Fred Bouvy: “I’m a party animal and structured”

Fred, where are you taking us?

In the region bordering the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, obviously. I have been coming to this area for a good thirty years and I am still as contemplative as ever before the beauty of nature. What a fabulous region! And since we are going to take dirt roads, it will be with my Volkswagen Amarok. Very practical in the area: I carry logs to fuel the hotel's open fires or tires for the race. It's also the machine with which I recognize rallies.

Does your passion for running go back to childhood?

I confirm ! I must have been 5 years old when Jacky Ickx, a friend of my father, taught me to ride a small motorcycle. I have always been immersed in the atmosphere of sport and challenges. My father was undoubtedly one of the first bikers to cross Africa from top to bottom on a motorbike with a friend in the 1970s. Later, he competed in the Dakar at the time of Thierry Sabine. I was a teenager and this race fascinated me. I often accompanied him from Paris until he boarded the boat in Sète (Hérault). But I never went further. I remember that at 18, I was driving on the Brussels ring road to break in the Range Rover that he had had prepared at Halt Up.

In my teens, I did motocross, enduro. I was even Belgian and then European quad champion. My dad was an accomplished sportsman: he played twice in the Olympic Games as part of the national field hockey team and even took part in the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck.