Motor Rallying: Travails of dust to dawn raiders: The tough terrain is taking its toll on competitors in the Paris-Peking Rally. Jeremy Hart charts their progress

COMPETITORS in the Paris-Peking Rally crossed into China yesterday after cutting a swathe through the rolling green hills of Russia, the dusty expanses of Kazakhstan, the deserts of Turkmenistan and the rich farming lands of Uzbekistan and Kirghizia.

Kazakh horsemen sleeping out last week on the vast plains which form much of their country woke up in their skin tents to the sound not of neighing horses or bleating goats but the roar of unheathily loud racing engines.

Never before in one of these mammoth events (the old Paris-Dakar could fit twice into the length of the Paris-Peking) has the going been so tough. Across deserts like the Karakum, where only lizards and coyotes live, the ever dwindling numbers of frustrated drivers and riders have ventured in search of the ultimate thrill.

Typical of the rally-raiding kind is Koyu Ishihara, a television director from Tokyo. He thought the rally would be too easy so he found himself the smallest car which he felt might just reach Peking. The Subaru was smaller than a Mini, with a 660-horsepower engine, smaller than the motorcycles in the event.

To the sadness of everyone on the rally who had willed him to finish each stage, Ishihara retired on Sunday with gearbox problems. He wept and the rally had lost one of its spiritual focuses.

Sunday marked the end of the first Asian stage of the rally at a tiny hamlet called Koulievoy on the edge of the Karakum desert. The whole village dressed up for the benefit of 300 sweaty competitors trying their hardest to reach the Turkmeni outpost.

On the deep, sandy main street, camera crews and mischievous children mingled in anticipation of the first car out of the dunes. It was a race in itself to reach the dust-covered Citroen. The crowd split. The journalists made for the driver, the children for the passenger door. As cameras whirred, the driver - Hubert Auriol , the winner of the Paris-Cape Town Rally in January - went into interview overdrive.

In the 'passenger' seat, wearing canary yellow fireproof overalls and a pair of ageing sailing shoes, Philippe Monnet, the man who had guided 'L'Africain' across a corner of Asia which closely resembled the Sahara was ignored but for the cluster of children, their noses pressed hard against the perspex window.

'I'm used to Hubert being the centre of attention,' Monnet shrugged. 'The driver is always more in demand.' There was a certain resignation in the voice of a man who reckons he could push the 150mph Citroen to the same limits as some of the others in with a chance of winning the rally in Peking on Sunday week.

Ego and confidence are things he is not short of. In his 33 years he has competed at international level in downhill skiing, show jumping, yachting and now the bizarre world of rally-raids. 'If I died tomorrow I know I have done about as much as I can,' the Frenchman said.

Monnet's exploits include setting the record in 1987 for sailing single-handed around the world in 129 days, 17 hours and in 1990 the Tea Route record between Hong Kong and London, which made him a household name in France. The move to rallying came almost by accident when he navigated for a friend in the Atlas Rally in Tunisia in 1988, and in 1990 he joined up with Auriol.

The following year they won the Pharaohs Rally and then this year's Paris- Cape Town. Things do not look so good in the Paris-Peking though, they are occupying fifth place overall, more than four hours behind the leader, fellow Citroen driver and compatriot, Pierre Lartigue.

Lartigue was 30 minutes ahead of the Mitsubishi driver, Kenjiro Shinozuka, of Japan, after yesterday's 425-mile stage from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to Kashgar. Two other Mitsubishi drivers, France's Bruno Saby and Germany's Erwin Weber, held third and fourth places respectively.

The rate of attrition on the inaugural 'west-east raid' has been higher than even Rene Metge, the rally organiser, had dared predict. He hoped that 60 per cent would make it to Peking on 27 September. They will not. It is now clear that less than half the competitors will complete the 10,000-mile course.

(Photographs omitted)