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Semyon Yakubov, director of the "Silk Way" project
The "Silk Way" rally greatly differs from the last one.
We have significantly altered the format of the rally, as well as special road sections.
We have already said that there will be mostly only new road sections.
On May 17, already tomorrow, a general reconnaissance will start,
in the process of which all the preliminary work
which was done already in the autumn of last year will be checked
and material for the composition of road book will be chosen.
It will certainly be kept in strict secrecy from the participants.
By the start of the game this road book will be presented to all participants.
The legend will be written by most famous and one of the best world specialists:
Stephane Le Bail who has already prepared three issues of the Silk Way.
This one will become his fourth one, he has great experience in preparing other competitions,
including the Dakar rally.
Pierre Lartigue is participating in the organization of the rally for the first time,
but he is a very famous figure in our country and abroad,
he is a three-time winner of the Dakar rally,
four-time winner of the World Rallying championship and probably his biggest achievement
is participation in a rally on Kamaz.
Frederic Lequien, deputy director of the "Silk Way" project
Good afternoon, thank you for coming to our press-conference
and I am very pleased to see you all.
As Semyon has just said, the situation is good and everything is going according to plan.
Secondly, and most importantly,
this year we managed to gather the most powerful team of participants
in the whole history of the Silk Way rally.
Up to now, around a month before the application deadline,
we have received more applications than last year.
At the moment we already have 100 cars and 30 trucks enlisted for participation in the rally.
I believe this is a great indicator as compared to, for example, last year,
the number of participants has increased significantly.
One can say that it happened also because we have managed to persuade Russians to participate in the rally,
but at the same time the number of foreign participants has also grown and I am very happy about this.
The quality is directly related to quantity.
One can say that up to now we have received confirmation from the strongest teams in this type of rallies.
First of all, I am talking about the Mini X-Raid team.
They will participate with us this year.
The Overdrive team with a new Toyota car will also participate in the rally.
The teams Dessoude and SMG will also participate in the rally this year.
We can say that the most important news is that this year after a break
we will be joined by Jean-Louis Schlesser, who will participate in the rally as a pilot.
In the category of trucks we have the same situation.
This year there are will be very strong, powerful and interesting teams, equal in force:
Tatra, Man, Genaf and perhaps even Kamaz.
This year is also largely different from last year in terms of media coverage of the rally.
Newspapers and TV are talking about our rally more and more.
The media coverage and the character of the coverage have also significantly changed.
A little more than a month ago I was telling you about negotiations with the famous holding Eurosport.
We have managed to sign a contract, a very important contract with this organization.
Gilles Sourize, participant of the reconnaissance
Good afternoon to everyone, I would like to note
that we will have more funds this year than during the previous one.
Professionals would understand me,
there would be a special server that would allow journalists to work with the same pictures all the time.
There will be 23 people and three of them will be representatives of the media holding Eurosport.
There will be means already traditional for us,
including a special helicopter which will be equipped with a special camera with a manipulator,
there will be also groups working on all-wheel-drive jeeps and groups working on bivouacs.
I would like to stress that all the people I am talking about are very experienced.
Each of them has from five to ten years of experience in rallies such as the Dakar rally.
These people are great experts and specialists.
Semyon Yakubov, director of the "Silk Way" project
From one year to the next, in the past three years and now we are in our fourth year,
we are making the rally more and more difficult for the participants,
making the route more difficult and finding new sections of road.
We are choosing more difficult sections than in previous years.
Naturally, the skills of the participants in the rally are growing and certainly
they are looking forward to more difficult special sections of the road.
We are working on it and this year we have managed to successfully accomplish the task.
The pressure on the special road section will be growing with each day up until the very end.
In order to make this rally more comfortable,
we have decided to introduce two circular sections and at the request of the participants
we will not introduce any special sections in the central part of Russia.
Usually due to weather conditions,
there are dirty puddles and the marathon runners do not like to ride there and it indeed is no fun.
So on the first day the participants in the rally will go to Ryazan,
where they will spend the night and later proceed to Volgograd.
At the start of the rally on the Red Square there also will be changes.
The start will take place earlier than last year.
This is related to the fact that the route to Ryazan must be completed as early as possible,
since the next day at five o'clock in the morning the participants will head for Volgograd.
Already near Volgograd there will be the first sports section, 200 km long,
where participants will encounter sand for the first time.
Later they will be followed by sandy sections with the difficulty growing almost every day.
Six vehicles will come on the reconnaissance,
six motor cars and one truck in order to conduct quality reconnaissance.
Pierre Lartigue, four-time world champion of rally-raids, three-time winner of the Dakar rally
Already for more than thirty years I have been participating in preparations for rally-raids
and I have personally known Semyon Yakubov for the past twenty years.
We met not only at rallies, but also in winter, at various winter activities.
My biggest impression certainly was the first Paris-Peking rally.
It was the first rally I took part in and it was the first rally which allowed me to see Moscow.
The time passes quickly, almost twenty years have passed since that time.
I know your Russian roads very well, I have travelled many kilometers along those roads
and I believe that I know them quite well.
Apart from that, as a participant in the master rally in 1985,
I was a member of the Kamaz team and also cherish only the best memories of the rally.
In my opinion the route of this year's rally is fantastically interesting,
first of all because of its diversity.
There will be fast-speed road sections as well as dune sections.
In fact, it is a very interesting rally that attracts a great number of participants
and is conducted in a very good period of time.
This factor will attract more and more participants in the future.
Stephan Le Bail, participant of the reconnaissance
The road book we are making is in line with international standards used on all rally raids.
I have composed a great number of books for a great number of rally raids
and I would like to say that the road book of the Silk Way
is the most ample in regard to different regions and zones.
One can find there fast-speed sections, rocky slopes, dunes,
there are very interesting navigation and GPS points which help to orientate during the rally.
In general it is one of the most interesting and complex documents.
That is why the rally attracts a great number of participants.
As a project it interests racers from different countries.
We have been in Abu-Dhabi and Dubai with my colleague Pierre
and people there know about this rally and are interested in it
because they know that it is a race with an interesting navigation and a very interesting landscape.