“Everyone wants to beat you”
RIDER FACTS
- Ricky Brabec comes to his 10th Dakar in 2025 as defending champion in the highly competitive bikes class.
- Five years ago, he became the very first American to win the Dakar (a few hours before Casey Currie and Sean Berriman also took victory in the SSV class).
- Born to bike racing parents, Ricky took up BMX at the age of five. He later tried motocross but soon realised he was best suited to desert racing. It no doubt helped growing up in the California city of Hesperia, which is surrounded by the Mojave Desert.
- After signing for THR Motorsports in 2011, Ricky decided to knuckle down and really focus on his riding career, partying less and training more. His investment soon began to pay off; in 2014, he won the San Felipe 250, Baja 500, Baja 1000 and Vegas to Reno.
- In early 2015, American offroad legend Quinn Cody called to ask if he would be interested in trying rally-raid. Ricky came fifth at his very first event, the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, which earned him a factory deal with Honda for Dakar 2016. He has been with the team ever since, and in 2020 became the first biker to win the Dakar on a Honda since Gilles Lalay in 1989.
- In 2024, Ricky became the 13th biker to win multiple Dakar titles. He is now hoping to become just the eighth to win it in consecutive years.
- His partner Sara Price did her maiden Dakar last year (4th in SSVs) and is set to return in 2025.
- Ricky is also targeting the W2RC crown in 2025. He missed two rounds of this year's championship (Honda didn't go to Abu Dhabi, and sponsor obligations prevented him attending Portugal), but still finished fourth in the standings thanks to victories at the Dakar and Desafio Ruta 40.
- He was in the frame for the world title at the season-ending Rallye du Maroc but suffered a heavy impact in his right leg on Stage 1 and had to abandon. Luckily, he avoided major injury.
2025 AMBITIONS
R.B.: “My knee and ligaments are 100% fine, which was the scary part after my crash in Morocco. It does suck that there's still an injury and I couldn’t continue the rally, but it's small compared to having a whole knee replacement or ligament damage. The only downside is how it affects my training, but there's other things I can do off the bike. I feel like it might almost be better to be in this situation. Sometimes we train so hard when we're at 100%, that by the time the Dakar comes around we're kind of burned out. I was really happy with my riding last year. At the previous Dakar in 2023 I crashed, so I kind of wanted revenge on that. Our new bike is super awesome, really comfortable and nice to ride. I also feel like the route at Dakar 2024 was just a lot better suited to my riding style, it was a proper offroad motorcycle and car route. Everyone asks me, where do you go training for the Dakar if it's all sand dunes? But we're not stuck in the sand dunes all day for two weeks. It's really cool that we can go from rocks to dunes to fast flowy rivers back to the tracks. I like how we can have that variety all in one day. And where I live and train every week is like that too, a mix of everything. To get a first Dakar victory or even a podium is not easy, people might say you got lucky. To get a second one is not easy. So to get three is definitely not going to be easy, especially after winning in 2024. You have a big target on your back and everyone wants to beat you. To back up what I did in 2024 and get three wins would be really awesome. In 2025 I want to chase the W2RC title and do every single event.”
