Dani Nosiglia, who finished 23rd in the prologue stage, suffered a fall today, but fortunately only lost several minutes and then tried to take it easy in difficult conditions to finish the stage in 26th place. Nosiglia is now 25th in the provisional general standings.
Marc Calmet, who finished 62nd in the prologue stage, confirmed at the finish the toughness of the stage and the great difficulty encountered during the day, in a stage of survival, in which he finished 61st. In the general standings, Calmet is in 62nd place provisionally.
Unfortunately, the worst part of the day, among the three Rieju Pedregà Team riders, was taken by Josep Pedró, who arrived in Saudi Arabia very happy to be well prepared physically and mentally, completing the prologue stage without problems, to finish in 40th place overall; but in the first stage, everything turned against him.
First his bike stopped, logically he checked it well, but not finding the problem, he contacted his mechanic ‘Pelut’, who indicated the steps to take, but nothing, he could not find the problem and time was running against him.
He then asked other participants to tow him, but after three attempts and due to the increasingly broken terrain caused by the passing trucks, he fell to the ground on several occasions, and on the last one he fell on his head, hitting his hand and wrist. Seeing that the night was closing in on him, he decided to contact the organisation so that they could rescue him, which they did until he was transported to the bivouac. Once there, they will have to wait for his bike to arrive to try to repair it, with the idea of rejoining the race on tomorrow's stage or the one after.
Daniel Nosiglia:
‘It was a tough first stage, quite tough, I had a small fall at kilometre 60 where I lost several minutes and from then on the rest of the stage I rode in dust and this hurt me a lot, I tried to take care of myself because with the dust you can't see anything, but well happy, because we were able to finish the first stage and we are ready for the next one.’
Marc Calmet:
‘First stage of the Dakar and what a stage, the truth is that it started hard, it was hard, it was all dust, I couldn't overtake, when I did I met another rider, we missed some crossroads, if you wanted to go fast coming from behind it was complicated. Then, in the final part, we found cars and more dust, it was a stage of surviving and trying to get there. Well you can see (showing the broken jacket), it's not a fall, it's the branches of the trees that hit hard here, anyway, I'm happy because physically I'm fine, but it was a long stage for the first one, I think that every day this week will be like that’.
Josep Pedró:
‘What happened is that my bike stopped suddenly, in an area where there was no coverage, in the end I managed to get a local to let me talk to his mobile phone with ‘Pelut’ because they had it, but there was no way, all the options he told me I've been trying, I changed the injector, the spark plug, I checked the fuel pumps ... It seems an electrical problem and it is impossible to repair on track, we will see if we can repair it here, it is a matter of changing parts, cables, to find the fault. When I saw that there was no other option, I tried to get a tow, I tried with three different riders, but it was a very complicated area, as the trucks had passed leaving many ruts, I fell three times and the last one was quite hard, I hit my head and I hurt my wrist and hand, in the end I decided that it made no sense, that if I hurt myself, it would be even worse, broken bike and broken rider, so nothing, I decided to notify the organization as it was getting dark and they came to pick me up.
Now the options I have are to rejoin the race, but we are waiting for the bike to arrive and we have to repair it, but well, I can rejoin in the next three stages, so I think I will do it, if not tomorrow, in the next stage’.
Tomorrow, a very tough second stage 48h Chrono awaits them, with a 45-kilometre liaison and 947 kilometres of special stage.
