Before the start of the 2026 edition of the Dakar, he said he had promised his wife Marie that this 32nd participation would be the last. But two days after his return from Saudi Arabia and despite a big scare in the second part of the rally, Jean-Pierre Strugo, met at his home in Chatou (Yvelines), this Tuesday, is less categorical. “I don’t remember saying that,” slips mischievously the stainless rally-raid driver who will celebrate his 80th birthday next May.
Difficult for the one who is the oldest and the living memory of the ordeal to draw a line under an adventure which has punctuated his winters for so many years. He is the only amateur to have won a stage like the last participant to have experienced the Thierry Sabine years. Hard, perhaps too hard, to put an end to his greatest passion, especially when this announced farewell tour ends on a bitter note, according to him.
