N° 052 - TEAM SOLDADOS.COM
- BONNET
- Pierrick
- FRA
- 01/08/1962
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Pierrick Bonnet (FRA): “I never come on a competition to have fun”
Start again despite everything. Pierrick Bonnet has always found the necessary resources since his first Dakar in 2001. Neither his withdrawals in 2004 and 2005, nor his painful fall during the fifth stage of the 2006 rally have taken away his love for “great landscapes” and his desire to “go beyond himself”. That year he also had to deal with the fear of his little Laureen, now eleven-years old. The little girl had been seriously moved by the news of the death of biker Fabrizio Meoni during the 2005 Dakar and didn’t want her daddy to take off for a new adventure.
Physically not as demanding as the previous one, Pierrick Bonnet’s Dakar was emotionally very tough last year. “Shocked” by a fall with 4 kilometres to go before the finish, he had to cope with sad news in Dakar: the death of his friend Eric Aubijoux, victim of a crash during the final stage. “I had done the entire rally with Eric, he remembers. He was better ranked than I was but every day he would keep a place for me on the bivouac, we would eat together… A few hours after knowing about his death, I told myself ‘this is it; I will never come back on this race’. I would tell myself that if I had been at his place, my daughter would no longer have a father”
But the months went by and the taste for challenge was just too strong. “I ride BMX bikes since I am 14. I never come on a competition to have fun”, he insists. Last year Pierrick Bonnet finished 5th of the “challenge malle-moto”, for the bikers with no assistance.
Son of a garage owner and a technical controller for cars himself, Pierrick Bonnet also sees in this challenge a way to promote the amateur bikers, “who are not seen enough on television”.
To communicate his passion isn’t the slightest of Patrick Bonnet’s goals This year again, he wishes to associate his daughter’s school class to the race and will take off with material for the N’Gor village school, close to Dakar. There will then only be one task left for the next editions: to take one his three sons – of 17, 18 and 21 years of age – on the tracks of Africa.
