Riding a powerful off-road bike with confidence takes some skill. Racing on off-road bike over the course of two weeks, over several different types of terrains covering thousands of kilometres, however, takes a special kind of human being. Enter Sam Sunderland, this year’s Dakar motorcycle winner.
During the recent local 2017 KTM Adventure bike launch, KTM South Africa flew their champion to South Africa to join us for the launch. I had to opportunity to sit with him and admire his achievements.
What are your earliest motorcycle memories?
As a kid, I was always playing around with my BMX cycle and crashing off kerbs. My neighbour had a Yamaha PW80 and he asked me if I want to have a go. We rode it through bushes and crashed it several times. Then in 1997, I got my own bike on Christmas morning. This was really special.
The Dakar is an immense challenge, both physically and mentally. How to you approach such an event?
Mentally, you might feel like you are destroyed and tired after a stage; you have to do everything you can to make sure that when you wake up you are not as tired as the previous evening. When you are there you actually just go through the motions and do your best with everything, trying to get as much sleep as you can. Usually you get only between five and six hours of sleep every night.
Do you sleep well during those few hours?
A lot of the riders, including me, take sleeping pills. Every minute counts and you can’t afford to try to go to sleep for half an hour. It is also noisy and there is a lot of commotion in the area.
What is the scariest thing for you during the race?
Animals. Everything else is more or less in your control. You control how fast you are going into corners and your speed on the straights, for example. You read the road book and make decisions according to that. Animals terrify me. Sometimes you see a cow and realise that it could have jumped out behind a bush and run across the road.
This year, I saw a cow next to the road while I was doing 150 km/h. By the time I realised I needed to brake, I have already passed it! But you can’t think about it the whole time, then you’ll be riding at 30 km/h the whole day.
Watch Sunderland’s victory in the video below.