The greatest adventure

By Rob Miech

Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004 | 10:57 a.m.

Ronn Bailey first got bitten by the Dakar road rally bug as he rode a motorcycle from Southern California through Mexico and Central America to the Panama Canal in 1996.

From Nicaragua to Costa Rica and into Panama, his Spanish improved, he said, with every swig of tequila he shared during rests with fellow travelers. Bailey's interest in Dakar piqued as he kept hearing tales about the legendary rally.

"I met a number of guys like me, doing their own quest through Central America," Bailey said. "They talked about Dakar. It was, like, the biggest thing in the world.

"When you meet people like that in El Salvador, you know these guys aren't talking (smack). They all had such a high regard for the adventure, the adventure of all adventures ... the race of all races. That's when it really bit me."

Nine months of planning and eight years of dreaming will culminate in Bailey and his Vanguard Racing Team beginning the 27th Dakar rally in Barcelona on New Year's Day.

Bailey, 53, is the founder, chief executive officer and chief technology officer of Vanguard Integrity Professionals, whose headquarters he moved to Las Vegas from Southern California five years ago.

He is a leader in his field, having addressed the United Nations, provided information for a Presidential board and advised the Department of Homeland Security.

Typically, Bailey said, a first-time Dakar participant requires at least two years to make the necessary preparations for the rally.

"It takes huge planning, and we'll do it in nine months and pull it off," Bailey said. "That's absolutely remarkable."

Bailey doesn't hope to just finish the race, either, in the seaside Senegal capital Jan. 16.

"Right," Bailey said Tuesday night, when reached at a technology trade show in Miami. "I feel like an American in an Olympiad. I want to bring (a victory) home for America."

Bailey said his vehicle, parts of which are being assembled in Paris, Newport Beach, Calif., San Diego and Las Vegas, will be one of the most advanced cars in the rally and its final cost will be more than $200,000.

He said he might reveal a detail or two about a new geometric design in the car's fabrication, considered top secret until the race begins, at his first official Dakar press conference Thursday in his East Patrick Lane offices.

Bailey plans to spend more than $1 million -- on everything from visas, permits, licenses and entry fees, to accommodations in Barclona and round-trip air fare for his entourage -- on his Dakar adventure, and he said every penny will be worth it.

"I'm getting so excited," he said, "I really am."

Veteran off-roader Steve Myers will serve as a co-pilot for Bailey, who hopes to recoup some of his investment via pending cable television network contracts.

Darren Skilton, a two-time Dakar veteran and four-time winner of the Baja 1000, is the rally's official North American liaison. In that capacity, he has advised Bailey on every detail of his vehicle meeting Dakar guidelines.

Skilton has also imparted to Bailey some wisdom about the race -- about crossing mammoth sand dunes or a field of land mines, which claimed the left foot of a Portugese support driver in '02.

In 1999, three competitors died from dehydration. Ample water and 5 grams of salt is the daily recommendation.

"It's very hard to get a feeling for it until you're there for the first time," Skilton said. "It's very overwhelming. It's like a 16-day expedition, like climbing Mount Everest, but it's also competitive.

"There are certain things you don't think of that stress you out, like communicating among the team, getting fatigued and eating properly, living at the same time as you're racing. You have to go and live it before you appreciate it."

Frenchman Stephane Peterhansel drove his Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution to victory almost 10 months ago to become only the second man to win the Dakar in a car and on a motorcycle, which he accomplished six times.

"Every kilometer was a test," he said. "Every kilometer was a problem."

Bailey has never taken part in a competitive race of any type.

"I've never wanted to be a racer," Bailey said. "I consider myself to be an adventurer. I go on adventures for the experience. The Dakar is one of the biggest adventures, a life-changing event for me and the team. I don't need a bunch of races in front of it to do it.

"We've got the best equipment possible and the best team possible, and the planning has been meticulous. I should be able to do it."

The history

Frenchman Thierry Sabine, who always raced in white coveralls, had an epiphany when he got lost in the Libyan Desert, on his Yamaha XT500 motorcycle, in 1977 during a Nice-to-Abidjan rally.

When he returned to civilization he immediately hatched plans for a Paris-to-Dakar rally for amateurs. Sabine always embraced the amateur spirit in endurance races.

"A challenge for those who go," Sabine has been immortalized as saying. "A dream for those who stay behind."

It kicked off Dec. 26, 1978, attracting 90 motorcycles and 80 cars -- whose participants were armed with only a basic road book, map and compass -- for the debut 10,000-kilometer race that started from the Place du Trocadero in Paris.

Only 74 crossed the finish line, and there was one death. In January, 607 vehicles took part in the Dakar.

Modern-era racers use the latest Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, although the experts typically navigate with only a compass, if not a star or two, for two legs of the journey.

In 1986, Sabine died with a French actor and journalist when the observation helicopter in which they were flying crashed into a small dune during a sand storm in the Tenere Desert.

Since then, the event's governing body has been called the Thierry Sabine Organization, or TSO, which also sponsors the Tour de France bicycle race.

Skilton, who has raced off-road in California and Mexico for 12 years, said Dakar is no bicycle race.

"The Dakar makes the Baja 1000," he said, "look like a go-cart race in a Kmart parking lot."

The route

The rally's path has been altered as much as its reputation has grown.

In January, for the first time, the Dakar will begin in Barcelona, through which it passed in 1987 and 1989 to the delight of a million spectators.

Three times it has started in Granada. In 2000 it kicked off in Paris, near the Eiffel Tower, and finished at the base of the Great Pyramids in Cairo. It began in Marseilles, France, and ended in Sharm el Sheikh, on Egypt's Red Sea coast, in 2003.

In 1992, the rally's length was doubled when it ran to Cape Town, South Africa. In 1997, the start was in Dakar and the finish line was in ... Dakar. The only other time it ended where it began, from and to Paris, was in 1994.

Shifting political climates, environmental concerns and terrorism threats have contributed to annual variations in the rally since 1992. Until then, it either drifted through Algiers, Tripoli or Tunis, but it always started in Paris and ended in Dakar.

"In Africa," said TSO director general Hubert Auriol, the first man to win the Dakar on a motorcyle (1981, 1983) and in a car (1992), "there are many complicated countries."

In 2000, a group calling itself the "Islamic Dissident Army," equipped with heavy weapons and 40 vehicles, vowed to disrupt the rally. The TSO responded by lifting more than 400 vehicles and 1,000 personnel to Libya via three Russian Antonovs that had been flown in from Siberia.

That was Skilton's first Dakar.

"They found a group of people planning to attack the rally in the desert, and they stopped us and flew us by transport to Libya," Skilton said. "Guys have been hijacked and cars have been stolen."

In late January, French secret agents thwarted an ambush plot by a gang of 100 that aimed to kidnap Peterhansel and Spanish motorcyclist Nani Roma, the race's respective leaders, in Mali.

The French weekly magazine Le Point reported that Amari Saifi -- known as Abderrazak the Para, with ties to al-Qaeda, in the terrorist world -- was behind the plot.

The group was armed with heavy machine guns on its all-terrain vehicles, but it scattered from the Sokolo region once it learned that the Dakar had been diverted from southern Mali.

The U.N. is responsible for security on the Western Sahara borders. Bailey said he has learned that 20,000 unclaimed land mines are scattered within those borders. He hopes his mother doesn't read those words.

"I'm curious how it will be (this time), how we'll be received being from the States," said Skilton, who will be driving a press vehicle in January. "I'd be lying if I said it wasn't in the back of my mind. At the same time, I'm confident.

"In Morocco last year, they were very warm and welcoming. One-on-one, they may not like our politics, but they're very warm. The rally is really well organized, and I'll feel secure."

The rules

Navigation ability will be as important as vehicle performance in the 2005 Dakar.

The Dakar is most often about 6,000 to 7,000 kilometers, but its length in 2005 will be nearly cut in half. However, organizers predict it will be one of the most challenging courses.

To provide a balance between the professional and amateur racers, for whom Sabine originally designed the rally, the latter group will have access to more GPS points via an unblocking code.

GPS will also be used to enforce a village speed limit of 50 kilometers per hour. Introduced moderately last year, at entry and exit zones clearly marked in road books, there will be zero tolerance for violators in 2005.

Time and monetary penalties about double for the first three offenses. A fourth is followed by immediate disqualification. Payment defaults result in a five-year ban from the rally.

The first-timer

Bailey's savvy business acumen enables him to feed his grand appetite for adventure, which he developed at a young age on family excursions to the Southern California-area countryside, deserts and lakes.

His visit to Miami, for instance, wasn't an ordinary business trip, as he was also introduced before an IBM group of thousands. Tuesday night, he was awarded with an exclusive contract to assist Big Blue with its next generation of operating systems.

The man who has ridden a motorcycle 900 miles across sand, glaciers and tundra to the Arctic Circle speculated that that deal might be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Vanguard.

With Africa and Antarctica, he will have traversed all seven continents on two wheels. "And I will do Africa," Bailey said.

Last month, asked to pick a vehicle number between 670 and 690 in an e-mail from Dakar organizers in France, Bailey, who was also told he was the lone American to register in his vehicle class, chose No. 680.

"So 10 will be in front, setting the pace," he said. "We wanted to avoid the front, because we wouldn't have anyone to challenge us to go farther, faster. In the front, all people can do is catch up to you. And we didn't want to be at the end."

To physically and mentally prepare for Dakar, Bailey will ride a test vehicle over the Baja 1000 course, covering 3,000 miles over five days, in a couple of weeks.

His finished Dakar vehicle will leave Newport Beach for a staging area in Paris on Dec. 19. Bailey's crew arrives in Paris on Dec. 21, and it will comb over every detail of it race, chase and support rigs for four days.

On Dec. 25, the entourage travels over land to Barcelona, where it will hand over the vehicles for "scrutineering" by race officials. Until the first of the year, Bailey's racecar will be kept in a secure warehouse outside Barcelona.

"I'm a 'privateer,' and I put together one hell of a team," Bailey said. "The whole Dakar thing is a personal adventure, and I'm up for it. There's no question that I'm in for the challenge of a lifetime."

Yearly pilot/co-pilot auto winners

2004...Peterhansel/Cottret

2003...Masuoka/Schulz

2002...Masuoka/Maimon

2001...Kleinschmidt/Schulz

2000...Schlesser/Magne

1999...Schlesser/Monnet

1998...Fontenay/Picard

1997...Shinozuka/Magne

1996...Lartigue/Perin

1995...Lartigue/Perin

1994...Lartigue/Perin

1993...Saby/Serieys

1992...Auriol/Monnet

1991...Vatanen/Berglund

1990...Vatanen/Berglund

1989...Vatanen/Berglund

1988...Kankkunen/Piironen

1987...Vatanen/Giroux

1986...Metge/Lemoine

1985...Zaniroli/Da Silva

1984...Metge/Lemoine

1983...Ickx/Brasseur

1982...Marreau/Marreau

1981...Metge/Giroux

1980...Kottulinsky/Luffelman

1979...Genestier/Terbiaut

Autos

9...Mitsubishi

4...Citroen

4...Peugeot

3...Renault

2...Porsche

2...Range Rover

1...Mercedes

1...Volkswagen

Bikes

9...Yamaha

6...BMW

5...Honda

4...KTM

2...Cagiva