Dakar2012: Day 9 from Bikes in the Fast Lane

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Dakar2012: Day 9

January
2012

  File under Dakar Race
  Author: Mike Werner
  Location: Normandy, France

Day 9 saw the incredible and scary sand dune of Iquique, a monster of a dune that would make any downhill skier green of envy, but now the Dakar

racers needed to ride it down on their motorcycle after the longest stage of the whole race. Not an easy accomplishment.

Day 9 saw the motorcycles racing in sand and fesh-fesh for some 500 kms, and Cyril Despres

regained the lead from Marc Coma

, but you can see that both racers are tired.

One more day, and they are on the final stretch, and into Peru, a first.

Marc Coma: "We knew that this would be difficult today. It was a long special and there was plenty of navigation to deal with. We’re not coming to the crunch part of the rally. Cyril is a major rival and we do battle over every single kilometer. But I think it’s interesting, its sport."

Cyril Despres: "Obviously I started this morning with the firm intention of pulling back some lost time. Unfortunately things didn’t go quite according to plan as I got stuck behind another rider for over 100 kilometres! Still I finished the first special about three and a half minutes up. Then on the second special both Marc and I attacked very hard. So hard in fact that we took about seven minutes off third placed man Barreda in 90 kilometres - and he’s a quick moto-x rider! Physically I didn’t feel too bad on the bike, after yesterday’s excursions in the mud, but now, having arrived at the bivouac I’m feeling pretty stiff all over."

Here are the photos of yesterday. courtesy KTM

and Maragni M.

. Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them after they have all fully loaded