Hubert Auriol, former driver and director of the Dakar rally died on Sunday.
His successor at the helm of the Koh-Lanta reality show, Denis Brogniart, paid tribute to him at the microphone of Europe 1.
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Hubert Auriol, former driver and director of the Dakar rally and first presenter of the
Koh-Lanta
reality show
, died on Sunday.
He was the first to win the Paris-Dakar both on a motorcycle (1981 and 1983) and in a car (1992).
"And at the time, there was no GPS, you had to fend for yourself. Hubert is someone who lived the adventure with a capital A, without taking the lead, without mercantile objective. He was there to escape ", greets Denis Brogniart, his successor at the helm of
Koh Lanta
, at the microphone of Europe 1 Sunday.
"He looked like a movie actor"
On the Paris-Dakar, Hubert Auriol had passed to the other side of the mirror from 1995, by becoming his boss, a position he held until 2004. It was under his leadership that the rally-raid took place. was launched for the first time outside France, from Spain (Granada in 1995, 1996 and 1999) and even from Dakar (1997 and 2000).
Denis Brogniart especially remembers a "charismatic" man, who "always greeted you with a smile".
"We must not forget that Hubert was also a pretty face. He had the face of a film actor, he had enormous charisma, he was someone who radiated."
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The taste for adventure has been the common thread in Hubert Auriol's life.
He had another record, that of the fastest round the world made in propeller planes, in 1987. "Hubert Auriol was the adventurer of modern times. There aren't many people like him anymore. That's somebody else. 'one that I loved very much and for whom I had both sympathy and admiration. "