DUBAI // It is January 2014 and Sam Sunderland is competing in the infamously laborious Dakar Rally. Having traversed the rocky plains of Argentina but before reaching the salt flats of Bolivia, the Dubai-based Briton is completing a lengthy road section and marvelling at the masses of motorsport fans who have turned out to witness the world's most testing endurance race.
On a long straight road, Sunderland, riding for Honda’s factory team, stops at a red light. Throngs of fans surround him and his fellow competitors. And then...
“I stopped at a traffic light and this woman ran up to me with a baby and put her baby on me to get a picture,” Sunderland recalls. “I was like ‘Woah! Woah!’ and I’m trying not to burn the baby because my bike is hot. The woman stepped back into the crowd to take the picture and got swallowed by the swarm of people. The lights went green and I was left standing with this baby asking ‘Who’s is this kid?’”
Sunderland still shakes his head in disbelief as he recalls his impressions of the Dakar almost a year after becoming the first Englishman in 15 years to win a stage. “It blew my mind,” he says from under his omnipresent Red Bull baseball cap. “I was riding through Argentina and there were people 50-deep across both sides of the road for miles and miles. It gets more than four million actual physical spectators. It’s just crazy. Everywhere you go, there are people cheering you on.”
During a 16-day event that can see riders on their bikes for up to 12 hours a day and being forced to survive on less than four hours of sleep each night, the size of spectator support can act as encouragement. “Sometimes we have road sections and they can be long, like four or five hours,” he says. “You start out and you are like ‘Yeah!’ and pumping your fist to the fans, after two hours it becomes just a raise of the hand, after three it’s like a nod of the head... It’s nuts, but I love it.”
That final sentence seems to perfectly sum up Sunderland, an outgoing risk-it-all action man who lives life for the moment. At Dakar, the then-24 year-old was the youngest rider to win a stage yet speaking at the recent launch of the new KTM UAE Racing Team in Dubai, he appeared grounded and gregarious, eloquent and effusive.
Born in Bournemouth in the south of England, Sunderland visited Dubai in 2009. He was recovering from an accident that had left him with two broken legs, but he immediately spotted potential in the UAE and returned permanently soon after. While riding and having fun at a track near Jebel Ali, KTM invited him to join their local team.
Within a few months he was racing motocross and endurance raids across the Middle East and won the 2010 UAE National Baja Championship. He made his Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge debut shortly after and entered the Cross Country World Championships, winning three stages and beating out competition from riders of far higher profile, including serial champion Marc Coma.
After winning stages at the Australasia Safari in Australia, he was offered the chance to ride for Honda’s factory team at the famous Dakar. Without Honda’s backing, it would almost certainly not have been possible given the financial demands of the two-week race come in at around €100,000 (Dh475,000).
Sunderland says he will for ever be grateful to Honda, but the three-year relationship between the two ended earlier this year when the Briton was approached by KTM, winners of the past 13 consecutive Dakar rallies.
“Signing with factory KTM team is a dream come true for me,” he says. “They are the pinnacle of off-road and were looking for a younger guy. I’m 25 now, but still pretty young for the rallying because all the top guys are 30-plus. I couldn’t be happier; to work side-by-side with Marc Coma and Jordi Viladoms, who was second last year.
“It is a great atmosphere; everyone is there for the same reason and it’s just a good laugh. And when it comes to it, everybody has the right mentality to win.”
Sunderland will continue to be based in Dubai, where he competes in the local Emirates Desert and Dubai Motocross championships alongside Mohammed Balooshi. The Emirati, a multiple champion on a regional level, says he finds his British teammate inspirational.
“Sam has brought a new level to the sport here in the UAE,” Balooshi says. “And what an amazing story: being based here, but being chosen by the KTM factory team. It shows you that anything is possible and I find great motivation every time I speak with him. He is such a good guy and never shy to share information if you are lacking, which is what you want in a teammate.”
Sunderland might have had a lot more teammates if he had pursued his other childhood talent, football. He trialled with Southampton FC as a youth and could have been in the same academy year as Gareth Bale – the world’s most expensive player – had he not opted to skip a Sunday match in favour of motocross.
“Maybe I would have been financially better off if I’d stuck with football, but I love my life,” says Sunderland, who sports two eye-catching skull tattoos on the backs of his calves and his name in Arabic on his arm. “I couldn’t ask for anything better.”
He lives in Jumeirah Village Circle for easy access to his desert playground and has brought over childhood friend Jake Shipton to help “kick my ass every once in a while to keep my level high”.
“It’s a dream come true for me to be out here and with Sam,” Shipton says. “Sometimes when I go out into the desert on the bike, I just look around and see camels and stuff and have to pinch myself. Everything is unreal. It’s amazing.”
Shipton’s early impressions of Dubai have only served to strengthen Sunderland’s own belief that the city is the best place for him to be based as he prepares for another crack at Dakar next January, followed by the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge a few months later.
“I’m loving life, dude. In terms of training out in the desert, Dubai is awesome,” he says, adding that he still escapes in the summer to train in the more hospitable climes of the United States or Belgium.
“The UAE is one of the last countries in the world where as a rider you have so much freedom. It’s magic. Even after five years of living here, every time I go out, I still have this overwhelming sense of freedom. Sometimes you are riding through the dunes and you find the biggest peak around and you can just stop, sit down and look across hundreds of miles of nothingness; an ocean of sand.”
While the desert offers instant gratification, nothing has yet come close to replicating the delayed thrill of his stage win in Dakar. Such is the daily routine of a rider competing in the most challenging raid of the year, Sunderland did not appreciate his achievement until he was back on his bike early the next morning.
“At the time, you have no time. You are like a robot,” he says. “ The only time that it really sunk in was on the liaison at 3am at minus-five in the middle of Argentina. I was riding along and I remember screaming in my helmet ‘Yeaaaaah!’ That was awesome – then at the end of the day, I broke the engine. Motorsport is such an emotional rollercoaster, dude.”
No rider will ever claim anything different: the sport offers massive highs and crippling lows. Likewise, all riders agree that, in terms of broken bones and other injuries, it is a matter of if not when. Only a relative few, however, have faced the challenge that is Dakar. And even fewer have been left holding the baby quite like Sam Sunderland was at a red light in Argentina.
gmeenaghan@thenational.ae
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