As seen in The Visor Down: Vanessa Ruck has become a well-known figure in the world of adventure biking, but her biggest challenge is to come: the Africa Eco Race

The Africa Eco Race is not the most famous rally in the world, but it does follow perhaps the most famous route, generally speaking, as it aims to replicate the original Paris-Dakar rally. Vanessa Ruck will be taking part in the AER for the first time in 2024.

It won’t be Ruck’s first attempt at a motorcycle rally. In fact, she’s becoming quite experienced in the discipline, having competed in the 1000 Dunas, Morocco Desert Challenge, and Tunisian Desert Challenge, to name a few.

But the Africa Eco Race is a tough challenge on Ruck’s horizon. “My goal is to not die in the desert, and make the finish line,” Ruck said with a laugh. I spoke with her back at the end of August at the Women in Moto Show in Uttoxeter. Even then, more than four months out from the beginning of the AER, she was “having nightmares about [it].”

But, despite the anxious fear of what is to come, the AER is an important rally to Ruck. “There’s a number of reasons why I’ve been attracted to the Africa Eco Race,” she said, “primarily, [it] is really the original route of the Dakar.”

The Paris-Dakar Rally no longer has anything to do with either Paris, the French capital, or the Senegalese capital of Dakar. Security concerns led to the rally’s cancellation in 2008, and in 2009 it left its original home and shifted to South America.

Since 2020, the ‘Dakar’ has been run in Saudi Arabia.
In comparison, the Africa Eco Race begins in Monaco, and runs stages through North Africa, into Senegal, and eventually to the finish in Dakar, making it quite similar to the original race. 

The AER has “got a lot more to do with the heritage and the emotion of what we think about when we think of the Dakar,” Ruck says. “It’s 14 days, it’s 6,500km, it’s moving bivouacs, all the way down to Dakar.”

Ruck is not only a supporter of the AER’s concept, but also someone who does not seem to enjoy the concept of the modern Dakar. Not only the event itself but also the way it dominates the rally discipline. 

For the rest of The Visor Down article see here.

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