You Do the Dakar Day by Day

The Dakar Rally special series

Lithuanian driver Emilija Gelažninkienė is one of the rookies in the T4-SSV category in the 2024 edition of the Dakar Rally. But beyond being a driver, she also works in media and business development in motorsport. We had the opportunity to catch up with Emilija after the Dakar, here is her story.

All photos © Emilija Gelažninkienė

In 2019, Emilija started her first Dakar journey. At the time, she was taking care of media, partnership, and many other things for her husband Arūnas Gelažninkas, a veteran motorcycle rider, who was entering the Dakar as a rookie. “When I met my husband Arūnas, he just finished his motorcycling career. I didn’t know much about motorcycle racing and just wanted to see what it was like. So we went to Latvia, and met another Lithuanian rider who was competing in the Dakar. Arūnas was like a professional rider, so I suggested why not try the Dakar. In his first Dakar, I supported him from back home. Then in 2020, when the Dakar moved to Saudi Arabia, we had enough budget to go together.”

In this social media time, it was slightly easier for Emilija to do her job even without media training. She learned everything on the job. “We went to the sponsors and told them about our media package, how we can advertise for them and give them more exposure. It was very simple things on social media. I was also reading a lot on my own to create presentation slides for our pitch. It was all new for me.”

From 2020 to 2022, Emilija accompanied Arūnas to three Dakar Rallies. But for Emilija, her dream of participating in the Dakar never really ends with watching on the side. Since she was a child, competing in the Dakar herself has always been her real dream. “I was following the Dakar Rally when I was still going to school. I was watching the TV shows about Dakar. But I didn’t understand anything, at least not the way I’m understanding it now. Everything looked very adventurous. It was like a fairy tale.”

You’re going somewhere in the desert and they’re seeing the beautiful views. Since 2011, I had the feeling that one day I would be there in the Dakar Rally in the car.

In 2022, Emilija finally took a crucial step towards actually being a driver in the Dakar, she started her training. “In the 2022 Dakar, I was working at the finish line on media stuff, and one buggy came. When the driver took off the helmet, it was a girl. I knew I needed to try now. I just saw a very good example, and I needed to do this. When we were preparing for the next Dakar, Arūnas went to the doctors and they advised him not to go again riding motorcycles. So I suggested to him, ‘we can still go, and you can be my co-driver.’ He was shocked, because I never told him that I wanted to compete in the Dakar. So we went to Dubai and we tried the buggy. I just wanted to understand it. From there I started to plan everything. When we came back to Lithuania, we sold our rally bike and bought my first buggy. T4 is a good category to start racing. I’m a beginner who didn’t understand much about racing.”

I was crying because I was so happy that we were going to the dunes. Everything looked amazing. I understood that this was my thing.

When Emilija was raising money for Arūnas, it was difficult enough already. Now when she needed money for her own race, she was met with extra difficulties. “When Arūnas decided to go for the Dakar, we didn’t have anything, but we needed 100k, and that was for the bikes category. Now in my T4 category, we needed to raise much more. When I talked to the sponsors, they were like, ‘so you are driving, not Arūnas?’ I came back questioning why I was doing this. Everybody was doubting me. But in times like this, you just need to be patient and continue your way.”

Getting the money is what Emilija has been doing for a few years, but physical training is her new preparation as a driver. “I go to the Pilates every day. It’s like my second home. My teacher is like the best in Europe. But it was the first time she needed to prepare someone for racing in the Dakar. It was a very interesting journey for the both of us. I was also training on the bicycle every other day. I had very good support from my coaches. I was also getting advice from other Lithuanian drivers in the Dakar Rally.”

After all her hard preparation, Emilija finally embarked on her first Dakar journey as a driver. However, it came to a very disappointing start. “When the other car hit us and we rolled up, I was thinking, two years of hard preparation, somebody just hit you in your first 27 kilometers of the entire 5000 kilometers. You are finished now and it’s not your fault. It put us to the back of the line-up and we started four days in a row from the back. We were riding with the assistance cars who were not racing. They were slow, but also didn’t want you to get past them. It was so frustrating, my emotion was very down. But overall I am happy because Arūnas was with me. I remember when we finally finished with the daylight, I was so happy because we had a little bit of dunes. I love doing the dunes. It was my passion and it was relaxing. My Lithuanian fans were waiting for me at the finish line. I felt like from that day, my Dakar journey began.”

You do the Dakar Rally day by day. You start one day, and finish that day. Then you have another one ahead of you. You just focus on your current day.

Even after this difficult debut, Emilija is still not giving up on her next Dakar. “On our first day, I was saying to Arūnas, this is not my way, I don’t want to be here. He said I would see the next day that I would talk differently. Then we started to drive to the dunes, and I wanted more and more of it. When you are there, you think why I’m here. But when you got home, you think I want another one. My main goal next time is to have a better result. I want to be another woman who can win the Dakar!”

Besides their Dakar journey together, Emilija and Arūnas also created a rally school. “When we went to the Dakar, we actually went with a purpose. We want to popularize off-road motorcycling in Lithuania, such as enduro and rallies. When we started our first Dakar, we saw a lot of people coming in, asking for information, asking for lessons. So we created our AG Dakar school.”

Similar to her first job in the Dakar, creating the school was also a new thing for Emilija, and she pushed through with her hard work. “We needed to do a lot of things to prepare for our next Dakar, and we also needed to build the school from scratch. Everything was happening at the same time, it was quite difficult. Now we have 16 riders, and four of them are preparing for the Dakar. We have built a new training base in Dubai so we can actually train in the desert. We’ve also added a few buggies.”

While Emilija prepares for her next Dakar, she also invites all the other riders and drivers preparing for the Dakar rally to come to their AG Dakar school’s Dubai base to train, which provides the same conditions as what is in the Dakar. We wish her and Arūnas all the best in their next journey!