How mental strength and bravery took Andrea Peterhansel from rank outsider to full-factory Dakar racer
Blonde hair framed by the red Saharan sand, a teenage rider lays beside her XT500, and suddenly feels a very long way from home. Panic swells and manifests into a scream – a mini crisis unfurling inside her helmet. Unhurt but unsettled, she faces an ultimatum; turn back and go home, or accept the risks and carry on. Andrea Peterhansel chose to accept the risk.
“That moment has stayed with me my whole life,” Andrea tells WoMCN. “Sometimes you make a decision because you are afraid – of the unknown or the challenge or the dangerand that makes you not do it. But for me, the riding and the journey brought me so much that I say every risk I take that allows me to have this extraordinary experience is worth it.”
As a result of that defining moment in the dunes, Andrea has contested in 11 Dakar rallies, six of which have been on bikes – and even one in a truck. After retiring from elite competition, she’s now Sport Manager for Yamaha’s factory rally team. Yet she may never had achieved such greatness had she chosen to give into fear that day. “Bikes were forbidden in my house,” laughs Andrea when she remembers her earliest biking memory. “No one in my family had motorcycles so I don’t know where my passion came from. But when I was 15 I started hanging around with boys who had mopeds – I saved up and bought a Honda MTX80, kept it with a friend and rode it without a licence or insurance!
“It didn’t take long before the police caught up with me! But after that my parents gave permission.”
Desert dreams
Riding through the verdant forests of Bavaria, Andrea found herself increasingly distracted by dreams of the desert. “I was always buying motorcycle magazines and seeing XR or XTs with their sheepskin saddles and aluminium boxes, and I was screaming to do that. It was a real dream, and I don’t know where from because I had no contact with the desert before.”
From there, Andrea and a boyfriend saved up what little money they had and set off for a two-week trip to Tunisia to get their first glimpse of the desert. Yet that short trip only added fuel to the fire. “I was blown away,” Andrea remembers. “But after that, we worked hard to save up 2500DM so that we could return to see the real
Sahara – and we spent six months exploring Tunisia, Niger, Mali, Togo, Ghana and back home. It was a life-changing journey.”
It was during that adventure when Andrea made her lifedefining choice. “I’d crashed down a small track – I didn’t break anything, but it hurt a lot. I remember laying with my head in the sand and I was starting to panic. Then my fo
