Dakar Rally bound for Saudi Arabia

Australia’s Toby Price will head to Saudi Arabia in 2020 to defend his Dakar Rally motorbike title.

The Arabian Peninsula kingdom has been named host country for the next five years, with the inaugural route alraedy plotted to encompass the best -- and worst -- terrain in the country. The route includes 250-metre high sand dunes, canyons and convoluted mountain ranges.

Racing is scheduled to start on January 5, 2020, and the event will end on January 17.

The finish will be in the purpose-built entertainment and cultural hub of Al Qiddiya. The city’s foundation stone was only laid in 2018 but the precinct is due to open in 2022.

As its name suggests, the Dakar Rally was originally run between Europe and Africa, finishing in the Senegalese capital of Dakar. It was conceived by Thierry Sabine and 182 competitors started the inaugural race on Boxing Day, 1978.

The event continued in African until the 2008 rally was cancelled because of security concerns in Mauritania. The race was relocated to South America in 2009.

Price famously repeated his inaugural 2017 Dakar win last year while riding with a broken wrist.

The KTM rider then underwent surgery to graft part of his hip bone into his scaphoid to repair the damage caused when one of the screws holding his wrist together during the race “wriggled” under the rigours of the rally.

The lure of a Dakar trifecta has even been enough to see him withdraw from the bike section of the 2019 Finke Desert Race in June.

Price has won the two-wheeled version of Finke six times but is concentrating on the four-wheeled option for the return journey between Alice Springs and Finke.

“Racing only the truck is the safer option to know that I’ll be ready for Dakar 2020, after the injury I’d like to focus on one category and the one I haven’t won yet,” he says.

“Bummed I’m missing out on the bike but I’ve got to look to the future and be smart about my injury at the moment.”