Sports丨Dakar goes to town with its logistics

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Television loves the Dakar Rally with its dramatic images of cars, motorbikes and trucks ploughing through the blood-red sands and dunes of Saudi Arabia.    But television doesn't show the whole picture, veering its lens away from the camp of 3,500 people, six planes, 11 helicopters, 100 trucks and 70 buses — the gigantic logistical machine that moves a mini-city in the desert from stage to stage and keeps the show, figuratively, on the road.    Set up under tight security on a 25-hectare (250,000 square meters) sand plain in the Bisha region in the southwest of the country, the Dakar start bivouac was bustling in the early days of the 2025 edition of the grueling cross-country race.    Night and day, generators chunter away next to white tarpaulin structures as large as aircraft hangars. Trucks fill the cisterns of the 200 or so toilets and showers, while others sprinkle water on the roads to settle the dust raised by the constant stream of vehicles.    Roaring sandstorms wh ………………………………