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^{T H E}_craziest_^{R O A D_R A C E_O F_A L L}
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______THE PARIS-DAKAR RALLY PITS 349 DRIVERS
______IN A 17-DAY RACE AGAINST EACH OTHER -- AND
______DESOLATE DUNES, WILD WADIS AND
______GRENADE-WIELDING TUAREG REBELS.

BY CRAIG BROMBERG | Two hours from Dakar, on the shore of Lac Rose, a sandy red lake hard by Africa's Atlantic coast, a few thousand Senegalese and a thousand newly sunburned off-road racing fanatics from Europe are standing at the finish line of the 20th annual Paris-Dakar Rally.

It's only 10 a.m., but the site is already so full the Senegalese army has cordoned off the road from the nearest town. Not that that's stopped a steady stream of fans and T-shirt merchants from trickling through the barricades to the finish line, which is not really a line at all, but a huge ramped podium covered with sponsor logos and strategically placed in the middle of the beach for the TV cameras.

It seems everyone's already here but the racers. When they left from Versailles at dawn on New Year's Day, there were 349 of them -- 173 motorcycles, 115 cars and 61 trucks -- and every last one was determined to make it to all the way to Lac Rose: down the highways of France and Spain, over the Mediterranean by ferry into northern Morocco and Mauritania, east into the deserts of Mali, and then back through the Mauritanian dunes to Senegal. Seventeen days and 6,500 miles later -- the equivalent of driving from New York to Los Angeles and back without roads -- just 29 percent (55 bikes, 39 cars and eight trucks) have actually made it, and they're not rushing now.

And why should they? The winners have already been known for the last 48 hours, and everyone is utterly exhausted. "They say it takes a man on a camel 40 days to do what we do in a few hours," says Anne-Chantal Pauwels, 34, the second-place finisher in the car class, and one of the few women in the race. "My body is shaking so hard from going up and down in the sand, all I want to do is lie down."

Meanwhile, the fans are watching a fashion show of sexy Senegalese models wearing ankle-length boubous and dancing to the latest Youssou N'Dour record in the hot January sun. Suddenly two helicopters appear in the cloudless sky and the theme from "Rocky" blares over the buzz of an approaching bike. Stephen Peterhansel, the No. 1 moto -- this was his sixth Dakar victory in seven years -- speeds up the ramp on his Yamaha to tearfully accept a magnum of champagne; someone hoists his 5-year-old son on his shoulders. The media (including more than 70 TV networks) go nuts for this and rush the podium; the sponsors, fresh-faced publicistes from the Paris offices of Mobil, Euromaster, Total, etc., scramble to get their pictures taken with "their" winners -- or (at least) with Hubert Auriole, the handsome former Dakar victor who now heads the group that runs the race, TSO.

Then, as quickly as it began, it all dies down until the No. 1 car, a Mitsubishi piloted by Jean-Pierre Fontenay, finally a winner after 15 years of Dakar racing, drives up the podium, and the chaos starts again.

Oddly, the few Senegalese who can see from where they are don't seem particularly interested in what's going on; the intense security -- gendarmes on horseback with swords and AK-47s -- feels a little beside the point. Although they might never admit it, you sense that the crowd has a certain ambivalence about the race. Can it, after all, be any coincidence that for 20 years it has been held during Ramadan, the holiest time of the Islamic year, a month-long, dawn-to-dusk fast, in a country that is 85 percent Muslim?

On the other hand, it's not as if they aren't somewhat fascinated. For weeks, Senegalese politicians have speechified about how "Le Dakar" has made their city a world sports capital, the newspapers have dutifully reported on the day's racing news, and kids have lined the roads, chanting "Ral-ly! Ral-ly!" as the racers flashed by.

"People have an image of Africans as being sad, hungry and poor," says TSO's Auriole, "but if you got in my car with me, you wouldn't see people throwing stones. The things that make Africans happy are just different than the things that make Americans happy." Still, even Auriole admits that the real audience is back home in France, watching the race on television, no matter how loudly TSO may boast of increased African participation. (This year there were seven Senegalese motorcyclists and a single Tunisian car.)

N E X T+P A G E+| A race is like a war

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Top: Fireworks light up a group of drummers on the reviewing stand at the finish line of the Paris-Dakar Rally.
PHOTO BY CRAIG BROMBERG