It might be more than three months away but Red Bull Volkswagen drivers Carlos Sainz, Giniel de Villiers, Mark Miller and Nasser Al-Attayah are already deep into preparations for their second assault on the Dakar Rally’s South American adventure.
De Villiers took a first ever diesel-powered Dakar victory for Red Bull and Volkswagen in January this year when the legendary race decamped from its African homeland to a new and gruelling route through some of South America’s toughest terrain in a marathon rally stretching from the Argentinian Pampas to the cruel emptiness of Chile’s Atacama Desert and back again.
And such was the intensity of the challenger that, fresh from a Sainz win on the Silk Way Rally a fortnight ago, all four VW drivers and their navigators were whisked from victory celebrations in Turkmenistan to a four-day fitness camp high in the Swiss Alpine town of Arosa in preparation for the next South American Dakar which begins on January 2 next year.
The four Volkswagen pairings prepared for their individual workout programmes scheduled for the next few months with a diverse fitness programme under the supervision of the Bad Nauheim Sports Clinic. In addition to mountain bike and jogging tours above the snow line, a tough hike to the 1133m Hörnli mountain and subsequent climbing tours to the Hörnlisteig and Rothorn peaks were on the agenda.
© Samo Vidic/Red Bull Photofiles
“The high-altitude training offers several positive aspects to the athletes,” explained Dr Johannes Peil, Director of the Bad Nauheim Sports Clinic. “For one, it automatically results in a higher specific cardiovascular strain and thus raises the individual’s performance capacity. For the other, our programme is designed to be easy on joints and muscles.”
Aside from the physical strengthening the workouts offered the training camp also served to build team spirit ahead of the grueling three-week event.
“We covered quite a bit of vertical distance, both on our bikes and on foot,” said Timo Gottschalk, co-driver of Nasser Al-Attiyah. “From an athletic perspective, this gave us a pretty good assessment of the shape we’re in. We now know what kinds of things we have to pay attention to during our personal training for the Dakar. The fact that we completed all the units together has intensified our feeling of being part of one team.”
'The inaugural event in Argentina and Chile was the toughest Dakar of all time.' - Kris Nissen, VW Team boss
The preparations were not, though, simply an exercise in exercise. According to VW team boss Kris Nissen, Dakar ’10 could be the event’s toughest iteration yet and tuning the drivers to meets its demands is key to success, especially as next year the route has effectively been reversed with the Atacama stages, which accounted for so many entrants, now coming in the first phase of the rally.
“In January we’re expecting a kind of ‘XXL Dakar’, making even tougher demands on the crews and equipment,” said Nissen. “The inaugural event in Argentina and Chile was the toughest Dakar of all time. Considering the extreme heat to be expected in the so-called southern summer and the literally dizzying heights during the two crossings of the Andes the physical shape of the drivers and co-drivers is one of the crucial factors. In addition to athletic aspects, the fitness week also served to strengthen the strong existing cohesion among the drivers and co-drivers even further.”
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