-Come on, come on!
A smile from ear to ear and the illusion in the eyes of Isidre Esteve (Oliana, 1972) light the way for visitors. The pilot is like a child on Three Kings Day with his new toy, a Toyota Hilux T1, a black leg from the Dakar, which should make his job easier this next edition. “If we don't manage to change cars, we could hardly be in the top 50. Now we have no reason to complain at the end of the stage”, comments an Esteve who reaches the age of participation (18).
Making the leap in quality with this T1, "with the same technical characteristics as the Toyota Gazoo and the Audi", suggests Isidre rubbing shoulders with Al Attiyah or Carlos Sainz. Although, realistically, he knows that his place in the race is not on the podium, nor in the top 15. “Although the impossible does not exist, finishing on the Dakar podium is very unlikely. We hit the ground with our feet. It has not even crossed my mind, ”he explains sensibly.
His realistic challenge is to "improve the 21st of 2018 and 2019", his best results. “Now there are 10-12 very fast riders, with a lot of experience, in official or semi-official teams, who you can't get close to if they don't fail. And then there is a second competitive group, from 12th to 25th, which is where I would like to be”, says the man from Oliana, who would sign “to finish a stage in the top 10. But it would be something abnormal; It's not our natural position."
His is, invariably, a fixed place in the toughest rally, which he experienced for the first time in 1998 on a motorcycle. With his KTM he competed in 10 editions, as a backpacker from Rome or as a close rival of Coma and Despres. Not even the accident in Baja Almanzora in 2007 stopped him. A spinal cord injury –rupture of the T7 and T8 vertebrae– left him in a wheelchair, but Esteve was determined to recover his racing life and return to the Dakar in an adapted car, as he did in 2009. He promised to return in better condition, with the intelligent cushion to avoid sores, and since 2017 he has not missed the appointment, each year with a better car.
How do you do it, without being among the favorites to win?
Therein lies one of Isidre Esteve's qualities: his charisma, his charm, his ability to convince sponsors, built on perseverance, dedication and the ability to overcome, "to face life's obstacles", as he says . “It is a matter of constancy; I am very stubborn ”, he adorns with a seductive smile, which he combines with his ease of communication. "I never say that I can do something that I think I can't do." That is why he –he confesses– “my great objective, more than a great sporting result, is that the sponsors are happy to have supported me, that they express their pride in the project”.
Esteve admits it: that big companies like Repsol, KH-7 or MSG support him “is not because of my sporting potential. If I have any value, it is that I do everything with the same professionalism as before [the accident]. We put everything. When we run aground in the sand, we lose an hour because only Txema [his co-pilot] goes down with the shovel, but it will never be an excuse. I want to be competitive with these conditions. What the people who support us is this normality with which we face things”.
A normality and realism, after 15 years of life in a wheelchair, that Esteve does not allow himself to alter with fantasies. Not even when science is approaching the day that spinal cord injuries can walk again, as he has begun to achieve at the Lausanne Polytechnic School (Switzerland).
“Since the accident it was clear to me that people with these injuries would walk again; the unknown is how long it will take”, meditates Esteve. “But I am very well doing what I do and I am not thinking of entering a program to have an electrostimulator installed and walk four years from now. It does not take away the dream. When there is a very proven program, it will be a pleasure”.
At this point, Esteve reflects bare-chested:
I don't know if I'll walk again, nor can I imagine doing it. I am very satisfied with my day to day. I don't get up thinking: "What a bitch to go in a wheelchair, let's see what day I stop going." For me, the chair is the least important thing compared to other things: sitting in front of the stove burning you and not realizing it, or having your partner touch you and not noticing it is worse than never walking again. I am not fascinated by taking 40 steps with a walker, but by recovering the sensitivity and control of my body, recovering my most basic functions. If I enter a program it will not be to walk again, but to have a better quality of life.
