The first day of the Dakar has finally arrived, with another pre-dawn start, in the icy fog of Lisbon.Huge crowds nonetheless, none of which I’ve seen, except on tape, as we moved out of our hotel at 7.30 this morning and headed towards the end of the first stage, near Portimao on the Algarve.
No golf for me though, as our destination was a converted winery (Adega) which has been (almost) transformed into some nice office spaces.
One was designated as the press Office, with plastic tables and chairs on the bare concrete floor. Next door was the TV edit room. More plastic tables and chairs and here, a dozen editing stations, busily putting together pictures not only for the World Feed 26-minute programme but also for reports for many other stations, ranging from France Television to Al Jazeera, via North and South America, Japan, China and all points west. Some journos are actually voicing their pieces into the editing machines as well...
Now that the first day of action is upon us, Eurosport’s first-time on this event, called Sebastian, and I have almost worked out a working pattern, whereby I organise and write much of the script, which serves both for the World Feed programme and all the stationjs that take it, and also for Eurosport’s own programme, which contains the same images but will also have live additions from the desert. Sebastian, meanwhile is at the end of the stage, getting interviews with Alessandro – another Eurosport staffer but now on his 4th Dakar and, like me, working for ASO – collars more likely faces with another camera.Between the two of them and Adelaide, the producer from Eurosport, we hash out the interviews, and they keep me up to speed with the running order, what is in, what pictures we will see and so on.
That’s the theory, in any case and it seemed to work tonight.
At 5.45 I was handed a tape, jumped in a waiting van and drove through the crowds to the end of the stage. Then we hiked a mile or so into the stage, through the soft sand, to a clearing where the uplink truck was parked.
A white-van-man’s dream, with a huge satellite dish on the roof, tapes played from here are beamed straight up at a satellite and from there re-dirceted acround the world. Either that, or there’s a long piece of string and some cocoa tins that I couldn’t see in the dark!
I voiced the programme, sitting in front of a 4-inch monitor in the van, with the generator roaring underneath us. Amazingly, the microphone seemed only to pick up my voice and not the genny, nor the sliding door beside me opening in mid-flow, as the second half of the programme was delivered!I had not seen the images of the trucks section and the running order of who I might see varied from the phonecall I had detailing it to the tape with it on. Substantially. Still, I fill holes for a living and hopefully not too many noses were put out of joint.
All in all, it passed off OK. Words and pictures left within minutes of the scheduled time and, all over the world, the blue glow in the corner of the living room will tell the story of the Dakar, Day 1.
And they were great pictures, as well. The stage might not have had the majesty and vrutality of Morocco, Mauritania or Senegal but it was heaving with fans and looked a real challenge.
Almost everyone made it through… At the present time, just 2 bikes seem to be hors de combat (but are expected to restart tomorrow) and, though his support truck towing him out of the stage decided to turn around on top of me in the dark, Kenjiro (Mad Dog) Shinozuka’s Nissan also seems to be in the event, if by the skin of its teeth. After all the time he’s lost, though, will it even be worth boarding the boat in Malaga tomorrow night – assuming whatever is wrong with his Pathfinder is fixable. Not a great start to his 22nd Dakar.
But at least he didn’t kill me!
So, now it’s 8pm, pitch black, and the sounds of packing-up equipment fill the cold air as the whole operation bugs out for destinations unknown (to me at least…)Sebastian is just putting the timecodes on the script and then it’ll go out to those who need it and our job is done.
We’ll board our coach and fall out somewhere hopefully hotel-like at some stage later, looking tired and hungry.
So, for tonight, it’s goodnight.
Oh, you thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?
As if…
The 2CV made it through the stage. It’s 150th in the cars, with Miki Bisaion’s works Fiat PanDakar under 3 minutes ahead in 148th and Bruno Saby, in the other teeny in the event, the second PanDakar, in 158th, more than 25 minutes further back…
The Super Snail rolls on to day 2…
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