I think it was Robert E. Lee who said it first, though I admit it could have been George Patton or Ghengis Khan or Xerxes. It's called "the fog of war." In ancient battles it was difficult to tell what was happening on the field. Today it's a lot easier to understand the overall picture, what with computers, radios, and cameras in the nose cones of cruise missiles, so now the military commanders lie to everyone about what is transpiring, apparently to restore that old feeling of total confusion and doubt.

Whoever is running the press tent at the Paris-Dakar has studied the problem facing war correspondents and appears to be making a conscientious effort to provide information that is at best humorous and at worst random bullshit. Day #2 of the rally is a fine example of that guy's work. I wouldn't mind this so much if I were actually part of the P-D road show, where I might have a fighting chance to figure out the truth, but I sit quietly in a basement in Washington, D.C., sift through French web sites, and try to make sense of something like the 11:45 a.m. interim press release:

"After placing second yesterday, Italy's Fabio Fasola (KTM) provided the day's surprise by winning the Chateau-Lastours special in front of Spain's Solano (Cagiva) and Frenchman Morales (Muz). Peterhansel finished in 45th place. Sainct 70th, Arcarons, Magnaldi, and Orioli 77th, 79th, and 116th."

The final press report of the day echoes those standings. That would be great if they bore any resemblance to the stage standings that appear for that day:

	1	Roma		KTM		30:21		00:00:00
	2	Perez		KTM		30:38		00:00:17
	3	Sala		KTM		30:43		00:00:22
	4	Peterhansel	YAM		30:47		00:00:26
	5	Sainct		KTM		30:50		00:00:29
	6	Fasola		KTM		31:21		00:01:00
	7	Katrinak	KTM		31:53		00:01:32
	8	Gallardo	BMW		31:56		00:01:35
	9	Morales	        MUZ		31:59		00:01:38

The truth is that it doesn't matter. A thirty-minute stage on the second day of the event has about as much chance of influencing the final results in another couple of weeks as I do of figuring out what is really happening in southern France. By the end of the first week they will be running through stages that won't take ten or twenty minutes to complete; they will last most of the day. When some of the amateurs like Flick and Fasola hit those 100-foot dunes in the Sahara for five hours at a stretch, they'll be wishing they were back in the cold, French mud.

The significant thing about the second day's stage was that, unlike the first day's aborted mud bath, it closely resembled the sorts of conditions that the riders will face in Africa. And the European riders, as Peterhansel explained to an adoring crowd, greatly enjoy putting on a show for the home folks on terrain that the bikes were designed for. Last year it wasn't the Paris-Dakar Rally; it was the Dakar Rally, starting and finishing there with a giant eastern leap into the desert of north Africa. Peterhansel won that one going away. Only Gallardo was remotely close to him at the end.

So whether the amateur Fasola won Day #2 with another slash-and-burn ride or whether veteran Joan --- he's a Spaniard, and it takes every fiber of my being not to spell his name "Juan" --- Roma took the honors, it's just a blip on the screen. In a while you won't need radar to see the big guns; they'll be in your rear-view mirror, and they'll be larger than they appear.

Day #3 will find the bikes in Spain, the home turf of hot shoes like Roma, Gallardo, Arcarons, Solano, and Sotelo. They'll be rested, too. After the short Day #2 stage, the bike riders are permitted to stick their machines on a truck and ship them the last 1,000 km to Grenada. Japan's Naitoh Daisuke won't be there. The organizers looked at his eyes this morning and decided he was too whipped to continue. It might be the luckiest thing that will ever happen to him.

And tomorrow, perhaps, we will get lucky too and the fog of war will lift in sunny Spain. Perhaps frogs will fly.

Bob Higdon

© 1998 Iron Butt Association, Chicago, Illinois

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