Mitchel Van den Brink: “We were pushing all day”

Dakar 2025 | Stage 9 | RIYADH > HARADH
January 14 ^th 2025 - 17:26 [GMT + 3]

Mitchel Van den Brink thought he was in with a chance of winning the stage on his 23rd birthday but finally lost out on victory to Ales Loprais in the last few kilometres of the special that took the competitors to Haradh. The Dutchman has only lost one minute and 29 seconds to his Czech rival, who is still third in the general rankings. The battle between the two men for second place promises to be ferocious.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t win today because we were searching for a way point. That wasn’t nice and we lost some time there but overall, it was not that much, so we’re still happy too. We we’re pushing all day, we were leading and then we missed something and were searching for the way point, so we lost some time there. It was very dusty and we couldn’t see where we needed to go. We were searching and then he opened a gap on us, so I think Loprais won today”.