Ouarzazte – Tantan
4th January 2006
Team Touratech rider Nick Plumb awoke at around 4am ready for another punishing 350km special stage. After experiencing a bad crash yesterday, the Touratech UK Managing Director was expecting to have to ride today’s stage on a badly damaged bike.
“I woke up in the morning and found that overnight my mechanic Bernie had worked a miracle” said Plumb “I have been very lucky that Battersea BMW let Bernie have the time off to support me. He has done an amazing job so far”
Unfortunately, today’s stage wasn’t any luckier for Nick. Forty Kilometres into the special stage he had another crash.
“I didn’t know why I crashed” said Plumb “ but I later found that my front tyre moose had started to break up and looking back this is probably what made me crash. I wasn’t going too fast at the time so I got away unhurt”
After the problem with the Moose and yesterdays crash, Plumb decided to take it easy for a while and started to follow a truck along with a few other riders. This proved to be a bad decision as the truck got hopelessly lost and the group ended up approximately 10km off course. The truck then decided to cross over some very rocky ground to get back on route and most of the bikes (including Plumb) followed. Unfortunately, the rocks made it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead and while still trying to keep up with the truck Nick’s bike plunged into a hole damaging his front brake hose. This knocked out his front brake and also damaged his throttle hosing, gear lever and brake pedal.
“I couldn’t believe my bad luck after yesterdays crash” said Plumb “The other guys who were also following the truck helped me to get my bike out of the hole and after they did we got back on course”
“I rode by myself for a while and about 50km from the end of the special stage I saw one of the Race to Dakar bikes. It was Simon Pavey who was my team-mate on the last three Dakar Rallies. I noticed on his bike that there was no front brake calliper and tried to shout to him that I had the same problem. I don’t think he realised that I had no front brake either until we both tried to stop!”
The former team-mates finished the rest of the stage together. At the end of the special stage Nick fuelled up and noticed that his moose had got worse. Shortly into the 282km liaison stage the moose finally gave up altogether and as Nick entered a corner his tyre came off the wheel rim.
“I was only doing about 50-60km when it happened,” said Nick. “Had I been doing 120km, which we normally do on the roads, I don’t know what would have happened. At the speed I was doing I managed to slow it down enough to crash into a ditch without any serious damaged. A local police car was following me at the time and it stopped to help. I’ve never been so happy to see a police car! Within what seemed like minutes, another police car and the Race to Dakar car had turned up and they all helped me to get the tyre off and I fitted an inner tube and set off again”
Scared that the wheel rim may have been damaged Plumb rode carefully for the rest of the liaison stage worried that the tyre may come off again. Forty Kilometres from the end of the stage the sun went down and it was then that Plumb noticed that he had also damaged the front lights in the day’s first crash so had to follow cars and trucks to the end of the stage.
“I have to be up at 1am tomorrow” said Plumb at 10pm local time “so I’m leaving the bike with Bernie again and hopefully he’ll work his magic and I can have a better ride tomorrow”
After a second bad day for Plumb he still managed to battle through and end up as the top BMW rider for the fourth time in five stages putting him in 93rd position overall ahead of Race to Dakar riders Simon Pavey (126th), Matt Hall (113th) and Charley Boorman (115th).
Contrary to the comments made at the end of last nights (4th Jan) Eurosport coverage Nick has NOT pulled out of the Euromilhoes Dakar Rallye 2006.