Dick Partridge was born on October 30th 1956, and spent the first 13 years of his life on his fathers farm. He was educated at Ipswich School and gained six ‘O’ levels and a couple of ‘A’ levels. It was on the farm that he first learnt to drive and his first motorsport experience was tearing around the farmyard on a beaten up old racing kart. At the age of sixteen he moved his attention to two wheels and, by working during school holidays, he managed to buy his first speedway motorcycle. He persued his speedway career with limited success and very little injury for five years, riding firstly at his home track, Ipswich, then at Eastbourne, Weymouth, Oxford and Scunthorpe.

In 1978 he bought a run down village garage which he resurrected, installing an MOT testing facility and introducing a new car franchise. It was during his time at the garage that he was talked into trying a parachute jump, and that experience re-vitalised his boyhood interest in flying. He qualified for his Private Pilots License in 1982, and after a few hours of leisure flying he decided to have a go at Aerobatics. Most of his early efforts in this sport were in his 1946 Stampe bi-plane, and it was in this machine that he did his early competitions. He went on to compete in a Steen Skybolt and finally a Laser monoplane, and enjoyed some good results on the national competition circuit.

While still running the garage business, in 1987, Dick happened to be watching a ‘Crash & Burn’ type video with his colleague Chris Louis, and this featured some clips of the Dakar Rally. Dick and Chris instantly recognised that they would love to do this race, so it was good-bye to the aeroplanes and hello to the Dakar! (Detail of his Dakar attempts to date are listed elsewhere.)

After his first Dakar Dick felt that a change of scenery was needed, and he sold the garage business. He spent the next couple of years on building projects, but caught a bit of a cold when the property market collapsed in the late eighties!

In 1990 He took on and completely re-developed the Mildenhall Speedway Stadium, installing a new speedway circuit and altering the stadium to accommodate greyhound racing. Although he loved the speedway side of the business he never enjoyed the dog racing, but he endured it to try to secure the financial well-being of the project! Ultimately the project was a financial disaster, the aftermath of which explains the lack of Dakar Rallying between 1991 and 1997. Following the Mildenhall period he moved back into the motor vehicle trade, concentrating as much on keeping down overheads as anything else! Currently he is putting all his effort into the Dakar 2000 project, aiming to achieve another rare British privateer finish.

His next entry was on the 1997 edition of the race, the Dakar-Agadez-Dakar. This all African route was set to avoid North Africa because of security problems, but the event was none the less very successful, and Dick was amongst the finishers at Dakar.

Dicks latest entry was on the Paris-Dakar-Cairo 2000, and again he managed a creditable finish at the foot of the pyramids. His efforts now are concentrated on raising sufficient funds to run in the 2002 Dakar with the Toyota Trophy class.