Dakar Rally remains the ultimate challenge

The team consisted of two of South Africa’s most experienced off-road quad champions, Brian Baragwanath and Hannes Saaijman, who tackled the Dakar Rally as Team Rhide SA, a name that was derived from the word rhino as they competed to create awareness of the plight of the rhino. At the Dakar they had to deal with an early disappointment when Baragwanath experienced engine problems on the first day (Saaijman towed him for 620 kilometres to the overnight bivouac) and had to call it a day in the second stage with two flat rear tyres which later disintegrated.
Saaijman (32), who broke his right hand 10 days before the start of the rally, soldiered on despite also experiencing numerous flat tyres (he carried a spare on his quad) and other mechanical problems caused by the long hours of racing in extremely tough conditions. The Pretoria businessman reached his goal to finish the Dakar and completed more than
9 000 kilometres in the two weeks with his Yamaha Raptor 700.
He finished ninth in the quad category (45 quads started the race and 18 made it to the finish) while he won the first-timers’ class. He was also the only South African competitor to win a stage when he claimed the stage victory in the quad category on the final day in extremely muddy conditions. Ten South African competitors started on January 4 in the quads, motorcycle, car and truck categories.
“The Dakar is not a race,” Saaijman said afterwards. “It is survival! The terrain is extremely rough and the dust is very, very bad,” he said at the halfway mark in Chile. “It is not like any race we know in South Africa and you have to approach it differently. That is what I decided to do after starting the race a bit too fast and making mistakes,” he explained.
Looking back, Saaijman remembers a few days which he describes as some of the worst in his life. They were in Bolivia, where it was extremely cold and he didn’t have enough warm clothing. It also rained heavily while they were on their way to the start of the stage and the rivers were in flood. While some competitors wanted the organisers to cancel the stage due to the rain and flooding, he was determined to push through.
“I paid a lot of money to do the race and was not going to give up,” he said. He explained how he looked for a safe place to cross the flooded river and found a train bridge, to continue on the route. Afterwards he discovered that numerous riders had suffered from hypothermia because of the extreme weather.
After racing for 12 days (the race was on for 13 days, but one was a rest day) Saaijman, who claimed a podium result at stage 11 by finishing in combined third place, had moved up to ninth place in the quad category and it was time for the last day’s stage in Argentina.
It proved to be a highlight of “his Dakar” when he posted the fastest time of the quads, to become the only South African competitor to win a stage in the 2015 Dakar Rally.