2020 DAKAR RALLY WINNER RICKY BRABEC
P60
Interview
The rally seemed easy for me
and I believe that's because the
training. I spent three days a
week, three roadbooks a week
training in the Mojave Desert
with Jimmy. I didn't even go to
the gym that much because I
was just living in the desert and
putting in the work from sun-
up to sundown. I was getting
irritated almost every day with
Jimmy. I was pissed off. I wasn't
even confident before the rally,
because I felt like Jimmy and
Johnny ran me into the ground.
But after the first couple days [of
the race] I was like, "Oh wow."
On the third day, I gave it every-
thing and made up like 18 min-
utes. Everything flowed so good,
and it just felt like it was way too
easy. Like I was just trail riding.
Cyril Despres (five-time
Dakar Rally winner) pointed
out that you're now a member
of an extremely elite group.
Only 14 other people in his-
tory have ever won the Dakar
Rally, and most of them have
won it multiple times. It seems
that once you have the recipe
for victory, the wins will keep
coming. Is that your hope?
Yeah, I think my year is going
to be a bit easier so I'm excited
about that. Because the years
before, you work so hard to try to
find out how to win, and now that
we won, we know exactly what to
do to win. I guess the thinking is
going to be easier because now
we have it all written down on pa-
per what we need to do to make
it happen. I'm really excited for
that. Now I can start my program
exactly where I left off instead of
finding all these different ways to
try to make it happen. Now that
we won, we know what it takes.
We're going to do our best to go
back and do it again. CN
The rally's new
location in Saudi
Arabia helped to
equalize the field,
according to
Brabec.
