apprehension and esteem. Less and less anxiety and more and more esteem. Admiration. There are “Pilots” who have something special, which the Dakar brings out. Cesare Zacchetti, Iader Giraldi and Franco Picco. Three different kinds of… same legend
January 23, 2023
Dammam, Saudi ArabiaJanuary. Zack was just born and the parents decided: Cesare. Epic name. In the euphoria of the moment Zacck escapes from his mother’s arms and throws himself into the void. Chilling sound of craniata. The mother bends down already overflowing with desperation, she starts to take it in her hands… e Zacck ride. She laughs out loud. Mom thinks: control unit burnt out. Ice on trauma. Zacck is nestled outside the door on the snowy windowsill.
People pass by, pull over and sees Zacck, caresses the little one who always laughsleave an apple, an emergency ration or a sandwich and leave. This is how Zack spends his first winter. Mom sees him happy and she doesn’t have the courage to bring him back inside the house. Winter in that cradle of ice and snow will forever forge, behind the perpetually smiling face, the steel chassis of the dakarian. And one day it is Dakar. And another day is two Dakars. It is clear that Zacck knows how to ride a motorbike. Not so strong, not so technical, not so outstanding. But he knows how to go. The rest is in that smile, periscope of a demolishing state of mind
You find him in the cold at the start, and he laughs it off, in the midst of a breakdown, and he laughs it off, covered up or bogged down in the midst of a hundred desperate people, and if he laughs it off, he pulls himself out and pulls the others out. ASOwhich is constantly looking for twists and turns to film the pathos of defeat and resurrection, Zacck avoids it. Because it is the misleading image of the obvious Dakar, of the Dakar infradito and long drink. It’s done like this and like that, it’s done. What’s the problem?
Iader leaves for his first Dakar as a convict, to exile or worse. ASO, who will demonstrate that he understands the right, has it already rejected for the Dakar 2022. They give him two stages, maximum three. According to others the math clearly says that it doesn’t get to the end of the first one. To the totalizers, the arrival on the day of rest pays a trillion to 1, the conclusion in Dammam the transfer of the assets of a Russian oligarch. But no one is betting on Iader. Going to see if Iader is there becomes five o’clock tea academy. But Iader is there. Maybe for midnight spaghetti, Iader is there! Day after day there it is, at the edge of the frame, you recognize it. never intrusive, Iader enters the film from one sidediscreetly, disheveled and hooded like Igorrather ygorin short, the legendary “Aigorby Mel Brooks. Nobody cares about him, he intervenes casually, never a tronista laughing at Zaccka mourn with Titiana desperate to help Peak to the mud wall. The cool thing is that Iader is capable of seeing himself from the outside, to move into the full action that also empties the soul, and go home, to his parents, to see himself in the midst of this madness and take it like this, leaving space to think about something else. This is Iader’s demonstrated strength. If you’re taken a thousand-by-a-thousand you corrode and disintegrate, if you have the strength to play down from the outside you can fish fresh energy from thoughts, you manage to give yourself advice as if you were giving it to someone else. And you know, the less things and people concern us, the more we are better judges.
Picco is at the 29th Dakar. He has never won one, indeed he has thrown away victories. In the runners-up he’s… second, behind only Jordi. Had Picco had the brain of today then he would have been the champion of the champions, the icon, the symbol of the Dakarian Super Champion. But Picco was instinctive, genuinely passionate and generous. She didn’t have that cunning side that makes you get carried away and win in the face of everything and everyone. She was sunny and… Pilot, for this people were rooting for him. People continue to cheer for him because Picco today is the evergreen legend, the envy of those his age who can only compete with trumps and broomsticks. Because with each new undertaking Peak drags. You give us a motorcycle, a quad, a locomotive, a forklift, Picco will always be at the finish line of the Dakar, of the Africa Eco Race, of its races. As he says “One kilometer at a time, let’s do them all!”. One day, the last of the last Dakar, Picco is trapped in that aforementioned mud: “We’re in shit!” He doesn’t say it like someone who discovers, mid-coffee or shower, that they’ve run out of sugar or shampoo. His is an enriched imprecation, the observation that up to there man has arrived, but beyond that he cannot. Man no, but Peak yes. A little help from my friends, the discovery of a dormant and unknown reserve energy that snaps like a spring. The man is beyond, the Pilot is beyond, Peak is over, at the finish. What the hell!
Here, these are ripples of thought. Slightly arranged stories that struck me for the strength of the protagonists, for whom I have seen them grow dramatically different forms of esteem and admirationand which I report because they refer, and reiterate, of what matter a Dakarian is made of!
© Immagini ASO Media, Red Bull Content Pool, DPPI, RallyZone
