The schedule says that after today there are but three days remaining in the rally. That is technically true, since it will end on Sunday afternoon, January 18. More accurately, however, this rally will be in the bag by Saturday night. Sunday will be a yawner, a 247-km leg that includes an 18 km stage. My predictive abilities are not as good as those of the supermarket tabloids, but I guarantee this: The rally will not be won or lost in those last 18 kilometers.

Three days cannot pass a moment too soon for me. I am bone weary of trying to dream up new and improved ways to describe how badly mismatched this field is against a lone rider, Stephane Peterhansel. From the moment he set foot in North Africa, he has been going through the rest of the bike class like a buzz saw through butter. That may do wonders for the spirit of the buzz saw's supporters, but as a sporting event, it lacks a certain dramatic tension. When Peterhansel shows up for the start of the Paris-Dakar, the question isn't whether he's going to win, but by how much.

Every day we watch riders crashing, getting lost, breaking down, flailing hopelessly through the dunes, and generally screwing the pooch. By and large, they don't recover. But Peterhansel --- falling down once in Morocco and going off-course the following day --- always recovers. Sure, his bike is a little bigger than the others, but that just makes it a little harder to shove through the sand. He is such a fine rider, however, that he doesn't seem to care. When the occasional road pops up, his extra half-pint of engine displacement is all that he needs. He vanishes.

It isn't that the KTMs and BMWs aren't trying. I'm sure they're trying just as hard as I've been trying to find Andrea Mayer's home telephone number. But nothing works for them. Or me either. They are now at the point of hoping for miracles. Maybe Peterhansel will drop into a wadi and not come out; maybe his Yamaha will crump; maybe a wet bird really can fly at night. But the man *always* comes out of the wadis and his bike *never* breaks. As for the wet bird, that really would be a miracle. But if it's going to happen, that bird had better put down the garden hose and start flapping: There are just 787 stage kilometers left.

Fabrizio Meoni is the only one left with any realistic chance of catching Peterhansel, and by "realistic chance" I mean roughly the odds in favor of someone finding the undiscovered tomb of King Tut in my backyard. But Meoni's global positioning satellite unit hasn't been working well for days. On one of the European sports channels the other day, there was a film clip of a Taureg tribesman, who had apparently been observing Meoni at a bad moment, imitating the rider's frustration with the malfunctioning equipment. The man spun around and waved his arms and kicked some sand and basically disported himself in a manner that closely resembles the actions of motorcyclists who are so far behind Peterhansel that they simply start going postal. Everyone had a good laugh and the Taureg man was internationally famous for fifteen seconds, which is about as much as any of us can ask these days.

Each day there is a unique topographical feature whose apparent purpose is to induce naked fear into the rider. Yesterday it was the Elephant Rock. Today, on the 358-km run north from Tidjikja to Atar, the Chinguetti Dunes were waiting. They ran this route north-to-south two years ago and Dutchman Gerard Jimmink won it. He won it again today. It isn't a section that Peterhansel much cares for, so he dogged it, taking a lazy fourth place on the stage. Jimmink needed to make up better than three hours on Peterhansel today; he got back seven minutes. Meoni took second on the stage, six minutes behind Jimmink. Alfie Cox came in forty seconds behind Meoni and eighteen seconds in front of Peterhansel. When the dust settled, Meoni had inched closer --- 59 seconds worth of an inch --- to the overall leader. If the past is prologue, that means Meoni will follow Peterhansel into the paddock tomorrow afternoon by a half-hour or more. Stop me if you've heard all this before.

It didn't get any easier for Richard Sainct. For a while he was tearing up the track as if there was no tomorrow. At 265 km into the stage, he broke his shock. For Sainct, who has struggled as hard as any rider in the rally, there will be a tomorrow, but it will be the first of just a lot of rest days until he returns home. The KTM team, having started with such high hopes and great expectations in Versailles, is slowly but surely cracking up on the rocks of Africa.

Yesterday I noted that the standings showed only 44 bikes having made it to Tidjikja. But during the night 27 more bikes apparently limped in. They weren't in good shape. Seven of them were moaning so badly that they had to be shot. That left 64 starters this morning. The standings tonight list 55 finishers today. Of the nine missing bikes are the BMW F650s of Oscar Gallardo and Andrea Mayer. No press release mentions the absence of these two riders. If this information is accurate, that leaves just a single BMW in the field, the R100PD of Raymond Loiseaux. I am not certain of this, but I think that no one has started more Paris-Dakar rallies than Loiseaux. He stands 52nd overall, three steps above the basement, but he's still standing. On this ride, that is saying something.

   	1	PETERHANSEL	YAM	FR	0:00:00
    	2	MEONI		KTM	IT	0:32:33
	3   	HAYDON		KTM	AU	1:22:02
   	4	COX		KTM	AF	1:59:13
	5	JIMMINK		KTM	HO	3:23:40
	6	BERNARD		KTM	FR	4:16:10
	7	VON ZITZEWIT	KTM	AL	4:21:34
	8	ARCARONS	KTM	ES	4:33:51
	9	DEACON		KTM	GB	5:55:30
       10	MAYER		KTM	AL	7:22:12
       11	KRAUSE		KTM	US	7:25:34
       12	SALA		KTM	IT	7:37:01
       13	VERHOEF		KTM	HO	7:45:14
       14	ZLOCH		KTM	RT	8:05:27
       15	DE GAVARDO	KTM	CH	9:32:58

© 1998 Iron Butt Association, Chicago, Illinois

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