Giniel De Villiers: “Opening the road was difficult”

Dakar 2020 | Stage 3 | Neom > Neom
January 7 ^th 2020 - 16:45 [GMT + 3]

After a prominent performance yesterday, Giniel De Villiers lost ground today. The South African finished ninth on the third stage, sixteen minutes behind Carlos Sainz, and drops down to seventh place in the general standings.

“It was not easy. The stages are quite tricky and obviously opening the road was difficult this morning because you need to make sure that you take the right tracks. Sometimes you have bikes going in the wrong direction and it makes it very stressful. Nasser and Carlos caught me and then Al Qassimi had a really big crash right in front of us, so we stopped and called the helicopter for him. On the last part, I just followed them to the finish. It was really tricky navigation once more, but I managed to follow them quite easily, though, for sure, Nasser and Carlos were going really fast today. It's a new challenge and today had some really beautiful landscapes. It was a beautiful stage, for sure”.