Dakar 2017: “Long, painful, dusty”

Sherco TVS rider Pedrero Garcia started the day first on the road after his stage victory on day two’s 29km stage and he finished the day ninth fastest – another strong showing for the small French-Indian outfit taking on the might factory teams from KTM, Honda and Yamaha.

Aravind KP who broke two bones in his left palm in a fall on day two obviously wasn’t (and couldn’t) ride at 100 per cent. The target for him is to ride through the pain threshold and just finish the Dakar. While he did drop way down the order to finish the stage in 125th position he didn’t lose all those places just because of his injury. 70km from the finish his teammate Metge was stranded with a blown engine and Aravind towed Metge for the remaining 70km of the stage and then the 100km transport. That is the Dakar spirit.

Said Aravind: “The first part of the stage was very bumpy and with a broken wrist, I can’t grip my bike properly. And because I can’t go fast a lot of the slow guys are going ahead of me and there’s a lot of dust and it is blinding me.”

Tomorrow is an even longer, even tougher stage and Aravind will have his work cut out.