The five-time Dakar winner opens up to DirtFish about life since his horrific accident in January
Photography by X-raid & Red Bull
Words by Stephen Brunsdon
As he lay stricken at the side of the road after being hit by a civilian vehicle, five-time Dakar winner Mathieu Baumel didn’t know if he would even survive, let alone keep his right leg.
January 29, 2025 changed his life forever.
“During the accident, I remember nearly everything, because I don’t recall the first seconds after the accident,” Baumel tells DirtFish. “I remember seeing a kind of lightning and then I fell to the floor and immediately felt that I couldn’t move my legs.
“There was a big mess with my legs, a lot of blood, so this was not really nice. And the first feeling was: ‘s**t, my life is finished’ but this is just two seconds of thinking. I was able to move my left foot but not the leg; I didn’t know that my left leg was broken too, but the first thing I thought of first was to call my wife.”
From that moment, Baumel became what he described as “a good co-driver”, doing what he felt he needed to do at the time. Remarkably, calmness amid turmoil took over.
“I called her and told her: ‘I have had a very bad accident, very serious, please organize everything. I am in Reims, then I organize everything else’.
“And then, I was like a good co-driver; I organized my identity papers, my money, my phone, all in one pocket protected everything.
In a dire situation, Baumel reached for the inner co-driver within him
“When something horrific like this happens, you need to think quickly and you are able to face everything, with the right mentality. And in this moment, it gave me a purpose in my life. It was 10 or 12 minutes; of course, you don’t know if you are going to live five more minutes, but you know that, if you do, then you know that your life will be completely different.
“You can’t go back in time; you have to face what is in front of you.”
Baumel was transported to Reims hospital where he was placed in an induced coma before undergoing an eight-hour surgery.
It became apparent that, with the extent of Baumel’s injuries to his right leg, an important decision needed to be made.
“Both of my legs were in a big mess, 20% of the skin was missing and it was a big, big disaster,” said Baumel.
“After I woke up, we were able to make some decisions, and the right leg was so destroyed that the doctors said that they probably could repair it, but it would take around 10 years and they weren’t sure if I would have been able to walk again.
“So, probably in 10 years, the chance I had to walk again was around 5%. I said to the doctors: ‘you want me to stay 10 years in the hospital and you don’t even know if I will be able to walk again?’ In 10 years, I could be dead anyway!
“The other decision was to amputate, and I decided immediately that I wanted to amputate because they told me that I could be ready in one or two years.
“And I thought: ‘well, at least that way, we will have gained two years’ and then I will not have any pain, so it was an easy decision.”
Six months after his horrific ordeal, with his right leg now amputated, Baumel left the hospital in Reims and began his rehabilitation. He is fitted with a prosthetic leg from above the knee and, incredibly, has been able to return to many of the activities he had carried out prior to his accident.
“I can walk, I can cycle, I can drive my car again now because I have a special pedal in my car which replaces the accelerator,” explains Baumel.
“So everything is back to normal now, not 10 years later. If I chose not to amputate, I would for sure still be in the hospital. In my head, this option was impossible.”
It is clear from talking with Baumel that this is a competitor of the highest order. He’s not ready to pack it all in and retire, not while he is still at his peak.
Instead, Baumel quickly turned his attention to one goal, and one goal only.
Instantly, Baumel was focused on just one thing: returning to the Dakar
“The first feeling I had when I spoke to the doctor was that I wanted to be ready for the next Dakar, so in 11 months’ time,” Baumel says. “Everybody at the time was telling me that probably it was not possible and a little bit too optimistic.
“Of course, I was pushing them, and they were helping me and step-by-step we saw that week after week that maybe it could be possible. So, I pushed them harder and harder to make it happen for Morocco in October.
“I left the rehabilitation center on July 11, and, after that time, I knew that Guillaume [de Mévius] and Sven [Quandt] were planning a small test at the end of July in Château-Lastours in the south of France and I was able to be there.
“At the start it was supposed to be just me going there to see everyone, to see Guillaume and be able to probably just sit in the car, with no other idea than to be there. In the end, I told my wife: ‘ah s**t, if I go there, I need to go inside the car and I need to try and see if I can do it!’.
“Entering a rally car, it’s not an easy thing to do [at the best of times] and I was there [at the test] with my prosthetist and he told me that he had a solution that could help me. He put on the end of my prosthetic at the knee, a quick-release system whereby I can take one part of my leg off. And with that, he said that I would be able to get in and out of the car on one leg only.
“Then I put my helmet on and, in the end, we did 90km with Guillaume and I felt like I had never had the accident; I felt how I did the day before the accident. This was the beginning of thinking about getting back into competition.”
To even consider getting back into a rally car that soon after nearly losing your life is barely thinkable to you and me, but for Baumel the idea of dropping his passion, even for an extended period of time, was never an option.
Having navigated six-time Dakar Rally winner and triple World Rally-Raid champion Nasser Al-Attiyah, Baumel is one of the very best co-drivers in the business. Rallying and, in particular, the Dakar is what he lives for.
The journey hasn’t been easy, there are still physical and mental hurdles to overcome, but Baumel reckons the allure of the biggest cross-country rally event in the world is worth the hard yards.
“Everything with regards to the prosthetic is sorted now, which is why we did the Baja Sharish in Portugal, we can control everything, and we checked that everything could fit in the car, with the prosthetic,” explains Baumel.
“On that front, we are fine, and we have no problems; my brain, I am now only focused on Dakar because I know that I am ready.
“Initially, I was a bit scared about the speed and how it would be, but in the end, we know now that I was able to think quickly enough [during the test] to be ready for the race, so it’s another thing we don’t have to worry about.
“With my left leg, and also my general body, because when you stay in hospital for six months, you lose a lot of muscle, and you are not as fit as you were before. But I still have three months to get properly fit; I go to the physio and the gym every two days; I have a special trainer and I know that there will be no problem for me to be ready in three months for the Dakar.
Baumel returned to competition last month, and finished second!
“I also now know that, during the Dakar, my prosthetist will be there so if I have any problem with the prosthetic during the Dakar, he will be there to fix it. I don’t have to worry about it, because obviously in the desert there is sand and there could be rain that gets inside the prosthetic, so you need to make sure that this is the negative point of the day that could impact the rally.”
It is for this reason that Baumel rates his current fitness level as 90%, but to even get to that number is an achievement in itself.
Drivers – and by extension, navigators – are a different breed to non-racers. Cross-country rallying demands a high level of both physical and mental fitness as individual stages can often last longer than an entire World Rally Championship event.
Therefore, it’s little surprise that high-functioning athletes are often able to recover from serious injuries better and faster than regular people.
Baumel believes that, had he not been an athlete, his recovery may well have taken far longer, and progress far more arduous than it has been.
“100%, definitely,” says Baumel. “After the accident, I started to say: ‘OK, I have only one goal and that is to get back into the car; everybody was looking at me with open eyes saying: ‘this guy is crazy, he just nearly died and now he is wanting to return to the car’ and ‘we need to rebuild his leg and probably we will need to [amputate] his right leg and then he needs to relearn how to walk with the prosthesis’.
Baumel's determination in his recovery stunned medical professionals
“But on the other hand, they know that if you have a high-level athlete to work with, the mind follows too. And if the mind is there, then the physical part could be easier, and it was exactly like that.
“My physio told me: ‘you are the only one in the center that if I asked you to do more, you would do more immediately; we start early tomorrow morning?’ I would say: ‘of course, what do you want to do?’ And I think that if you are used to being fit physically and mentally then you have the right tools. And so, to leave after just six months since the accident, it’s incredible.”
Baumel’s left leg was badly broken, resulting in a complex surgery in which he was fitted with metallic plates and screws in his knee, femur and tibia. Extensive physiotherapy is still ongoing, while pain management continues to be an obstacle.
But such is Baumel’s desire to be on the start ramp in Saudi Arabia, he maintains he will be there regardless of whether he is 100% fit or not.
“With my physio, the doctor, my prosthetist, the whole team including Guillaume, who has been fantastic from the beginning, we have a great support,” Baumel says.
“Guillaume told me at the start: ‘I don’t care about your prosthetic, I know that maybe we will lose some seconds when we have a puncture or something, but we are so good together that I don’t want to break that up and do it without you’, so this was really nice.
A strong team (from L-R): Baumel, de Mévius and Quandt
“All the messages that I received from not only the motorsport family, but from people that I have no idea who they are, it’s been amazing. I still receive plenty of messages from people who are putting their own troubles into perspective as well. This is for me very important, because when you receive these kinds of messages it pushes you even further and makes me even more determined to be at the Dakar.
“Because of these messages, I will 100% be at the Dakar, whether I am ready or not!”
Baumel is one of a kind and is determined to become the first disabled navigator to win a stage of the Dakar Rally in T1+ machinery. The road is long – longer than the entire Dakar route – but not insurmountable.
And few would bet on Baumel not giving it his all-in pursuit of the ultimate prize.
Words:Stephen Brunsdon
Tags: Dakar, Dakar 2026, Mathieu Baumel
Publish Date October 12, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/10/yslMoYNj-R6JG2471-780x520.jpg October 12, 2025
Up Next
