Dakar Profile 2022:
Olga “Ollie” Rouckova made history in 2018 by becoming the first Czech woman to complete the Dakar. The 34-year-old had been riding quads for the past 15 years, starting out with quadcross before discovering her true passion when she moved into cross-country. After successfully getting through her maiden Dakar, she went on to win the FIM Women’s Bajas World Cup in 2018, as well as finishing second behind Arcadiusz Lindner at the Baja European Championship. Sensing the need for a new challenge, she decided to team up with long-time friend and mechanic Daniel Zelenka to tackle Dakar 2019 in the SSV category. And despite never having raced her Can Am Maverick before, she managed to finish what turned out to be the last South American Dakar. Now she has set her sights on a new category and a new challenge: the Dakar Classic, and in choosing to enter a Suzuki Samurai hasn’t taken the easy option…
“I’ll really enjoyed racing an SSV, I loved every stage of the 2019 edition Dakar, even though it was quite strange to have a co-driver telling me what to do… When I heard about the Dakar Classic it straight away piqued my interest. I am always up for something new and in terms of budget the Dakar Classic is a lot more accessible than other categories. Way back in 1990 two tiny 1300cc Suzuki Samurais were entered on the Dakar in Africa and nobody even expected them to make it to the end. It turned out to be a particularly tough year, with only 133 vehicles finishing out of the 465 that started, yet the two little Suzukis were among them! We wanted to pay homage to that exploit but it meant using the same long wheelbase model and there are very few left. The one we found was lying in a bed of nettles in a scrap heap which is why we have called our project ‘From Nettles to Dakar’. Needless to say the car has needed an awful lot of work to get it ready but that’s all part of the challenge and all part of the fun.”
