Paulo Oliveira – A sense of mission

He is the first Mozambican to participate in the motorcycle world championship.

When Paulo Oliveira, 48 years old, decided to embrace off-road motorcycling, he faced opposition at home: his parents considered it dangerous. He persisted because of the affinity with motorcycles from an early age. But the fact that he was born into a middle-class family made it impossible for him to start riding at a young age. It was only at the age of 20 that he had his first motorcycle, the result of the job he worked during school holidays.

From there, he started training regularly, having even participated in some races in Portugal, the country where he was born. Still dreaming of great achievements, he had a serious accident and had to retire from the tracks. In 2009, he moved to live full-time in Mozambique. He came to work, but over time it was as if he had been born here, and he ended up acquiring Mozambican nationality. It was fate helping weave the future. In Maputo, he meets people who love motorcycling and decides to return to the sport.

He started by participating in some regional championships and in countries like Morocco, Portugal and Spain. As time went by, he began to believe that he could go further. He dreamed that he could make it to the Dakar Rally. It is the most coveted competition for off-road motorcyclists. To other sports, it’s like going to the Olympics.

Paulo Oliveira, to materialise his dream, had to train every day, sacrifice time with his family and meet requirements for qualification. He chased it until, in 2020, he managed to qualify for the Dakar Rally, during the classification events held in the Andalusia Rally, in Spain, having taken second place in his class.

Last year, he participated in the off-road world championship in Baja Aragon, a competition that took place in the Teruel region of Spain. In the same year, he was in another international representation, where he won the off-road world championship in Baja, Jordan, having brought home the gold medal in the individual classification and fifth place in his class for his team.

Paulo Oliveira made history. He is the first Mozambican to participate in the motorcycle world championship. He went there with a mission to complete the 13 stages and he succeeded. In 14 days, he covered 8500 kilometres, 13 hours a day riding a motorcycle. Along the way, obstacles: rocks, mountains, unusual terrain, a damaged engine, which made him lose 45 hours of racing. In the fourth stage, he suffered a fall and broke two ribs. The pain was intense, but he had to swallow his tears, make of his sense of mission a pain reliever, and pilot his way through the stages. “People give up, I went as far as I wanted.”

With several years on the road, he already knows that motorsport is a risky sport. “It requires 101 percent concentration. Any mistake is fatal.”

Maybe that’s also why motorcycling in general is undergoing dark moments in the country. There is no internal competition. Massification is still a mirage, but Paulo Oliveira already has a solution: to create an academy. There is an agreement with the ATCM (Automóvel Touring Club de Maputo) to house the training centre and it already has some of the materials to start the activities planned for this year.

Sponsorships are another headache, but he doesn’t give up and he always finds a way out. If there’s one thing he’s learned in competitions in inhospitable terrain, it’s that there’s always a way out. “We just want to be as far ahead as possible. If we see an opponent, we will try to overtake them. It’s like that in life too, you don’t think about anything other than doing better. When you’re on a motorcycle, all you think about is winning.”

He has covered so many kilometres that he declares: “There is no longer any fear. Speed is not scary. We are the ones who control it. But there are always obstacles, so we must be focused. When speed increases, attention must double.”

Advertisement

Issue 72 Mar/Apr | Download.