With only 10 days remaining to the start of our journey to Buenos Aires the anticipation is mounting for Team Dakar Ireland riders Philip Noone No.229 and Gary Ennis No.206. Final preparations in terms of special tools and racing kit is now organized for this 14 day, 9,500km  race loop which will take in some of the most barren places known to man including The Atacama desert, Patagonia and last but not least the Andes mountain range.

Both Gary and Philip will depart on the 28th to Buenos Aires, fingers crossed that the ferry carrying our bikes and all of our spare engines,wheels and riding kit makes it to Buenos Aires on time and does not encounter any sea bandits! The same specially chartered ferry is indeed carrying all of the 530 Racing vehicles entered in this, the 30^th edition of the Dakar in 2009 so we’d be rightly stuffed if we drifted off course!   

In terms of media activity for Team Ireland the Gerry Ryan show on 2FM were kind enough to invite us back for an interview on Monday December 8^th (Thanks Gerry!) and we will be trying to make contact with Gerry’s show on the rest day on January 10^th during the Dakar. In addition TV3 interviewed Philip on Sandymount beach recently and the piece was broadcast on Friday the 12^th of December on the TV3 sports program. You can view the video on http://www.tv3.ie/sport.php?request=&tv3_preview=&video=3707

Lastly, as the final countdown begins to our departure for Argentina a word of thanks to some people who helped us to get last minute details in place this month. Firstly, a big thank you to Ivan at AB who organized CE cert and replacement visors for our O’Neals Team Ireland racing helmets. Secondly, Damien Tolan and Jim Gary at MCUI for organizing our racing licenses in double quick time. If there is anybody else we have forgotten thank you all for your help, have a great Christmas and don’t forget to track us on www.dakar.com when the race starts using our Competitor Numbers 206 and 229. 

We’ll have our PR Manager tracking our progress on this Blog as much as is possible so looking forward to sending you all some good news throughout the two weeks! She can also be contacted on (087) 2808828 for all media who are interested in getting regular updates.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 3:56 pm and is filed under posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.