DOHA: Four-time Dakar Rally winner Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah is one of kind. Not only he takes part in the two sports but also excels in them.
Besides Motorsports, the Qatari sports icon is a top shooter and has taken part in six Olympics as skeet shooter and won a bronze medal at the 2012 London Games.
At 51, he continues to excel and bags top honours in both sports. In January, he won the gruelling Dakar Rally for a fourth time after the race through the Saudi Arabian desert.
“It is a good feeling,” said Al-Attiyah, who extended his lead in the regional series.
The success was a 28th for co-driver Mathieu Baumel in the MERC and his fifth in Qatar, while Al-Attiyah’s 80th success as a driver equalled the number of wins achieved last month by French legend Sebastien Loeb in the FIA World Rally Championship.
“I am really happy to win Qatar Rally. This is my home and in front of my people. This was not an easy race. It was tricky. The pace that we did from yesterday to today, me and Kris and Mads, was very hard. This was a fantastic win. I was trying to keep one pace. It was amazing,” he added.
The Qatari – champion in 2011, 2015 and 2019 – took the overall honours ahead of France’s nine-time world rally champion Sebastien Loeb in South Arabia, leading the race from start to finish.
Being a two-sport athlete is a challenging logistical exercise but Al-Attiyah is committed to excelling at both disciplines.
“The love of Motorsport keeps me going,” Al Attiyah told Khelupdates.com after his Qatar International Rally win on Saturday, when asked about his tremendous success in both sports over a period to time.
On Saturday, Al-Attiyah overcame the most difficult challenge of his career at the Qatar International Rally to record a 16th victory at his home event and achieve a stunning milestone of 80 wins in the FIA Middle East Rally Championship (MERC) since 2003.
Driving his customary Autotek Volkswagen Polo GTI, Al-Attiyah only hit the front on the eighth of 12 gravel special stages in the Qatar deserts and survived a front puncture in stage nine to press home his advantage over the final three stages.
Mads Østberg pushed him all the way to the penultimate stage, but Al-Attiyah hung on doggedly and eventually secured a winning margin of 4min 38.4sec after the Norwegian retired.
