Zouerat – Atar
6th January 2006
Stage 7 of the 28th Dakar Rallye was all about the special stage. With a short liaison of 10km at the start of the day and 12km at the end the competitors knew that the 499km special was going to be hard.
“This is my fourth Dakar,” said Nick after a long day in the saddle “and I can honestly say that this is the hardest Dakar stage I have EVER done. For some reason the organisers decided to let the slower riders out first and the fast guys last. I set off with Simon and Matt [the Race to Dakar riders] and the guys who are running at the front caught up and overtook us pretty quickly. We also overtook loads of the slower guys. There was a lot of overtaking going on out there today and it got pretty scary in places”
Although Nick started the stage on a near perfect bike (mechanic Bernie had worked through the night to amazing results) he did experience problems on the gruelling sand dunes. Due to the sheer difficulty of the dunes speeds were decreased by so much that many of the bikes, including Nicks, started to overheat and boil over.
“I lost at least an hour in the dunes” said Nick “I had to keep stopping to let the bike cool down, but I made it. I managed to complete the whole stage in the daylight, which made a change, but there are still loads of bikes and cars that haven’t got in yet. It’s almost 9:30pm and the bivouac is really empty”
“It might have been the hardest Dakar stage I’ve done but I enjoyed it a lot. I also managed to stay on the bike so hopefully Bernie can have an easy night tonight”
Tomorrow sees another difficult special stage before the competitors can enjoy a rest day on Sunday.
Despite being the most challenging day yet on the Dakar Rallye Nick managed to claw back the places lost over the past three unlucky stages and now sits in 74th place overall with Race to Dakar riders Simon Pavey in 115th and Matt Hall in 113th.