Mongolians at Dakar rally

Dakar rally. This is a fascinating competition which challenges and tests both  sportsman's endurance, skill and the quality or dependability of  vehicles they use. It is an off-road  endurance race with many  stages each with  distances of up to 900 km (500 miles) a  day. Nowadays Dakar rally, formerly called Paris- Dakar rally, is organized annually in South America and not in  Europe and Africa as it used to. Four major categories of vehicles used  in the race are motorcycles, quads, cars and trucks. Currently the champions in each class are Ayrat Mardeev  (Russia) team with KAMAZ (trucks), Nasser Al-Attiyah (Qatari)  team with MINI (cars) , Marc Coma (Spain) with KTM 450 (motorcycles), and Rafal Sonic (Poland) with Yamaha (quads).

Ayrat Mardeev (Russia)

KAMAZ truck (Russia)

KTM 450  bike (Austria)

Marc Coma (Spain)

YAMAHA Raptor 700 (quad, Japan)

Rafal Sonik (Poland)

MINI car (UK)

Nasser Al Attiyah (Qatari)

Mongolian bikers Anar Ch. (left) and Boldbaatar D.

Pilots in 2015 Dakar rally had to master 9500 km in total in 13  stages. This time 7 Mongolian drivers were present at the rally. Boldbaatar Damdinkhorloo (KTM bike) and Anar Chinbaatar (KTM bike) were the bikers from Mongolia, successfully finished with times of 65:39:18 (45th place) and 149:24:08 (78th).  79 bikers in total  out of 168 could cross the finish line completing all stages.  Besides these two bikers, there was a Mongolian car crew with driver Lhamaa Namchin and two other co-drivers, driving a Toyota vehicle of the Hungarian Sandlander team. They finished the race taking 62th place. Two more Mongolians participated in Dakar as co-drivers for two  separate crews of the same Hungarian team.
The fact that from all participants not even half of it in bikes' class and only the half in cars class could complete the race, shows how tough the whole race was.

Boldbaatar D. (Mongolia) after finish

Mongolia's history in Dakar rally  goes back to 2013.  Two our bikers who first time represented Mongolia, could not complete the rally because of the technical failure of their bikes on the 6th day (Boldbaatar D.) and on the 11th day (Lhamaa N.). In 2014 three bikers have participated in the rally,  but two of them couldn't complete the race, again, because of their bikes' failure, and only Boldbaatar D. completed  the race finishing as 60th.  And he made a progress  in 2015 race finishing 45th. Let's hope that he makes it to the first best 20 bikers next year! Or even better. I wish all our racers the best success in the coming years! Go Mongolia!

Representatives of Mongolia at Dakar 2015