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The Spanish rally driver Carlos Sainz, three-time Dakar Rally champion and two-time world rally champion, you will receive this Friday the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports 2020 in a ceremony without an audience for the COVID-19 pandemic, and that will be held at the Hotel de la Reconquista in Oviedo instead of the Campoamor Theater.
The award ceremony of the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports will be marked by the current health situation, as Oviedo has just entered Phase 2 to stop the advance of the coronavirus, and it will not take place, for the first time in forty years, as is usual at the Campoamor Theater.
Sainz’s candidacy was proposed by Luis María Ansón, 1991 Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, and was supported, among others, by the Prince of Asturias Awards for Sports Rafael Nadal (2008), Iker Casillas (2012) and Pau Gasol (2015), as well as by Jean Todt and Manuel Aviñó, presidents of the International and Spanish Automobile Federation, respectively.
Sainz was the winner in the vote of the jury, who chose his figure ahead of 16 other candidates to take over from former American skier Lindsey Vonn. The award will also return to national sport after in the last three years it went to the New Zealand rugby team (2017), the mountaineers Reinhold Messner and Krzysztof Wielicki (2018) and the aforementioned Vonn.
Further, the Madrilenian, who at the age of 57 won his third Dakar last January, becomes the first pilot in this discipline to be awarded this award, and the fourth related to the motor world after the motorcycle racer Sito Pons (1990), and the Formula 1 drivers Fernando Alonso (2005) and Michael Schumacher (2007).
The Princess of Asturias Award for Sports wanted to recognize the “best rally driver of all time” for his “exceptional career, in a splendid, diverse and innovative career of more than three decades in the elite.”
«The charismatic Spanish pilot has always shown a great spirit of improvement and competitiveness combined with effort, discipline and solidarity, which has also been reflected in his constant support of young pilots throughout his long and successful sporting life “The minutes said.
The jury for this Award was chaired by former athlete Abel Antón and made up, among others, by the president of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE), Alejandro Blanco; that of the Paralympic Committee, Miguel Carballeda; the former national soccer coach Vicente del Bosque, the ex-cyclist Joan Llaneras, the mountaineer Edurne Pasabán and the vice president of the IOC, Juan Antonio Samaranch Salisachs.
A life dedicated to rallying
Carlos Sainz Cenamor (Madrid, April 12, 1962) started in the world of rallying in 1980, after proclaiming in 1979 champion of Spain of squash. After dropping out of law studies, he decided to dedicate himself professionally to sports motorsport and is considered one of the best rally drivers on the international scene.
It also became, in 2010, the first Spaniard to win the Dakar in the car category, title revalidated in 2018 and 2020. With a career that exceeds three decades in the elite of world motorsports, Sainz marked an era by becoming the first non-Nordic driver to win the rallies of Sweden or Finland.
In 1989 he participated in his first full season in the WRC and in 1990, in the Toyota team, he achieved his first world championship, after winning four of the ten events in which he participated and being second in another four. In 1992, he revalidated the world crown, with four victories in as many tests, while he was runner-up in 1994, 1995 and 1998, this last year with his remembered abandonment a few meters from the end of the Rally Great Britain.
In 2000, 2002 and 2003 it ranked third final and in 2004 he announced his retirement as the then most victorious rider in history (26), a mark that was already surpassed by the French Sebastian Loeb. After a break, he returned to competition in the ‘cross-country’ mode and made the leap to the Dakar in 2006. In 2007 he was proclaimed world champion of the discipline and in 2010 he conquered the Dakar for the first time, already in South America, triumph that would repeat in 2018 on the same stage and this year 2020 in Saudi Arabia.
Among other honors, he has also received the Olympic Order of the Spanish Olympic Committee (1997), the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Sports Merit (2001), the Medal of Youth and Sports of France (2008) and the Influential Award for professional career (Spain, 2020). In 2019 he was inducted into the Rally Drivers Hall of Fame created by the FIA.
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