[Luso]

Entrevista con Bruce Garland (11º en 2009) y nº320 en Isuzu

Mas una demonstracion de la importancia de (la 1ª y 2ª etapa para) salir de los ultimos lugares.

Garland is everything Aussies expect from their sports heroes: gritty, determined and tough, with a larrikin sense of humour.

His passion for off-road racing led him inevitably to the Dakar, drawn like so many before him by the gruelling challenge ahead. On his second attempt, and the first ever by an all-Australian team in the car category, Garland was 11th outright, first of the diesel utes and winner in his class.

"It's the biggest, toughest most dangerous event in the world. If you're always trying to prove yourself, to see how good you are or how good you can be, that's the best way," Garland explained.

"It's like racing in Australia, you want to go to Bathurst, or an athlete you want to go to the Olympics. It's that sort of thing."

It's with a smile that Garland describes the tortuous race.

"You don't know what's coming. You keep thinking 'Oh shit, it can't get any worse than this' and that ends up being the best part of it. It just gets worse and worse.

"Dakar tests your patience, it tests your endurance. They mentally push to the extreme, and then they keep pushing you. If you're no good, you don't make it."

Despite a difficult start, Garland stunned the field with his results in 2009.

"Last year we had a few setbacks early on in the race, but we came good in the end. We got in a better race position everyday which makes a big difference.

"Because we started from position 62, every time we made progress up the field, and we were passing blokes left right and centre, you get caught up in their dramas.

"This year we're starting a lot better, from position 20 with a three minute gap, whereas last year it was 62 with a 30 second gap. So you'd catch somebody and he'd be in other people's dust and just slow you down and then the more trucks and cars that go over it, the road gets trashed."

The Dakar is gruelling, and the effects of the challenge were with Garland long after the event.

"I didn't recover for probably a month or so but I had to come back and start working. The other bloke [Garland's co-driver Harry Suzuki] he went back and slept for three weeks! I wasn't right for months after."

Not only is fatigue a factor, the course is a treacherous one, demanding the most of a driver's skill and commitment, even in the daunting desert dunes.

"Fear is always a companion, in the sand dunes especially. It's not for the feint hearted, you have to have a level of confidence. It's like sitting on top of a 20 storey building that you can't see the edge of, but you have to force yourself to drive over the edge of it. That's how high some of the dunes drop off.

"The dunes are the scariest and the other part is racing with the trucks. That was dangerous as hell. If you get stuck in the dust and they don't see you, they'll just run straight over you."

With an improved car and a better position, it would be easy for the Aussie to be confident going into 2010, but Garland is realistic about the trial ahead.

"You hope for the top ten, but luck plays a fair bit of it," he explains.

"Sometimes it just falls your way, but so many things can go wrong. There are so many elements to it. Teams spend hundreds of millions of dollars and don't even finish.

"There are miles and miles of heartbreak on the Dakar."

Saludos