"Very unfortunate"

Dakar 2019 | Stage 3 | San Juan de Marcona > Arequipa
January 10 ^th 2019 - 19:23 [GMT -5]

After starting the stage in the overall lead, the 2009 champion saw his hopes of a second win 10 years later dashed upon a stone and now trails Nasser Al-Attiyah by 4 h 23.

"We were really unlucky. We were going really well. [I was] slightly in the dust of a quad, I was in the track in third gear and I jumped on the one jump and I landed into the next jump, but in the next jump there was a stone in the track. It hit the guard underneath, which unfortunately broke the engine mounting. So the engine mounting broke, and then the engine fell on the water cooler, and then the water cooler broke and then, you know, we had to stop and repair. It was a long story... But we managed to fix it at the end of the day. You know, very unfortunate, If I'd been maybe 10 k faster I would've jumped over the rock, or 10 km/h it would've been okay, but because we were slightly in the dust of a quad I didn't see the rock, and I saw it at the last minute, and it was in the track, in the road... Very unlucky."