Cycle News

INTERVIEW DAKAR RALLY FINISHER RICKY BRABEC P86 hours away]! People are pulled over on both sides of the road to wave at you and wave their flags. It's wild, for sure. But Spectators Are Under Control Spectators on the course, everything's controlled, I guess you could say. Like in Mexico you have people out in the middle of nowhere, well you get that in the rally, too, but there are spectator zones and each night they tell you where the spectator zones are and each spectator zone has cops every 100 feet, every 100 meters or whatever, keeping the people behind the ribbon and banners that they put up so the spectators aren't on the course. The cops really have it under control out there. That's crazy. They have 12 helicopters flying over the bikes the whole time. It's so wild. Safe For Certain The safety there is freaking crazy. There's a sensor on your motorcycle that if it's laying down for 30 seconds it beeps and then the IriTrack people get ahold of you. If you fall over and you're struggling to pick up the bike that's full of fuel and it starts beeping, you've got to push the green button to tell them you're okay. When you fall over or when you crash and you're completely fine—I crashed five times the exact same way, like I slid out; and 30 seconds goes by pretty quick. By the time you slide out and get to your bike, your buzzer's already going off. It's crazy. Wrapping It Up It was an adventure, for sure. Every day was learning some- thing new. Every day I was realizing what I had forgot [from the day before]. Every day I was telling myself, "Man, back at home if I would've done this, this would've been easier today." Everything was a learning curve, for sure out there. Chris Blais said back when he raced it [in 2007 and got third overall bike, he looked at it like], it's like a whole series in one single race. To not make a mis- take, that's impossible because there are days when you're on the bike 10 hours, minimum. (More if you're slow or have problems.) Leaving the bivouac at 4:00 A.M. and not getting back until 6:00 P.M., the last three days were very hard for me to concentrate on the road book because you've been looking at it for two weeks and the last few days were definitely pretty hard. Also, the hardest part I think of Dakar is the liaisons. When you have to wake up at 3:00 A.M. and you have a liaison that's 480 kilometers (almost 300 miles be- fore you start the timed special stage), that takes a lot out of you because at 4:00 A.M. you're on the motorcycle riding down the highway. That alone takes so much out of you! It was a great experience and now I think next year I'll be prepared. CN Brabec is already looking forward to next year's rally.

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