“If the price to pay is a little bit of discomfort then so be it”

The Original by Motul category is often compared to climbing Everest without oxygen. Not only do you have to ride all day but when you get into the bivouac you have to do all your own servicing and take care of all the practical stuff like sorting out your gear, putting your tent up… Basically its endless and most definitely not the category for people who need 8 hours of sleep a night. Stuart Gregory, a South African nut farmer whose Instagram and Facebook page used to be ‘Nuts4Dakar’ but is now ‘DakarStu’ dreams of being able to pay for the luxury of being embedded in a team and having an ‘easy’ Dakar. But by his own admission he’s a mid-pack rider and despite bearing an uncanny resemblance to George Clooney he struggles to find sponsorship. So for the fifth year on the trot he’s back slumming it in the malle moto class with all his mates, even though he’s vowed ‘never to come back’ for at least the last 3 years…

“To be honest I put my bike entry in just as an insurance policy as I was pretty sure I’d be co-driving for my mate Jurgen Schroder in a T3. But that didn’t work out and the market price of nuts has halved so here I am back in the malle moto class. It most certainly not a holiday but I don’t seem to be able to stay away. I just love riding in the desert and navigating, there’s nothing to compare it with and if the price to pay is a little bit of discomfort then so be it. Plus I’m good mates with all the other South Africans riding on the rally and we all train together up in Namibia. If I stopped doing the Dakar maybe they wouldn’t let me come anymore. Obviously Ross (Branch), Bradley (Cox) and Charan (Moore) are a (tiny) bit quicker than me but when training we take it in turns to open a 20 kilometre stretch. They give me a little head start and my goal is not to get caught by them. It definitely improves my riding. I won’t say never again at the end of the 2024 edition because nobody will believe me but one day I’ll be back in a car!”