Paulo Gonçalves

Paulo Gonçalves (5 February 1979 – 12 January 2020) was a Portuguese rally racing motorcycle rider. He won the FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship in 2013.

Biography

Paulo Gonçalves was born on 5 February 1979, in Gemeses, a civil parish in the Braga District city of Esposende. He excelled as a rally biker, having accumulated 23 titles in motocross, supercross and enduro, and won the FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship in 2013, before being a runner-up in 2014. He started participating in the Dakar Rally in 2006, and participated in thirteen of them. He raced on African, South American and Asian continents and won three stages. He finished among the top ten competitors, and was the runner-up in 2015, Marc Coma being the only competitor ahead of him.

Gonçalves was a member of the KTM, Honda, Husqvarna Motorcycles, and Hero MotoCorp teams, the last one in 2020. During the 2020 edition, the engine started in the third stage, and it was even announced its withdrawal, news that was corrected about three hours later, as Paulo Gonçalves was trying to repair his vehicle at the same time as he was waiting for his team to arrive for assistance. Due to his taste for high speeds, he was nicknamed "Speedy", which was a reference to the Looney Tunes character Speedy González.

Gonçalves crashed during the seventh stage of the 2020 Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia, at 276 km. He was found unconscious, resuscitated at the scene, and then flown by helicopter to a hospital in Layla, where he was pronounced dead. He was 40.

After his death, the municipality of Esposende issued a note of regret, highlighting his career as a pilot, and regarded him as an Esposende ambassador to the world. His death was also mourned by the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who stated that Gonçalves "died trying to achieve the dream of winning one of the hardest and most dangerous rally events in the world, in the which has always been a worthy representative of Portugal, reaching second place in 2015".