Deep in the Dust: On the Dakar trail

Bruce Garland was forced to withdraw overnight - the back pain he had shrugged off to complete yesterday’s stage more serious then he’d let on. The ever stoic Garland now lies in hospital with a broken vertebrae.

Today, it was Warren Strange who departed the bivouac. Riding side-by-side with Jacob Smith, Strange lost control after hitting a washout, and crashed heavily onto his already damaged shoulder.

He was taken from the stage by helicopter to hospital, where he’s in good spirits but in some pain.

Jacob Smith rode side by side with Strange for much of the stage, after his GPS failed and the duo shared navigation. Smith was right behind Strange when he crashed.

“He came over a little rise and it just g’d out. Went side to side and then shot him out, it was like slow motion for me, there was nothing I could do,” a tired Smith said.

"I sort of thought he’d be ok because the bike only came down on the low side, but he landed badly and popped his shoulder out.

“He’s alright, he didn’t hit his head or anything, and he tried to get me to put his shoulder in before the chopper came but he was in too much pain,” Smith explained.

After referring to yesterday as ‘the toughest day I’ve had on a bike’, Smith was shattered after today’s stage. “It’s just relentless this race,” he said simply. “Absolutely crazy.”

Smith said no warning was ever going to be enough to prepare for the Dakar, “You can’t prepare yourself for what you’re going to go through till you come here and do it. I came here with the attitude that nothing was going to surprise me and i knew it would be tough, but you just can’t prepare for it.

“You hear all the stories and you think ‘oh yeah’, but you just don’t know til you get here. Maybe if I was out in clear air and could ride my own race it would be ok, but you’re not.

"There’s one problem after another, and you’re always catching guys and getting caught in their dust, and it’s nothing to do with me, I only crashed once and it didn’t even hurt, it’s just one of those things.

“When you’re in dust and back there, you can’t race. You just can’t race the race, you just have to ride it. You can’t ride like you do in Safari or you have what happened to Warren. I’m so over this place.

"There is so much that can catch you, so much. You have a hundred moments a day, where you go ‘urgh!’. Like you’re going over a flat and then it’s just a big drop off, and then the next thing and there’ll be a huge rock you miss by a millimetre,” Smith said, trailing off at the end.

Simon Pavey had an off of his own today, but luckily survived. The Dakar veteran used his experience to navigate through an area that confused many others, in the process picking up time. He sits 71st after finishing 47th on today’s stage.

The Coconut race team are still out on stage, and will be for some time, another massive night for Geoff and Steve who only made it back to the bivouac at 5.30am this morning...and started today’s marathon stage just four hours later!

Tomorrow brings a much needed rest day to the Dakar bivouac.