Every nation has their headline-making musicians, and in France, Daniel Balavoine (left) was one of the biggest stars of the 1980s. By the time he released his eighth album in 1985, he had moved on to becoming a humanitarian activist. It was partially that activism that put him on the same ill-fated helicopter as Thierry Sabine, the architect of the notorious Dakar Rally, a grueling cross-country auto race. Balavoine — who had competed in Dakar in 1983 and 1985 — had headed to Mali in a partnership with the charity Paris du Coeur.
Balavoine was on-site in collaboration with a humanitarian effort to install fresh water pumps, and joined Sabine in a helicopter search for vehicles that had been lost somewhere along the Dakar’s 8,700-mile route. The 1986 rally was condemned from the start for what was said to be an unthinkably, ridiculously difficult course from start to finish, and when a number of vehicles got waylaid by high winds and sands, Sabine and Balavoine, along with two pilots and a journalist, were killed in a helicopter crash as they searched for missing vehicles.
The official cause of the accident was poor visibility due to a combination of high winds, sand, and darkness: The helicopter crashed into a 100-foot tall sand dune just outside of Timbuktu. Honda’s Philippe Bourserault commented on Sabine’s death, saying (via The Washington Post), “He died in the country he loved on a rally which he created. His wish was that, whatever happened to him, the race would continue.”
