Israeli Motorcyclist Alona Ben Natan Will Race Past Dunes and Prejudice at UAE’s Baja World Cup 

The Israeli rider enters the Dubai International Baja aiming for a global title and carrying a message shaped by resilience, loss, and a belief that human connection can survive even when governments clash. 

By Gabriel Colodro/The Media Line 

Alona Ben Natan’s global Baja World Cup season has taken her across forests, rock fields, and plains in Portugal and Spain and will culminate in the dunes of Dubai, a place she considers one of the most demanding environments in the sport. Leading the championship as she heads into the final round, Ben Natan carries not only the pressure of competition but also the accumulated weight of two turbulent years, both for her personally and for any Israeli athlete traveling abroad. 

Dubai’s desert, she says, forces riders to confront the limits of technique and endurance at once. The sand is soft, the dunes unpredictable, the heat punishing. Israel has sand, of course, but nothing like Dubai’s structureless mountains of it. She arrives a week early to train alongside teammates who come from Lebanon, Russia, the Emirates, and Europe, forming a temporary community built around bikes, mechanics, and the discipline of long-distance concentration. “Dubai is one of the toughest races in the whole season,” she said. “I’m ready, I know what’s gonna be there … but sometimes things happen and it doesn’t even depend on you.” 

When Alona Ben Natan explains what a Baja race is, she does so with the calm, methodical precision of someone who has crossed enough deserts to understand that the difficulty of the sport is less about machines and more about consciousness. Off-road rallying, she says, is about tracing a line between points designated by the organizer, navigating at high speed while maintaining an almost meditative focus. “It’s like to find the way and also to be focused on your way and speed and everything together,” she told The Media Line. What sounds simple on paper becomes something closer to a psychological trial when the terrain shifts, the heat rises, and visibility collapses into dust. 

Her descriptions of racing often expand into reflections on coexistence. The team she rides with is a study in political contradiction, yet on the track, these differences become almost invisible. “We are all human,” she said. “When we race together, we forget about politics.” She describes moments in which riders from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel help her fix a bike, share water, or offer advice. She added a deeper reflection about this dynamic: “Most of the time I feel that people genuinely want to connect, just like I feel with teammates from other countries on my team, and that it’s the governments who are fighting, not the people.” For her, these small collaborations in the desert reveal a human logic that feels increasingly rare elsewhere. 

That sense of shared purpose contrasts with the weight of being a pioneer. Ben Natan is the first Israeli woman to compete in major rallies in Morocco and Dubai, and the visibility that accompanies it is both empowering and exhausting. She began off-road riding only six years ago, almost by accident. “If they can do it, why can’t I?” she remembered thinking. She rose quickly through domestic races in Israel, then short European rallies, then the international circuit. With that growth came a predictable kind of noise. “People were criticizing: this is not a sport for a woman, or she’s not that good, or how did she get all these sponsors?” she said. “Most of the time it’s the guys.” 

She resists turning these comments into drama; instead, she frames them as the static anyone hears when breaking into a space that was not built for them. What matters more to her are the messages she receives from young girls and their parents who follow her races and want to meet her. Ben Natan’s 10-year-old son describes her proudly at school and listens to her stories about navigating Morocco or crossing hot valleys in the Middle East. “I feel like an ambassador,” she said, not with self-importance but with the sober awareness that visibility can turn into guidance for others. Recently, she became the first Israeli member of the Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) Women’s Committee, where she hopes to encourage more women and girls to enter a sport traditionally dominated by men. 

The psychological dimension of her journey deepened after Oct. 7. She was racing in Portugal that day, far from home but connected to events in Israel through the first fragments of video and the shock that followed. “I was in complete shock,” she said. “It was very hard for me being there when my family is here and I don’t really know what’s going on.” She finished third in the race, but canceled Dubai that year. “We were all upset,” she said. “I have friends who died on the 7th of October. You don’t really feel comfortable to go to another country when you know that your friends are fighting and dying every day.” 

Her social media presence also shifted. She lost followers, received harsh messages, and even heard from other athletes who sent anti-Israel comments. She refused to respond. “I come to every race as an athlete, very neutral,” she said. “I don’t enter provocations.” Yet neutrality does not erase the emotional impact. When she helped a Kuwaiti athlete during a race, pulling her out of a deep hole in the terrain, she later received a long anti-Israel message from the same rider. “It was very upsetting,” she said. “Really, are you entering politics into this sport as well?” 

More recently, she faced a barrier that affected more than her feelings: a denied visa to Qatar. She had been scheduled to race there three weeks ago and had already purchased tickets. A formal letter from the FIM asked Qatari organizers to help with her entry, but nothing worked. Missing the race meant losing crucial championship points. “I was very upset,” she said. “Sport should be a neutral zone.” 

Dubai, in contrast, has been accommodating, though precautions remain. “The main organizer called me and asked if it was fine that during the race they don’t put my nationality, just regarding security,” she said. She understood immediately. Safety comes first, and the goal is to finish the race, not to provoke audiences with geopolitics. At the same time, she refuses to hide who she is. “I’m proud of being Israeli and I’m proud that I’m Jewish,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what’s going on around.” 

What she wants others to see when she races is not an Israeli symbol or a political actor but a human being performing a difficult craft with integrity. When asked what message she hopes to send by competing—and winning—in some of the world’s toughest off-road events, she answered with a clarity that reflects her larger philosophy. “We are all human … we want peace, we all have families at home, we want to go home safe,” she said. “Be polite to other people, smile, enjoy, and just give good energy and vibes.” 

Her world is one of long distances, soft sand, mechanical failures, and split-second choices, but also of improbable alliances and moments of unexpected respect. As she enters the Dubai International Baja leading the global championship, she carries both the fragility and the resilience of the past two years, alongside a belief that the desert can still be a place where people meet without preconditions.