00:00Thierry Sabine the creator of the Dakar. Thierry Sabine the man in white. Thierry Sabine an
00:19exceptional human being. Above all the Dakar is like a great big school of adventure. It's a way
00:29of promoting values that may seem a bit old-fashioned but which are very important to me. Audacity,
00:34courage, the notion of always moving forward and always going that little bit further.
00:42Thierry Sabine got lost in the Libyan desert during the Abidjan to Nice rally. We know that
00:50Thierry was found by accident and I think that he nearly died in the desert which made him want to
00:55conquer the desert. He's very hard to describe, excessive but in a good way. That helped him
01:09to succeed. He could be very selfish and very generous. You need to keep going. Yes of course,
01:20you have to keep going. Thierry Sabine was very shrewd. He understood everything instantly. He was as
01:34smart as a fox and the king of improvisation. He had incredible charisma, intelligence, leadership and we
01:56were proud to go to Dakar. We were proud to overcome the challenges he set us. The difficulty of this event,
02:11that's my choice, is true. It's my fault. I'm putting you through it. But when it comes to the sand and
02:15everything, that's just the race. On the Rue de Rome, when the sailors are getting tossed around by huge waves,
02:22they don't go complaining to the organisers. It's true that when he stood on his truck giving his briefings,
02:29dressed all in white with his white scarf, everyone listened to him as if he were God.
02:34You head up the cliff and leave the valley on your left. The ground will be very rocky.
02:47He was actually very shy. He had trouble speaking to two or three people. But in front of a crowd,
02:52he was electric. Those morning briefings were amazing. He had a gift for motivating people
02:59in the morning, motivating and scaring them, telling them that the stage would be super tough,
03:06that they had to be careful and that we would all suffer terribly. But that's why we were there.
03:11What a charmer. He's so charming. Like a brigadier general. He's like a Rommel or a Montgomery.
03:27You meet people like him and without knowing why, you just know they're different.
03:34Thanks to him, we had that extraordinary period. I'll always be grateful for that.
03:39He was an extraordinary man. Absolutely extraordinary.
03:50I've often said he was a sadist who made events for masochists.
