a few cars had finished. Eighty percent of the competitors ran out of gas that day with some of the privateer motorcycles taking over 25 hours to complete the stage; US privateer Charlie Rauseo finished in 23 hours. This day was one of the longest, most challenging days ever in the Dakar rally.”

Charlie and Dave Rauseo were the true privateers of the 2005 Dakar Rally. Wanting to race the Dakar for over 25 years, they raised 100 hundred thousand dollars to arrive at the 2005 Dakar start in Barcelona. They hosted XR 100 races, sold T-shirts, and collected sponsors. Charlie was back after a failed attempt in 2004. Charlie describes his brother Dave as having the perfect attitude for finishing Dakar — “If you hit him in the head with a 2x4,” laughs Charlie, “he’d just smile and say how happy he was that it didn’t have a nail in it.” Unlike the factory riders, life is tougher for guys like Charlie and Dave. They were able to bring a mechanic, and recall just being covered in dust and dirt the whole time.

Charlie Rauseo wrote the following in his journal. “Bikes and cars are stuck and broken everywhere. Several times, I nearly ran over groups of riders huddling together under emergency foil blankets in the desert cold. Did I mention the sandstorm and rain? But I just kept going, mostly standing up through the camel grass next to the torn-up track. The going was very, very slow in the dark.” Charlie rode well into the dark, riding slow through the camel grass all night long. He finally made it into the bivouac at 7 a.m., 2 hours before the scheduled start of stage 8. He had no idea the ASO was going to cancel stage 8. He figured that he would have enough time to catch a nap, eat breakfast, and work on his bike, and then go again. He thought all those guys camping in the desert would miss their start times. His brother Dave unfortunately broke his leg and had to abandon the rally. Charlie feels that the Dakar should be hard and made difficult, otherwise everyone would finish. He says, “If everyone can do it, then Dakar becomes an amusement park ride. No one dies on a roller coaster.” Despite the difficult conditions and constant unknowns, Dakar is not all doom and gloom. Rauseo continues and says that he was giggling to himself the whole time, he was riding a dirt bike in a beautiful and exotic part of the world. These are the experiences you never forget.

He is talking about the infamous stage 7 during the 2005 Dakar rally; it lasted for over 10 hours consisting of grueling camel grass, dunes and desert roads. Near the end of the stage only 30 motorcycles were in by nightfall; only 10 cars were in by midnight. Many riders were stranded at night in the desert with minimal supplies because they ran out of gas. After the 3rd check point, the promoters underestimated the distance to the next check point and limited the amount of fuel to 20 liters per motorcycle. Most of the top riders knew that 20 liters would not be enough after looking at the road book to reach the next check point; the riders who made it into the bivouac insisted on taking double the gas, despite the protest of the officials at the check point. One privateer said he just took the gas and quietly got back in the line. As fate would have it, those riders were right to take the extra gas; that night would leave over a 130 bikes stranded in the desert; some having to spend the night and using their thermal blankets and running out of water. The organization later admitted that it was a miscommunication and that more gas should have been allowed, none the less, many of the top contenders like Eric Verhoef were stranded and lost hours of time, ending any chance of a high finish. Knowing how far your bike can after filling it with gas is important and can be life saving.

The daughter of then Senegalese president Wade, Syndiely Wade competed in a car in the 2005 Dakar. She highlighted the difficulties of Dakar - crossing the dunes at night is an incredibly slow process. “You have to remove your harness, run to check out the dune you are going to cross, and then reattach the harness before attacking the dune with our car. That is how we spent the night arriving at the bivouac at eight in the morning, having slept just twice for fifteen minutes in twenty four hours.” Others stuck on course found themselves siphoning gas from abandoned motorcycles. Most who did this discovered that the bikes were already empty.

If the day wasn’t difficult enough with the wind and gas situation, another major accident would hit the 2005 Dakar Rally during the seventh stage in Mauritania, en route to Tichit. The forty-one year old Spanish motorcyclist Jose Manuel Perez crashed at high speed before the first checkpoint of the seventh stage from Zouérat to Tichit in Mauritania and suffered severe abdominal injuries. Perez, in his fourth rally was immediately treated by the ASO medical team and helicoptered to the bivouac in Zouérat. During an emergency surgery, his spleen, part of the liver and one kidney was removed. He was later transferred to the Clinique du Cap in Dakar, Senegal, but his condition worsened. He was airlifted to a hospital in Alicante, Spain, where he was placed in intensive care and died from sepsis a few hours later on January 6th, three days after his accident. The death was announced at the racer’s meeting that night and the deep feelings of losing someone close was evident for everyone. Even if you did not know Jose, it hit very close to home. Everyone knew this was the risk of participating in the Dakar. However, we could not imagine just how deep the rift went only a few days later.

A native of Alcante, Spain, Jose Manuel Perez was nicknamed “El Carni” by fans. He was a well known off-road racer and this was his fifth Dakar rally. David Fretinge won the stage and dedicated his victory to Perez.