Disaster hit the gruelling Dakar Rally again at the weekend when a Toyota co-driver was killed and a British motorcyclist was rushed to hospital with a suspected ruptured spleen.
Disaster hit the gruelling Dakar Rally again at the weekend when a Toyota co-driver was killed and a British motorcyclist was rushed to hospital with a suspected ruptured spleen.
French co-driver Bruno Cauvy was killed in an accident about 270 km into the stage between Zilla and Sarir on Saturday. The driver, Daniel Nebot, escaped unhurt. The Toyota overturned and 48-year-old Cauvy died by the time medics reached the car.
British motorcyclist Patsy Quick crashed her Honda 650cc in the Egyptian desert during the 11th stage on Sunday. Medics said she had ruptured her spleen and she was taken to hospital in Siwa for surgery.
Meanwhile, a support truck had one of its wheels blown off by a mine as it passed the border between Libya and Egypt on Sunday. None of the team members, Austrians Gunter Pichlbauer and Johann Peter Reif, and Italian Arnaldo Nicoli, were injured.
Japanese driver Kenjiro Shinozuka, who was seriously injured on Thursday when his Nissan overturned, is out of danger after undergoing surgery in Tunis. His co-driver Thierry Delli-Zotti is also recovering well and has returned to France.
South African motorcyclist Alfie Cox, who had to withdraw on Thursday, returned home at the weekend.
It had been initially thought he had just dislocated his shoulder, but he had also cracked his arm. “I rode across what we call a set of waves (small dunes) that got me bouncing up and down.
Eventually I realised I had to bail off and unfortunately I must have hit the oncoming wave with my shoulder,” he said.
Cox said he would be going to Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt to congratulate the winners. “Richard Sainct is on a high this season, after he was out of it for two seasons or so, because he did the entire World Cup Cross Country Rally series last year and I plan to do the same this season. You only learn this game by doing it and practising it day in and day out,” he said.