The Odyssey of Isidre Esteve in Dakar 2025: “I competed after three days without sleep”

Everything DAKARI It is ready to be enthusiastic over the year for the most important race, the one in which it is disturbed, the Dakar. But too many times, the most difficult appointment in the world, as good as cruel, responds to the urge with unexpected events. Isidre Esteve (May 15, 1972, the Seu D’rgell) lived on its own skin this January in Saudi Arabia. In his —20 Dakar, the 10th of the car, he sought to look at Top-20 with your Repsol Toyota Rally Team HiluxBut he was surprised at a stomach flu that left him without strength. Thus he had to deal with the long stage they put to the limit.

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“You take care of yourself during the year and the first day you are wrong. And you say: ‘Go, a little paracetamol and ibuprofen and you will find yourself well.’ And no.He explained during his visit to MD.

Isidre had to drive more than 6 and 7 hours without an eye. “It was a stress at the night to think that I was not good at rest when the next day I had a stage. For 20 years many things happened to me and something I always thought about. I said: ‘Go! It takes 15 days and you won’t find bad 15 days. Come on! Another day ‘. I went out of the way to recover me ”. But that day did not come and had to make a decision.

“I arrived six or seven afternoon after driving. I got out of the car and went to bed. After 500 kilometers days. She had no dinner, and she didn’t eat in the car because she was running, and she was just a little late. Until I made a decision before the marathon stage: Go to the medical center, ”he announced. There, there, Doctors have proven to have the capacity of Isidre Esteve’s resistance and who is not left behind. Did he think about it? “No, by God, it’s not …”He told MD that it was as if the simple fact of asking it was a sacrifice.

And it is the darling of all of him: “It was my life and I tried to adapt everything here. So when Dakar came, the last thing that passed through my head was gone. I’m leaving when I can’t. If there was a day I couldn’t find myself properly, that they were climbing me in the car, to open my belt and to see if the next day I was seeing better, ”he argued.

At the medical center they gave him the medicine to end the nausea, half an hour before the stage. And he started to fly, to show his true potential with a few days at 20 best.

There will be a more competitive car

Now, at home after being 32º in cars in Dakar, a position that knows that it could be better without initial flu and no late mechanical problems, Isidre Esteve does not stop thinking about 2026 Dakar. And does cTo more illusions if possible, Close to announcing something important that then decide not to disclose further: “We will return with a more competitive car, with a more competitive technical group and will allow us to fight for more important positions. This is not the current car”Incidentally all the details were announced.