10/04/2011 - Press release n°16
An exceptional year

The end of the Ahansal brothers’ domination and the victory of French runner Laurence Klein on the women’s side are but two of the highlights of an exceptional edition. Sunday morning, at the Awards ceremony at the Cos hotel in Ouarzazate, Patrick Bauer gave an extremely positive review of the  26th Sultan MARATHON DES SABLES: “In terms of the race itself, it’s been an amazing edition for two reasons. The first one is the end of the Ahansal brothers’ reign after 14 uninterrupted years. Next year should be interesting, as Mohamad will want to come back to beat Rachid El Morabity. Then on the women’s side, it’s been an extremely intense race, nearly to the very end, and it was great to have a French runner win. Laurence Klein is quite a lady and I was immensely pleased to see her at the top. On a more general level, there has been so much emotion, so many beautiful moments shared with the runners.  A simple « thank you » from them on the finish line is my greatest reward. What makes me happy is to catch signs of a positive or generous attitude.” The competition itself remains the sinews of the whole event, but that’s not all it’s about. And God knows the runners were lucky this year. First of all than ran an amazing course, starting with the dunes of the opening leg. Then, their rather Spartian lifestyle on the bivouac was made a fraction more comfortable by toilets designed by the Norwegian army, which can be fitted with a plastic bag by each user, thus avoiding germs of virus contamination. Such innovation is likely to be followed by others in the future. A future that’s nearly here already, since this edition being hardly over, the next is already in the pipeline. In Patrick Bauer’s own words: “We never switch off, we think about the Sultan MARATHON DES SABLES 365 days a year. And not just about the course. It’s also about safety. When people get her to run this race, I want them to be able to focus totally on the race, and not worry about anything else. I do hope they’ll like what we have in store for 2012.” As a conclusion to the 26th edition, Patrick Bauer wants to remember the finish of the last runner on the 82km long stage: “It’s difficult to retain but one image and one image only, but when the Japanese competitor arrived after the time-limit, that was very intense. I was really moved to see that everybody had come to cheer him on the last few yards. It was very symbolic, considering the tragedy the Japanese people is currently going through.”

See you all in 2012 for many more adventures.