The Paris-Dakar rally and adventure

sport tourism: Historico-cultural

perspectives

Cathal Kilcline

European Commission (Marie Curie) and Irish Research Council (IRC) Postdoctoral Mobility Fellow,

National University of Ireland, Galway

cathalkilcline@gmail.com

1st European Sport Tourism Conference,

Limerick, 14-15 May 2015

1

Place de la

Trocadéro,

1978

2

Les frères Marreau

3

Les Croisières de Citroën

4

“le précurseur” … Jean-Claude Bertrand

et Abidjan-Nice

5

6

Here are the motorcyclists and the 4x4 drivers who at home are condemned to tinker with their vehicle on Sundays and, from time to time, go for an off-road spin that involves outwitting landowners, local representatives, the police and all those peasants who stop them enjoying themselves freely. Roger Cans, ‘Un plaisir d’enfer’, Le Monde (28 January 1988), p. 49.

This rally is irrefutably the manifestation of a new type of leisure that is developing in numerous forms: trekking in the Hoggar Mountains, excursions in the Ténérédesert, nomadic expeditions with the Tuareg, trans-Saharan crossings, even surfing on Senegalese beaches. It is also the spark that relights an old passion for the pleasures of Africa (the music, the girls, the colours). Jean Hatzfeld, ‘Le Dakar sinon rien’, Libération (29 January 1988), p. 45.

7

Passeport Pulsion

8

Croisiere Jaune II –

Operation Dragon

9

10

Sport and Society in Global France:

Meanings, Markets and Media (Liverpool University Press)

11

12

cathalkilcline@gmail.com

13