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General Moto | Off-Topic Posts
Dakar has started...Yam 450 2 wheel in first!!
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[QUOTE="Tony Eeds, post: 717347, member: 32023"] [b][i]Rest Day[/i][/b] (Readers: First of all, thanks to contributors that have helped me come across cool information and links to include in these summaries - keep em coming! Second, especially you short women out there, make sure you read PG Lundmark's comments at the end of today's posting. Amazing. Tough and guts does not describe.) Restday at Bobo Dioulasso, 12.January 2004 The sun is burning and the thermometer climbed to 39° Celsius in the shadow. One can hardly feel the breeze. There is no cloud in the sky. Doesn't that sound like a perfect vacation day? No. One is missing the sound of waves and there is no relaxing in the shadow underneath a palm tree. The riders rest, the mechanics are busy. Manel Salinas is Roma's mechanic: "Today no part of the bike will stay untouched. I have stripped the motorbike down to the frame. Now I'm looking for cracks and other damage. That is what I'm going to look for on every other part. After everything is cleaned I putt he motorbike back together. Actually, this is pretty simple, just like playing with Lego. Only the engine will be changed as a whole. The old one has perfectly worked, but fort he second part of the rally a new one will have to be used." What about the riders? They've got time to relax, at least the factory team riders do. Nani Roma: "I'm washing my clothes, which is something I never have time to do otherwise. Further we'll go to a restaurant enjoy our time eating and talking. Additionally I'll still have to write my road book for tomorrow." Marc Coma: "I'm doing laundry today, too. And I'm going to have a nice massage." Richard Sainct: "I'm going to see the doctors. The injury on my arm heals very slowly, but my subscription of antibiotics is almost all gone." Ralf Pariasek, medical assistant: "The danger of an infection has passed. Luckily, nothing has happened and Richard won't have to worry about any troubles resulting from the injury. He will still have to take some pain killers. That is why the rest day is especially important for Richard. Finally he gets to relax his arm. For us it is unbelievable how he can go on with an injury like that. He really is an tough boy. To tell you the truth, neither one of the others is mentally as strong as Richard." (I don't this this is HIPPA acceptable.) And the physiotherapist is also busy: "I need to keep an eye on everyone to make sure they sleep, eat and drink enough so their energy will revive." Fretigne: "I loved going through villages - the welcome the thousands of children gave us was just amazing," commented the multiple French champion. "They waved at you and if you wave back they all applauded you - it was really amazing - I must have ridden 500 kilometres with my arms in the air! I wanted to stop and give them my energy bars but there was just too many of them." Alfie Cox: "I think tomorrow's stage could be quite quick - more like a WRC stage than a traditional rallye-raid stage. After that there are only 3 real stages left on the rallye. The Spanish KTM team have an advantage in that they have two water carriers - Esteve Pujol and Coma - to support Roma. I think Fabrizio will stop to help me but he is on a different bike and can only supply me with wheels. As far as the French team is concerned it is clear that Cyril won't be happy to stay where he is, and as he is only 14 minutes behind me I will have to watch out." Hans Trunkenpolz, team coordinator KTM: "Concerning the motorcycles, we can be satisfied: Only once did we have trouble with an engine, but that was due to a crash. The problems with the tires were owed to the material so it had nothing to do with us. Besides that our material has endured the high stress of the rally very well." Didn't translate well, but he blames the tire failures on the tires, not the huge (and powerful) motorcycle driving them. OTOH, nice to see a Rally without a lot of mechanical breakdowns. In the car race, the Dakar enters its second week the pit consensus is that the race is Mitsubishi's to lose. With Stephane Peterhansel and Hiroshi Masuoka well clear of the field, third-placed Jean Louis Schlesser knows that while he may not match the top pair for speed, his Ford's reliability could be the key to another Dakar victory. Schlesser: "Under 'normal' circumstances the Mitsubishis are untouchable and I won't be able to move up the ranking unless they run into problems. On the other hand this race is not just about speed, it is also about endurance and it that respect I think we have the edge on them; they have been having a lot of gearbox problems" Peterhansel: "The second week of the race will not be easy at all. There are four or five stages which are not too long, but they are likely to be very hard. Remember last year, it can all go wrong at any time and we must all concentrate. For sure, I will be under some pressure." Team mate Masuoka confirmed that he would be hot on Peterhansel's heels after being given "nothing at all" in the way of team orders. He also entered the debate over the three marathon stages between Tan-Tan and Néma, branding them too hard for all but the top teams. "Yes they were too difficult for the drivers at the back of the field. For me they were not too bad, but the Dakar organizers should also think about the other entrants and the mechanics and assistance teams." With the three days of no racing, there is not much to report. Here is something: "Really, there is no reason to worry." Mali sought on Saturday to soothe fears of insecurity after reports of armed gangs roaming the nation's borders forced the cancellation of stages 10 and 11 of the Dakar rally. The rally organisers preferred to not risk the safety of its competitors by diverting the caravan South instead of heading East into Mali. "We have taken security measures, our troops are on the ground, they control the whole area. Really, there is no reason to worry," said Colonel Salif Traore of the rally's Malian organising committee. Traore did not confirm the presence of armed gangs along the desert border but large swathes of the burning Sahara desert are lawless no-man's lands, where opportunistic bandits and former rebels sometimes seek refuge. "As soon as you have information that there are elements in a border zone, whatever their intentions, it is wiser to take conservative measures," Traore said. "Even if there are bandits, we have enough security and armed forces to keep them under control and eventually kick them out of the country." In 2000, four stages of the event run from Dakar to Cairo were cancelled after warnings that Algerian Islamic guerrillas were planning an ambush in Niger, one of Mali's neighbours. Mali also sits on Algeria's southern border and hit headlines in August when 14 European hostages who had been held in the Sahara for five months by Algerian militants were released to Malian authorities. Final comments from PG Lundmark: [url]http://www.pgdakar.com/race/2004_dakar/en/dagar/dag_11_en.html[/url] There are hard people, like my former colleague Göte Jonsson, shredder driver for Sveaskog timber. I have seen him bend a crowbar, OK? Then there are other tough persons, like the Japanese girl Yuki Tanaka, the only woman left in the race. She looks small and fragile, but this is just a front. Yesterday we shared a tent and when she undressed to go to bed I saw that her arms and what I could see of her legs had a deep blue colour. Now, I don't know what colour they usually are, but blue didn't seem right, even if I don't get to see lightly clad Japanese every day. I asked what bike she was riding and she answered a KTM 660 and I asked if she had crashed. She answered: "Many, many, many times", and then added with tears in her voice that she had missed a control point and was afraid to be disqualified. When I told her she would already have got a three hour penalty for it, she looked as if she'd won in the lottery. I was impressed by this tiny little power package, with the right will and attitude. And she must be able to ride as well, otherwise she wouldn't have got this far, like the Swedish rider Maria Sandell who was the only female to finish here in 2002. (130 Yuki Tanaka (Japan), is 5' 2" and 115 lbs, riding a KTM 660 in this year's Rally, still.) There is an interesting development for the rest of the race until we reach Lac Rosé. None of the riders in front of me and Pål is willing to accept anything but victory, meaning some of them will overdo it and fall by the wayside. At the same, neither Pål nor I say anything about our respective placings, but we may start to compete against each other, increasing the risk that one of us falls out. But I know that we have never had such a good position for the last half as we do this year. If we reach the finish without major problems we will win the team competition and a minibike. We have just agreed that the one of us with the worst result, will get the bike. We both feel we need one, so it may end with the two us riding ever slower, just to get the bike. Only one team is in front of us and that is Gauloises with Sainct and Despres. I suggested, half for fun, that we try to ride on safety, but was told off by Ullevålsäter: "No old-age manners here now!" My plans for putting a 10-amp fuse in the brains were killed at an early stage. So now it's back to a 2-inch steel nail to the bitter, or hopefully sweet end. The advantage with riding with a 2-inch nail is that you never have to ask yourself, how you would have finished if you'd given it everything. You get the answer at the finish. Your very own charter tourist Sigurd Per Gunnar Lundmark in Burkina Faso Tomorrow, they start racing again: Stage 12 BOBO-DIOULASSO > BAMAKO Liaison 85 km Special 213 km Liaison 368 km Total 666 km Large sections of tomorrow's 12th stage pass through tropical forests. The officials of the rally have pronounced it to be a fast track. The finish is located at Bamako, the Malian capitol. Tom Warr [/QUOTE]
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General Moto | Off-Topic Posts
Dakar has started...Yam 450 2 wheel in first!!
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