Patrick Beaule makes it official! He's returning to Dakar on a Motorcycle! See the official announcement here: Official Patrick Beaule Announcement Follow-along here for updates, and day-to-day stuff until we get to the Dakar. This should be pretty interesting since Patrick is one of Canadas most accomplished enduro racing champions! He holds an impressive list of titles: three Canadian Motorcycle Association (CMA) National Enduro Pro-class titles; one Canadian Enduro Championship (CEC) E1 Pro title; three Off-Road Ontario Provincial Enduro Pro-class titles; and, two prestigious International Six-Days Enduro (ISDE ) silver medals (Chile and New Zealand). In addition to these titles, Beaule has also won the infamous Corduroy Enduro in the Pro-class four times, was 3 times team Pro-class 12-hour endurance event winner in Quebec, and twice Pro-class 24-hour endurace ice-race team winner in Alberta. He is also finisher of the DAKAR in 2012 (in a car with David Bensadoun Driving), and the 1st ever finishing automotive-class navigator in Canadian history. They finished in an impressive 40th place for their first effort! This year ALDO Racing will again be providing title sponsorship, but this time for his Motorcycle effort. You can all really help our effort (since sponsors are watching!) by doing the following: -Subscribe to this thread! - "Liking" on Patrick's official FaceBook Page here: Patrick Beaule Dakar Facebook Page - and followign tweets with the hashtag #PatrickBeauleDakar I've been asked to help Patrick through my media company FlannyMedia, so you can also help by following my Twitter account @FlannyMedia, and also follow Patrick's tweets as @PatBeaule More information to come! I'm pretty excited since Patrick only lives about two hours from me, and the two of us can work together on this project, and do rides etc. There is even a chance that I might get to provide support at the rally in the T5 support truck a la "Deadly99" for Rally Pan Am last year!
Hey folks. Thanks for the few Facebook "Likes" -- it's crazy, but it really does help to build he case for sponsors. The more, the merrier. Here are a few pictures from Dakar 2012 featuring Patrick and David Bensadoun in the ALDO Racing Desert Warrior just to keep the ball rolling. Patrick is on the right. Another.. Not everyday someone gives you one of these.... We've got a number of big announcements in the works for the coming weeks, so subscribe ans stay tuned!
Okay folks, So it's been a busy few weeks over here at the palatial FlannyMedia Headquarters running the Patrick Beaule Dakar media campaign. Time for a few updates to get everyone up to speed... Two weekends ago we (Patrick and all of the KTM Canada Team, along with FlannyMedia and a bunch of other journos) had the onerous task of chaperoning some French dude on this ride called the "Orange Crush Adventure Challenge" http://orangecrushadventure.com Here is a picture of him. Not sure why he didn't change out of his pyjamas for the ride, but he seemed comfortable despite the cool morning... The funny thing was, as shown in the picture, this guy kept grabbing the microphone at the start of the event for some reason. He spoke in a funny kind of French that I had trouble understanding. I think he might have mentioned his dream of one day going to the Dakar just like Pat Beaule.... Anyway - the event covered about 600 miles of terrain in the Quebec wilderness - a truly spectacular part of the country where Adventure riding terrain is truly limitless. This would be a great training event for Pat to get long saddle-time, and to do a bit of route-sheet navigation. Here are a few more pics... That poor French man from out of town (I think his name was Daryl or Cyril or something...) Poor guy, he didn't really even know how to turn on a motorcycle, and the event organizer had to show him all of the controls, and how the bike works and everything...must have been under a lot of pressure, so they let him leave first so that he wouldn't get left behind... Well, it turns out that this Daryl guy that everyone was listening to at the beginning of the event, he was actually a pretty good rider after all, and he seemed to keep up with the group okay...Here we are at a nice spot by the lake...I think Daryl, or Cyril or whatever his name was must have been getting a bit tired, cause he pulled over for a breather quite often to chat with people... Turns out he was a real joker too... I don't actually have many photos of Patrick for the weekend because Patrick was busy filming with a crew from the TV Show HP ( http://auto.vtele.ca/hp/ ) most of the day, but suffice it to say that Patrick and that Cyril guy talked a lot about the Dakar, and Patrick seemed to have given him lots of tips and pointers for 2013...I think the guys was really routing for Patrick to win the Dakar or something... Another pointer that Patrick gave was to 5-time Canadian National motocross Champion Jean-Sebastien Roy (the one and only JSR!) about how best to trim a route sheet to fit into the Road-Book holder.... Overall, the weekend was a great opportunity for Pat to shoot the breeze about the Dakar, to ride lot's of good trails, to navigate a bit, and to try to help this poor Cyril chap to have any hopes to finish the Dakar... We're going to be posting a bunch more interactive stuff over the next few days...so if ever there was a good time to subscribe to this thread... Fun, Fun!!! Flanny
Awesome update. I have mixed feelings about Cyril's suit, although I have to admit it is very attention getting (great for his sponsors). We should all be thankful that he didn't show his technical under-garments: