After conquering off-road rallying, Daniel Sanders is chasing further glory

The chances of coming across a Dakar Rally winner at work in regional Australia, knee-deep in a farm dam, are always slim — but never zero.

Victorian motorbike racer Daniel Sanders is that slim chance.

The 30-year-old, a rising star in the high-speed world of rally-raid — and winner of one of the world’s toughest races in January — is focused on the third race of the 2025 World Rally-Raid Championship this week.

But lately, his mind’s been put to much lower-adrenaline pursuits.

Lush apple farm a world away from desert tracks

Sanders had previously said if he wasn’t a racer, he’d probably be a farmer.

“Apples are in full swing here at the moment,” he said of his 12-week break from competition, at the family farm about 65km from Melbourne.

“The old man’s flat-out picking. I’m just tidying up some machines … It’s been a really dry end to the summer, so we’re cleaning out dams and making sure they’re ready to fill up for next summer.”

Sanders Apples is a fourth-generation, 100-acre orchard growing on the slopes of a Yarra Valley hillside in Three Bridges — a locale home to about 200 people and innumerable bush tracks. Beneath the canopies of towering native eucalypts, soft-edged roads wind through the valley’s hills.

It’s the Aussie’s home away from the overseas desert tracks over which he’s lately firmed his reputation as a tactical and uncompromising competitor.

Rally-raid is a mixed-class category: high-powered dirt bikes race alongside almost futuristic, purpose-built rally cars, and even quad bikes. It’s a tactical race against the clock on epic, constantly-changing courses that take days to complete. The World Championship consists of five races this year, beginning with the famed Dakar Rally — which Sanders won convincingly.

After that win — making Sanders the second Australian to win The Dakar after Toby Price — and the celebrations that ensued, Sanders returned to Three Bridges as family duty called.

Long, quiet days in the paddock perfect training ground

Even the winner of one of the world’s toughest races still had to help around the farm — not that he complained.

“I’ve been pretty busy between training and working on those [farm] machines,” he said.

“Tidying things up and making it a bit easier for my old man and my uncles.

“Making sure the irrigation’s good and all the water’s running as well.”

Days in the paddock — sunrise to sunset, he said — might seem an unusual distraction for a world-class motorbike racer — especially one who leads a World Championship approaching the season’s half-way point.

Some competitors might spend their days burning around a test track or poring over data seeking an edge for the next event.

To be sure: he’d kept up his training, and wasn’t short of social engagements.

But work around the farm — training his mind to hone a different kind of focus than the type needed for days spent flat-out on a motorbike — would, he hoped, help sharpen him for the season’s remaining week-long races.

“When you jump back on a bike it makes you really enjoy it and keeps you motivated.”

But inevitably, after a nearly three-month break, the championship race has pulled him back to competition.

The farming gear has been switched for racing leathers, hat for a helmet, and from work gloves to racing ones — CHUCKY, his nickname, emblazoned on them above a bright cartoon of a honey-dripped apple.

Now the focus is on the pursuit of victory over the coming days, this time in southern Africa.

Swapping desert sand for dirt and gravel

The six-day Safari Rally marks the World Rally-Raid Championship’s first visit to South Africa, and presents distinctly different challenges to those posed in North Africa and Arabia, where Sanders has lately excelled.

Shifting desert dunes, with red-gold sand rising like giant waves, have been the backdrop for each of Sanders’s recent wins in Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.

In South Africa, competitors expect more solid ground.

Organisers say dirt and gravel will make up three-quarters of the rally’s 1,600-kilometre route through the country’s expansive northern middleveld and highveld — midfield and highfield — a broad area outside Johannesburg defined by its changing vegetation and soils, rising from 600 to 1,800 metres above sea level.

Water crossings, dense bushland and open plains are promised — maybe even a close encounter with one of Africa’s famed natural predators.

Sanders expects a close race but, he said, he’s hopeful the conditions have parallels to Australia.

A potential home advantage, only 10,000km from the farm.

“To lose 10 to 20 seconds overshooting an intersection, having to do a U-turn and come back — I think that’s where you’re going to lose it,” he said.

Over the journey, riders and drivers will navigate an arid and unpredictable path. It’s a solo race against the clock — no GPS, no directions, just a digital roadbook and instinct.

How they reach the finish — that’s largely up to them.

It means sharpened wit is needed as much as a quick throttle to find the fastest route, often concluding at a campsite hundreds of kilometres from the start line.

A victory is worth 30 points, second place 25, 20 for third. A retirement? Just one.

And any one of Sanders’s rivals could take the win.

The championship’s second-placed rider, Tosha Schareina (ESP), spent part of the break winning a 650km race through Portugal and Spain. Third-placed Ricky Brabec (USA) won a rally in Las Vegas last week. Last year’s champion Ross Branch — from neighbouring Botswana — is among the favourites too.

But if having rivals chasing his tail-light distracts him, Sanders doesn’t show it.

“I’m sort of all around it at the moment and have strengths everywhere,” he said going into South Africa.

“The quicker I can get back into that rhythm, the better the result will be.”

The South Africa Safari Rally runs May 19-24.