Installed under high security on 25 hectares in a sandy plain in the Bisha region (south-west), the starting “bivouac” of the Dakar is in full swing in these first days of the 2025 edition of the most famous and grueling rally -raids. Night and day, generators backfire next to white tarpaulin structures as large as hangars. Trucks come to water the tanks of some 200 toilets and showers, others spread water on the roads to fix the dust raised by the incessant ballet of vehicles.
Roaring, the sandy winds whip the sea with small “two-second” camping tents, in which most of the inhabitants of this itinerant commune sleep. Near the 1,600 m² canteen tent there is an arcade games room, sports fields, two shops, a stage with giant screen… A whole small world that operates in self-sufficiency away from the cities and which must be carried through the twelve stages.
Transposable and duplicate structures to keep pace
“The basic mission of logistics is to put in place the people and the means so that each service, customer, competitor can operate and experience their event in the best possible conditions.s”, told AFP Guillaume Kleszcz, logistics director of the ASO organization. On each Dakar, the organizers must plan around ten bivouacs like this one, which follow the runners throughout their journeys across the Arabian Peninsula , where the competition has pitched its tent since 2020. Almost every day, a new mini-city to be created ex nihilo, in the middle of sand and stones.
For each site, “We have about ten days of editing. We first level the ground, then the structures, the electrical part, etc. are installed.“, says Arnaud Calestroupat, logistics manager for the Dakar. As far as possible, the logisticians juggle with duplicates of elements to be able to get as far ahead as possible in the assembly. The race control center exists, for example, in two copies the one used at bivouac 1 will go directly to bivouac 3, the one from bivouac 2 will be sent in advance to bivouac 4, etc.
Likewise, the catering tent (100,000 meals over the entire duration of the rally) exists in four copies, which will be inserted one after the other. Thanks to these shifts, the organization is almost two bivouacs ahead of the race. Each place follows the same structure: “We put the technical zone in the center, which is the work zone. Opposite, we put the living area, which is accessible to all, where everyone meets and can get together. And around these two large spaces will be all the paddocks“, the living bases of the different competing teams, describes Arnaud Calestroupat, 30 years old.
An army of arms in the shadows
However, not everything is cloneable, starting with people. At each change of bivouac, 500 people (organization, press, teams, etc.) are moved at dawn by specially chartered planes to be able to be at the point of arrival, several hundred kilometers further away, before even the start of the race.
As for the TV production, it must have finished its work in the early evening to pack the equipment and transport it at night by truck to the next location. There, it is immediately reinstalled in order to be operational again when the cars and motorcycles leave the next morning. This gigantism requires an army of hands: of the 3,500 people that a bivouac generally accommodates, the organization and the various service providers represent nearly 800 to 900 people. But all this will not be seen on TV.
