Adrien Van Beveren: “I thought to myself, ‘this is going to hurt’”

Dakar 2024 | Stage 11 | ALULA > YANBU
January 18 ^th 2024 - 15:59 [GMT + 3]

In the middle of his fight for second place with Ross Branch, the Honda rider was forced to interrupt his progress by a sudden encounter with a herd of dromedaries.

 “There was a herd of a dozen dromedaries right in the middle of the tracks. It’s not unusual to see them, they are desert animals after all. It was one of the very quick main tracks, just after refuelling. When I approached them they moved away to the left, but just as I was accelerating to pass them to the right, one of them had a change of mind and went back to the right-hand side of the tracks. It was too late and I was going too fast. I tried to avoid it but there was a big rock at the edge of the track and I hit it. I don’t know if I hit the dromedary, but there weren’t any there when I picked myself back up. I couldn’t avoid it and went over the handlebars at speed. I thought to myself, ‘this is going to hurt’. I think I landed on my head and cartwheeled over. I was groggy afterwards, but the airbag did a good job protecting me. I picked up my bike, which was a bit damaged, but I managed to finish. I had to slow down a bit towards the end, but I’m ok. I was battling to overtake Ross (Branch) in the general rankings. I was 50 seconds behind this morning and I pushed throughout the special. I lost a lot of time, but I was giving it my all: when the crash happened, I was at 200%. There were a lot of rocks and I wanted to show that it wasn’t a problem, that I’m capable of riding through rocks as well as dunes”.