Dakar goes to town with its logistics

BISHA, Saudi Arabia — Television loves the Dakar Rally with its dramatic images of cars, motorbikes and trucks ploughing through the blood-red sands and dunes of Saudi Arabia.

But television doesn't show the whole picture, veering its lens away from the camp of 3,500 people, six planes, 11 helicopters, 100 trucks and 70 buses — the gigantic logistical machine that moves a mini-city in the desert from stage to stage and keeps the show, figuratively, on the road.

Set up under tight security on a 25-hectare (250,000 square meters) sand plain in the Bisha region in the southwest of the country, the Dakar start bivouac was bustling in the early days of the 2025 edition of the grueling cross-country race.

Night and day, generators chunter away next to white tarpaulin structures as large as aircraft hangars. Trucks fill the cisterns of the 200 or so toilets and showers, while others sprinkle water on the roads to settle the dust raised by the constant stream of vehicles.

Roaring sandstorms whip up around the sea of small camping tents, in which most of the inhabitants of this itinerant community sleep. No five-star hotels here.

The tent that makes up the canteen is a massive 1,600 sq m and sits next to a games arcade, sports fields, two shops and a stage with a giant screen.

It's a whole self-contained little world, situated far from any city, which has to be transported throughout the 12 stages.

"The basic mission is to put in place the people and resources, so that each service, customer and competitor can operate and experience the event under the best possible conditions," Guillaume Kleszcz, logistics director for the ASO organization, told reporters.

On each Dakar, the organizers have to provide around 10 bivouacs that follow the competitors as they make their way across the arduous terrain of the Arabian Peninsula, where the competition has pitched its tent since 2020.

Almost every day, a new mini-city will have to be created from scratch amid the sand and stones.