Notes:
The eighth edition of the Paris-Dakar Rally started from Versailles, Paris, on Wednesday, 01 January and finished at the Rose Lake in Dakar, Senegal, on Wednesday, 22 January 1986. With 486 competitors at the start - 131 motorcycles, 282 cars and 73 trucks - this was the second-largest field to date, exceeded only by the 1985 event which listed 550 competitors. The almost 15,000-kilometer (9,325-mile) route passed from France through Algeria, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritanie and Senegal, along the course: Paris Cergy - Versailles - Sète - Alger - El Golea - In Salah - Tamanrasset - Agadez - Dirkou - Agadem - Zinder - Niamey - Gourma Rharous - Bamako - Labé - Kayes - Kiffa - Saint Louis - Sali Portudal - Dakar.

Only 100 vehicles - 71 cars and trucks, 29 motorcycles - reached the finish line of the rally. René Metge-Dominique Lemoyne in a Porsche 959 were the winners in the car competition. Cyril Neveu of France won the motorcycle gold, and a Unimog Mercedes carried the Italian team of Giacomo Vismara and Giulio Minelli to first place among the trucks. The event was marred by a number of accidents, that resulted in the deaths of two motorcycle entrants, Yasuko Keneko of Japan and Giampaolo Marinoni of Italy, and many injured people, including the Czechoslovakian driver of a Liaz truck, who was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down; a third rider, Jean-Michel Baron of France was seriously injured and passed away, after spending twenty-four years in a vegetative state till his death, on 02 September 2010.

The 1986 edition of the Paris-Alger-Dakar Rally is most noted for the helicopter accident that took the lives of its founder and organizer Thierry Sabine and five other persons: a well-known French pop singer Daniel Balavoine, the journalist Nathalie Odent, a radio engineer Jean-Paul Le Fur and the helicopter pilot François-Xavier Bagnold.

The white helicopter Ecureuil named "Sierra" crashed at 19h30 on Tuesday, 14 January 1986, into a dune eight kilometers from the oasis of Gourma-Rharous, about 190 kilometers (118 miles) east of Tombouctou, Mali, during a sudden sand-storm. The wreckage and the remains of five people were scattered around 400 meters.

Instrument flight conditions, caused by darkness and the effect of the sand storm could have been a factor, but it is known that the pilot Bagnoud was well qualified for instrument flying. It has not yet been clarified whether Bagnoud or Sabine himself had the helicopter flying controls at the moment of the accident.

Sabine's helicopter took off from the village of Gao at 17h15, piloted by Bagnoud, with only Le Fur and Balavoine on board. The latter joined them at the last moment. Around 18h10 on 14 January 1986, the helicopter landed for the first time in Gossi, where the start of the second timed section of the 843-kilometer (524-mile) twelfth stage, Niamey - Gourma Rharous, was located. Thierry took the opportunity to discuss with several competitors before they started. But the wind from the sand was getting stronger and he had to take off again, since the helicopter was not equipped to fly at night. The young journalist Odent who was also present at the place, went on board spontaneously, as she was used to do every day with any vehicle to follow the race. She occupied the fifth and last vacant post.

According to the testimony of Italian competitors Renato Savoldelli and Alberto Alberti, the last persons to see Sabine alive, they met him in the dark along the desert road with his white overalls and a torch in the hand. He had landed the helicopter because of a sand-storm, signed the Italian to stop the Land Rover and asked them how many kilometers to go, by their trip-master, until the finish-line of the stage. Then he decided to take off the helicopter, following the Land Rover's light towards Gourma Rharous, but suddenly he disappeared among the dunes, for visibility problems. Pierre Fourticq, who was an Air France pilot, co-driver to Henri Pescarolo in the 1986 Paris-Dakar Rally, told about the probable inadequate aircraft maintenance during the days of the rally and about night piloting trouble flying over desert, unvarying and indistinguishable like the ocean. It was French rider Marc Joineau to find first the helicopter wreckage, about twenty minutes after the accident.

Thierry Sabine's story is legendary among rally and racing fans. Born in a wealthy family, his father Gilbert Sabine was a dentist in Le Touquet, Pas-de-Calais, northern France, who competed in international rallies in the 1950s, his mother a famous Paris antique dealer, they lived in Boulogne-sur-Seine, a smart suburb of Paris. A marketing and advertising graduate, from 1969 to 1978 Thierry Sabine was a successful racing driver, in circuit races and rallies, occasionally co-driven by his father, Gilbert. He scored about 30 national wins during his career and in 1974 he won the GT French Championship title. Among his remarkable results, were his eighth place overall in the Coupe des Alpes, then a round of the 1971 World Rally Championship, with Dominique Surre in a Ford Capri 2300, and a second in class, fourth place overall, in the 1973 Tour de France Automobile at the wheel of a Porsche Carrera RS, with Jean Delannoy as co-driver. Sabine made three starts in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, between 1975 and 1977, taking a best finish of 13th in 1976, sharing with Jean-Claude Andruet and Philippe Dagoreau a Porsche Carrera RSR. His last circuit start was in a touring-car race, the prestigious 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in 1983, at the wheel of a BMW 635CSi which he shared with Claude Ballot-Léna and Thierry Boutsen - retired. As an actor, Thierry Sabine was featured in Claude Lelouch's movie "Un homme et une femme, 20 ans déjà", released in 1986.

In addition to his motor racing activity, in the mid-1970s Thierry Sabine participated also in great motorcycling desert races. In 1977, during the Rallye Côte-Côte (Côte d’Ivoire-Côte d’Azur), organized by Jean-Claude Bertrand, along the route Abidjan - Nice, he got lost while crossing the Ténéré desert. He was recovered in extremis by the emergency crews after three days and three nights of searching. Sabine was found just in time and saved from a certain and very gruesome death.

Impressed by the experience, Thierry Sabine worked hard to create his own rally. Soon the race on African sands came to prominence all over the world. Sabine had started his race organizer career in 1974, creating the famous Enduro du Touquet, that after his death was titled as the “Thierry Sabine Classic". In 1978 he held the first motorcycle Croisière Verte rally, from Le Touquet to Sète in southern France. Finally, on 25 December 1978 from the Trocadero of Paris started the first edition of the Paris-Dakar, a 12,000-kilometer (7,460-mile) rally for 167 competitors. Thierry Sabine was helped by the organizing committee formed by Patrick Verdoy, François Vincent, Joelle Ilous and Thierry's wife, Diane Thierry-Mieg, from which he divorced in 1984. Soon the race on African sands came to prominence all over the world. In the following year the T.S.O. (Thierry Sabine Organization) was born. After Thierry Sabine's death, the company was managed by his father Gilbert, that organized the Paris-Dakar Rally with Patrick Verdoy and René Metge until 1994, when it was sold to the group Amaury Sport Organisation.

Thierry Sabine was survived by his Danish partner Suzanne Fournais, and a 13-year-old daughter, Emilie. Burial is in the Cimetière Intercommunal des Joncherolles, in Villetaneuse, department of Seine-Saint-Denis, France. In his memory was erected a stele, named as the "Arbre Thierry Sabine" in the Ténéré desert, territory of Niger.

• French Death Index, 1970-2020, retrieved by website MyHeritage: https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-10823-6453496/thierry-gilbert-marcel-sabine-in-france-death-index .
• Book "Les grands dirigeants du sport: 23 portraits et stratégies de management" by Emmanuel Bayle, De Boeck Sup, 2014, ISBN 978-2804183042.
• Magazine Rombo, issue of 21 January 1986.
• Magazine Rombo, issue of 28 January 1986.
• Newspaper The Washington Post (Washington, DC, United States), issue of 16 January 1986, page B1, Washington Post Foreign Service, article "Death Of an Adventurer", by Michael Dobbs.
• Newspaper The Record (Bergen, NJ, United States), issue of 16 January 1986, page a30, Washington Post News Service, article "Adventurer's Death In The Sun Sahara Race Kills Founder.
• Newspaper The Toronto Star (Toronto, ON, Canada), issue of 16 January 1986, page H6, AFP-CP wire service, article "Paris-to-Dakar rally continues despite death of its organizer".
• Website AUTOSPORT → Forums → The Nostalgia Forum, thread "Speeds Ultimate Price: The Toll", page 46, posting by "Rainer Nyberg", List of Dakar casualties, 13 January 2005, page http://forums.autosport.com/index.php?showtopic=9705&view=findpost&p=1893650 .
• Website The Dakar 1986, History 1986, page http://www.dakar.com/history/1986.html .
• Website eWRC-Result.com by Tomáš "Shacki" Wanka, page https://www.ewrc-results.com/profile/53315-thierry-sabine/ .
• Website Touring Cars Racing History by Frank De Jong, page http://www.touringcarracing.net/Races/1983%20Spa.html .
• Website IMBD-Internet Movie Database, page https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0754753/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm .
• Website Le Mans & Formula 2 Register by Stefan Örnerdal, page http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk/formula2/1976.htm .