MAKING CHAMPIONS

Over 37 years, TVS Racing have been identifying talent from the grassroots and turning out champions capable of taking on the best in the world. Harith Noah who made his Dakar debut this year is one of them!

- SIRISH CHANDRAN

THE DAKAR IS THE TOUGHEST MOTORSPORT event in the world — a sentence we’ve written, maybe, a million times. Anybody who has even the remotest interest in motorsport knows the Dakar is hard as nails. But, just getting to the Dakar, is harder than you can imagine.

First, of course, you dream and dream and dream of the day you’ll get to the Dakar. That route, as Drake spat out in his verses, starts at the bottom. You ride your damndest and hardest on a private bike hoping to get the attention of a factory before you run out of your own cash. Your stars align, a factory signs you up but you, being the runt of the litter, get the hand-me-downs and that makes it near impossible to make an impression against the established factory riders. You invariably over-ride and crash and break your bones and bust your balls. As they nurse you back to health in the hospital, the family wonders why you didn’t just do an MBA and get a normal job. But you persevere. You train. You work on your fitness. You ride and ride and ride. You learn to fall without breaking your bones. You learn to race with broken bones. Your pain threshold goes up. You can barely walk but on the bike you learn to fly. You win races. You get better factory bikes. You please your factory bosses. You get more opportunities. You rage against the world when your teammate goes international and you go to, err, Bhopal. But, by now, you have somebody sensible in your camp who tells you to calm the heck down because your time will come. You stop smoking. Stop drinking. You train like a maniac. You fall, you win, you train, you keep your head down and… your time comes.