The world's most dangerous sporting event.

Driving or riding in these conditions is incredibly physical and demanding - most stages last much longer than a marathon and the driver is exerting far more energy than a marathon runner. They do that back-to-back, for 16 days.

And the fatigue that we see reduce marathon runners to pitiful shuffling wrecks is being played out at race speeds. Herculean feats of endurance in horrifically hot (though sometimes freezing) conditions, averaging 160 kmh plus speeds for hours at a time in unknown territory. It sounds like a fictitious blood sport from a science fiction novel but it's true.

This year's winner is without doubt the current master of the sport. Peterhansel has won twice in a car, but prior to that, he won the event six times on a motorcycle - eight titles from 18 starts makes him clearly the most successful competitor in the event. Hubert Auriol also won both car and motorcycle classes but noit as many titles. Spaniard Joan Roma who finished sixth in the cars this year won the motorcycle event last year. Though the technique of driving a rally car and a motorcycle are very different, there is clearly a common element.

All of the 465 contestants in this year's event knew there was less than a 50% chance they would finish the dangerous event. The high attrition rate is mainly due to injury or exhaustion. There are no unrepairable machine failures in a 16-day event if you really want to fix something.

KTM, Mitsubishi or Kamaz have enough hardware and expertise in their support crews travelling with them to be able to fix any conceivable problem very expediently.

The attrition rate varies from 45% to 65% and though the retirements may go down on a sheet somewhere as being mechanical, the failure is almost always due to injury or exhaustion of the rider.

The odds when the field left Barcelona on New Years Day said that one maybe two of them would not be alive by the time the trucks rumbled into Dakar.

The main cause of competitor death is high-speed crashes, but there are a host of other things that can catch you out in this 10,000-kilometre race.

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