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Mauro Prosperi: Survival Stories From The Olympic Athlete Who Spent 10 Days In The Sahara Desert

Courtesy of Mauro ProsperiMauro Prosperi and another racer during the 1994 Marathon des Sables before his disappearance.

One of the most harrowing survival stories involves a former Olympic pentathlete named Mauro Prosperi.

In 1994, the then-39-year-old took part in the Marathon des Sables, a six-day race covering 155 miles through the Sahara Desert. The competition was known as one of the toughest of its kind. But with Prosperi’s background as a former police officer and Olympic pentathlete, he felt like he could handle anything the desert threw at him.

But the competition’s terrain was famously challenging — and potentially deadly. Participants in the race were actually required to fill out a form stating where their body should be sent in case they didn’t make it. To prepare his body for dehydration, Prosperi ran 25 miles every day and practiced drinking less water. Still, his wife was worried.

“The worst that can happen is that I get a bit sunburned,” Prosperi recalled telling her. But as it turned out, Prosperi ran into far more trouble than that.

The race kicked off at the starting point in Morocco. At first, Prosperi was off to a good start, but by the fourth day, he ran into a big problem. A strong sandstorm that came out of nowhere engulfed him, hitting his face “like a storm of needles.” He managed to crouch into a sheltered space and waited until the storm passed to get back up. The sandstorm roared on for hours.

The next morning, Prosperi woke up on the sand and found himself disoriented as the storm had altered the landscape. He had a compass and a map, but was unable to get his bearings. At that point, he had plenty of dehydrated food in his backpack. But he only had half a bottle of water left.

Courtesy of Mauro ProsperiProsperi survived on drinking his own urine and eating raw lizards until he was rescued.

Realizing the severity of the situation, Mauro Prosperi quickly urinated into an extra empty bottle as a precaution, a trick he learned from his veteran grandfather. He conserved as much energy as possible, walking only in the early morning and evening when temperatures were cooler. When he needed a break, he rested in places that were sheltered from the heat.

After a couple of days, Prosperi came upon a marabout — a Muslim shrine that was typically used by Bedouins who were traveling through the desert. He ate some of his rations, which he cooked with fresh urine, and started drinking his bottled urine on the fourth day.

At one point, he captured 20 bats from the roof of the shrine and ate them raw for sustenance. But after days of failing to attract aircrafts that had flown by, Prosperi fell into deep despair and slit his wrists. He hoped that his dead body would be found inside the shrine and his wife could collect his police pension. But at that point, his blood was so thick that it didn’t drain — and he took it as a sign that he was meant to survive.

He continued his journey through the desert for a few more days, killing snakes and lizards, which he also ate raw. Prosperi grew so dehydrated that he was unable to urinate anymore — so he drank the juice from succulents he found. On the ninth day, Mauro Prosperi finally reached a Berber settlement, where local women gave him goat’s milk.

After police picked him up and brought him to their headquarters, Prosperi discovered that he had walked all the way to Algeria, roughly 181 miles away from where he was supposed to be. It took him two years before he was able to fully recover from the incident. Despite this agonizing experience, he competed in at least eight more desert races after that.

“My wife was a saint,” he said. “She coped with me for many years but at a certain point, because of my lifestyle, we decided to split up. We are still best friends, maybe more so now than when we were married. I have a new partner but she knows I am a man on a mission. I can’t change.”

After reading these incredible survival stories, check out some crucial survival tips we hope you’ll never have to use and read 12 remarkable Titanic survivor stories that reveal the true scope of the tragedy.

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