DAKAR, 19 January 2004 - Stephane Peterhansel has spent most of his life as a winner and yesterday he became the second competitor to win the Dakar Rally in both the car and motorcycle categories after compatriot Hubert Auriol.
The 38-year-old Frenchman had already established that he was the world's greatest off-road motorcycle racer by winning a record sixth Dakar Rally for Yamaha in 1998. Tiring of the life-threatening risks faced by two-wheel Dakar entrants, he then switched to the slightly safer four-wheel challenge and recorded a podium finish on his second attempt in 2000.
Last year Peterhansel looked set for victory, leading for most of the rally only to break down and then hit a rock near the end of the penultimate stage, allowing Mitsubishi teammate Hiroshi Masuoka of Japan to record his second straight win.
He made no such mistake this year, however, piloting his Mitsubishi Pajero Evolution into the lead after two stages and successfully holding off Masuoka's challenge to deny the Japanese a hat trick of wins.
Not that it was easy. The Dakar Rally is never easy, as former world rally champion Colin McRae found on his debut in the grueling desert race this year. If that is the case, then Peterhansel is a great survivor as well as a great winner.
He was born on Aug. 6, 1965 in Vesoul, close to the French border with Germany and Switzerland. His plumber father was a race mechanic and trials bike rider and Peterhansel began riding motorbikes at the age of eight. But he did not start motorcycle racing until the age of 16, having been distracted by the craze for skateboarding at which he became French champion aged 13.
At 18, Peterhansel became French enduro champion - the first of 11 titles in this discipline. He was also world enduro champion in 1997. But he had always dreamed of competing in the Paris-Dakar Rally, and finally got his first chance in 1988. Three years later, at the age of 25, he won the motorcycle category for the first time.
