It has been over a decade since Yoshio Ikemachi retired from racing professionally, nearly fifteen years since his most recent Dakar Rally, and even longer since his last Dakar on a bike. The last two will change in 2024 when he makes his return on a KTM 450 Rally Replica for BAS World KTM Racing Team, competing in the Rally2 category.
Ikemachi first appeared at the Dakar Rally in 1996, though to drive the car for the race’s press corps. He made his actual racing début a year later, where he finished sixteenth overall on a Honda bike. After two years of competing in enduro and other rallies, he returned to Dakar in 2000 and improved to tenth, the highest finish for a Japanese rider at the time and the best among privateers. However, that was his final start on two wheels as he joined Nissan’s factory programme to race a car in 2003.
He finished twenty-second overall in his first Dakar with Nissan in 2004, which he replicated two years later en route to a runner-up finish in the T2 category. Ikemachi eventually raced for Mitsubishi and Subaru; his last Dakar in 2010, with Subaru Argentina, ended in retirement after his driveshaft broke on the third stage. While he scaled back his racing over the next decade and took an office job in car sales, he continued to take part in races like the Asia Cross-Country Rally, winning the bike category thrice in 2012, 2015, and 2018.
Other outings during his career, which began when he was seventeen, included a fourth in the 1994 Australian Safari, seventh in class at the 1995 Baja 1000 and fifth at its Baja 2000 variation, and winning races like the 2006 Beijing to Ulaanbaatar Rally.
Although now in his fifties, he found the urge to return to international rallies and partnered with TM Racing, an Italian team that competes in the FIM Enduro World Championship team. In February, Ikemachi entered the World Rally-Raid Championship‘s Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge with BAS World, finishing twelfth in Rally2 and second among Veteran’s Trophy riders with a best stage performance of tenth in Stage #1.
“When you turn 50, your body starts to weaken suddenly. I thought if I’m going to do it, it has to be now, and it has to be on a bike,” Ikemachi told Off1.jp. “It was around the time the COVID-19 pandemic started, and I thought it could also be a positive message to the world. I found meaning in returning to Dakar once again. The passing of my longtime mechanic Yukishige might have been a catalyst as well.
“Once you’ve made up your mind, it’s a do-or-die situation. It creates a situation where there’s no other option but to go. I changed my job to a freelancing position where I have more freedom, and I’ve been active for the past few years. The severe depreciation of the yen sometimes leads to a sudden shortage of funds, but I guess I’ll manage somehow [laughs].”
The 2024 Dakar Rally, which begins on 5 January. will be Ikemachi’s eighth Dakar. He is one of ten riders racing for BAS World.
