Jan 3 - The Dakar is renowned as one of the world’s great motor sport adventures: a race through dunes and deserts to the Senegalese capital. But any competitors speeding through the West African city will find themselves 3,000 miles off course as the 30th edition of the rally begins today – in Argentina.

Critics say that the race should be renamed The Buenos Aires after the French organisers abandoned their traditional route through Africa and shipped the 530 competing vehicles to South America in response to threats from al-Qaeda.

The Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), the French group that stages the race, said that Africa had become too high a risk and hinted that a return to the continent was unlikely in the near future.

Officials in the Francophone African countries say that the decision will cost them millions of euros in tourist revenue and damage their image.

Senegal described the move as an "immense loss".

African critics are particularly angry at ASO for continuing to call it Le Dakar even though it will take place on another continent. Étienne Lavigne, the race director, said that it was the legal name and a change was not required. "I would even say that its name has never been more appropriate. This year we will once again see everything which made it a success, which is to say discovery, adventure and the unknown," he said.

A total of 82 lorries, 188 cars, 230 motorcycles and 30 quads will take part in the 5,951-mile (9,580km) race through Argentina and Chile. The 15-day rally will start and finish in Buenos Aires and take in the Andes, Atacama desert and the Patagonian pampas on a route that organisers say will prove as gruelling as the Sahara.

Among the competitors is Stéphane Peterhansel, who has won the race nine times, and Carlos Sainz, twice world rally champion, along with amateurs including Christian Califano and Philippe Bernat-Salles, both former French rugby internationals.

The race has attracted criticism as a dangerous display of Western arrogance. Opponents point out that thirty-two competitors, seven journalists and about twenty African villagers, including nine children, have been killed since the first race in 1979. The Stop Rallye Dakar campaign says the same fate awaits the Mapuche, the indigenous inhabitants of Chile and Argentina. Senegal’s National Agency for the Promotion of Tourism said that the move to South America would cost it €2 million (£1.9 million) in revenue. "It’s unacceptable to create a doubt about our security," an official said.

Mr Lavigne said: "Unfortunately, the news from Africa is terribly dramatic. I would remind you that al-Qaeda is still talked about a lot. Last September 12 Mauritanian soldiers were kidnapped and decapitated in a place to which we had been to 30 times."

Last year’s Dakar rally was cancelled after four French tourists were murdered in Mauritania and al-Qaeda in North Africa threatened further attacks on French people.