Albert Llovera: “In each stage of the Dakar my body loses six centimeters that my osteopath later recovers on the stretcher”

As a young man, the Andorran Albert Llovera (57 years old) He lived life at full speed. He seemed destined for success in alpine skiing, until a brutal accident in a race left him in a wheelchair. And he was lucky. Far from regretting and throwing in the towel, he accepted the new reality he had to live with and enter the world of motor sport. First in rallies and in 2024 he will face his ninth Dakar, sixth in trucks, with his niece Margot in navigation. The goal is to complete the Dakar at Ford Trucks Spain, in a particularly difficult edition that tries to recover the original African essence of the test. If it is already difficult for a driver to run the Dakar, the difficulty for someone like him in a wheelchair is extreme, so he makes sure that at each stage his body loses six centimeters that his trusted osteopath eventually recovered. . He said the sacrifice was worth it.

With what ambition do you face your ninth Dakar?

The project we started last year with Ford Trucks was very embryonic and we got to Dakar very tight and we couldn’t do the kilometers we needed. We had a mechanical breakdown that only happens in Dakar or occasionally, and a rock punctured the differential hydraulics part until it blocked. The priority is to finish and if there is an option to improve my best result (top 15) we will push a little.

This is the second Dakar that I have had to leave early, the anger must be too great with all the work behind it.

Yes. It’s a job that lasts all year, when a Dakar is over you don’t know if you want to come back but I’ve already started working for the next one. We need, not only me, but the brand and sponsors, to try to reach the end of the Dakar in a complex edition.

It is always said that the current Dakar is the most difficult.

They realized that the Dakar lacks the initial African essence and we have two days without assistance on 600 kilometers of sand, which depending on how soft it is, we will suffer a lot and they have created some final stages with only two hours . aid and no bivouac , which would make everything a bit confusing, due to mechanics and subsistence, especially for those of us with limited mobility.

How do you prepare for a Dakar?

First you need to have a team and renew them. And then close the budgets. It’s fun riding the truck because the teams love me. It’s an advantage and the briefcase is half full.

What budget is needed?

With the car it is a million euros, and in my case about 200,000, I have to contribute it, I don’t want to think about the total. Look, I’m a Unicef ​​ambassador and we were in Jordan recently and sometimes you think a whole family can survive 20 days with one set of tires. Then you need to change the chip.

Do you remember the first time you heard about the Dakar?

I was very lucky to run the Dakar on three continents and in 2007 the Isuzu team in Europe called me to backpack for Edi Orioli, who won four editions. I thought it was just a joke. I told them that the only sand I saw was on the beach when I was with my parents, but they followed me to Rally Finland (I was 10) and they needed a fast driver like me. I came back to South America thanks to Nasser Al-Attiyah.

What would you say to those who think the Dakar has no initial magic?

Well, this year they want to recover the original essence, that we are all lost and no one knows where we are, but being such a media race it has to go more towards real competition. Perhaps a very high point of professionalism has been reached. Everyone wants to race the Dakar. In the trucks, because the Russians were not there, everyone went crazy, especially the Dutch and Belgian side, they thought they were going to make the podium. There used to be 22 possible winning trucks and now there are 35.

This year he will go to Dakar with his nephew as a navigator.

Margot has been working for several years. The Dakar is his big dream and he is in two or three different teams. He then competed for a year as a co-pilot. Motorcyclists are good navigators and this is a reward for him and me. It means a lot to me to have my niece by my side.

If the Dakar is already difficult, doing it under its conditions is even more difficult, right?

Look, I’ll tell you there are three Dakars. That is the availability of equipment. The second was after I got off the truck, because living in a bivouac with a wheelchair is not easy, because they have to help most of the day. And the third Dakar is what we all do.

Are you thinking about the risk?

Nope. I know there is, but the risk is with me all year round, in the rallies and life is a risk. If you stay at home, you risk your roof or your brain falling off. Being active is more important. I often tell people who have an accident, problem or disability that you need to be active and rely heavily on sport, have a clear and tired mind and don’t think about nonsense.

And knows how to take the hits. At the age of 17 he was the youngest athlete at the Sarajevo Games and a year later at the European Cup in the same city he had an accident and was left in a wheelchair.

I was very lucky that at the age of 17 I started scoring in the European Cup of alpine skiing. The accident was at the finish line. A judge from the federation crossed my path, something that would never happen and I hold no grudge against him. It was a difficult day with a lot of fog and rain, and unfortunately he was two meters tall and weighed 130 kilos and I was running 103 km/h and weighed 63 kilos. I didn’t see it. When I woke up, I was in a coma, I don’t know what happened to me. I jumped from hospital to hospital. No one likes me because it’s such a bad injury. All the ribs on the left side were broken, the sternum in the middle, a clavicle and a shoulder blade and a spinal cord injury at the 3-4-5 dorsal level, where we have the chest. I have no abdominals or paravertebrals. In Dakar, the first thing they do when we arrive at the bivouac is to get out of the truck and my osteopath stretches me on a stretcher so that my body returns to the starting position, thus gaining six centimeters.

And how does it affect your driving?

It affects me. I have no abs and I wear a corset made of my thermoplastic orthotics to support my trunk. But anyway, because you’re jumping and hitting all the time, I’m losing six centimeters and my diaphragm is sticking inside. It hurts a lot, but I don’t feel it. The first thing they do is put me back in my original position,

And, compensate for the extreme suffering?

Well, it happened to me in the World Rally Championship. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I trained more and more physically and stronger, but I got more tired and that’s it, until we realized and I started competing with the corset, which it does to hold my ribs and chest in a fairly correct position while more time.