"Two stages and back home!" It was a bit of an answer to the question: Who is Iader Giraldi, on his first Dakar in 2023? The surname didn't even matter, you said Iader and the Rally-Raid people understood. It is true that the name is not just any Paolo or Marco, but in that Iader it was as if there was already a sentence.

This over-fifty-year-old comes from the Motor Valley, lives and works in Rome, and from Romagna has brought with him a childhood dream. From BMX to fifties, and then to rally bikes, posters of Picco and Orioli, of Picco VS Orioli, on the walls of his bedroom. Having arrived at a certain, solemn tranquillity at work and at home, one certain day that dream jumps out with all the urgency of something he has been digging into for too many years.

The proposal is indecent, on the verge of turning fifty with no apparent premonitory sign, public, perhaps even just circulated in a close circle of friendships. "I must do the Dakar" will become dogma and, later, the title of the book-romance of his story. The imperative between himself and then public manifests itself in the announcement to his wife, one fine day taken aback and cornered: "My dear, the lover or the Moto?" So it began, two years of work and some frustration, then the happy ending.