Coma ye faithful!
By TMX Archives on 21st Jan 11
Spaniard Marc Coma maintained his composure over the closing stages to claim his third outright victory in the 33rd Personal Dakar Argentina-Chile and equal the number of wins set by arch rival Cyril Despres last year.
Victorious in 2006 and 2009, Coma rode a controlled race on his new 450 KTM. He never took risks and won the battle of cat and mouse with Despres once the Frenchman had made a navigational mistake and ruined his chance of taking a fourth crown.
The Catalan rider eventually reached the finish at La Rural in Buenos Aires with a comfortable advantage of 15-min 04-sec over Despres.
"I focused on my riding style,” said Coma. "It was the only way to get the win. It has been very hard. There was never any time to relax. When you finished a tough day, the next was even tougher. There has been a lot of tension in recent days.”
Despres was disappointed to be second: "When you are second, you always want the race to be longer. The feeling to finish the Dakar is always nice, but I am sad that I could not do better. I have contested 11 Dakars, won three and ended eight times on the podium. One more would have been great, but I made some mistakes with heavy consequences.”
Chile's Francesco ‘Chaleco' Lopez outlined his pedigree by holding third position for much of the race. The Aprilia rider began the final stage virtually assured of the final podium place, but he suffered a cruel rear shock absorber failure on the last special stage and the delay handed third overall to Portugal's Helder Rodrigues on his Yamaha. Lopez even stopped again soon afterwards with electrical maladies.
Spain's Juan Pedrero Garcia finished fifth on his KTM and Norway's Pal-Anders Ullesvalseter completed the top six.
Great Britain's Craig Bounds (dislocated shoulder) and Jenifer Morgan (broken leg) retired on the sixth and fourth stages respectively. But there was good news for British-based Australian Simon Pavey – he finished the event in 69th position on a BMW.
Coma set out into the daunting 508km stage to Copiapo with an overall advantage over Despres of 7-min 24-sec.
Goncalves led the remaining 112 bikes into the long special and was the early pace-setter on his BMW. However the Portuguese rider fell heavily around the 55km point and arrived at the passage control soon after complaining of pain in his shoulder.
After a brief examination by the medical team Goncalves was diagnosed with a broken collarbone and was forced to retire from the race.
Team-mate, Frans Verhoeven, suffered a broken engine around one kilometre from where Goncalves had crashed. He managed to walk to his stricken team-mate's bike and cannibalised the engine to enable himself to continue, dropping to 26th in the overall standings after losing four hours.
Engine problems had knocked Jonah Street out of the top ten and down to 14th overall on the stage into Antofagasta and the American was forced to stop and repair his bike again on the stage into Copiapo.
Predictably, Coma and Despres were the class of the field on the long stage and the Spaniard shadowed the Frenchman to the finish to beat him by 1-min 55-sec and extend his overall advantage to 9-min 19-sec, with Chile's Lopez safely in third overall.
The stage accounted for Slovakian rider Stefan Svitko, who had been holding eighth overall, and Frenchman Laurent Lazard.
FOR FULL REPORT AND PICTURES SEE T+MX JANUARY 21
33rd PERSONAL DAKAR ARGENTINA-CHILE
Final positions after Special Stage 13
1 Marc Coma (E - 450 KTM RR) 51-hr 25-min 00-sec
2 Cyril Despres (F - 450 KTM RR) 51:40:04
3 Helder Rodrigues (P - 450F Yamaha WR) 53:05:20
4 Francesco Lopez (CHL - 450 Aprilia RXV) 53:34:45
5 Juan Pedrero Garcia (E - 450 KTM) 54:32:03
6 Pal-Anders Ullesvalseter (N - 450 KTM) 54:57:56
7 Jean de Azevedo (BR - KTM) 55:24:38
8 Ruben Faria (P - 450 KTM RR) 55:38:01
9 Quinn Alexis Cody (USA - Honda) 56:17:10
10 Jacek Czachor (PL - KTM) 57:38:41
11 Henk Knuiman (NL - KTM) 57:39:46
12 Miran Stanovnik (SLO - KTM) 57:56:49
13 Jonah Street (USA - Yamaha) 58:06:15
14 Daniel Gouet (CHL - Honda) 58:36:24
15 Jordi Viladoms (E - 450F Yamaha WR) 58:37:07
16 Frans Verhoeven (NL - 450 BMW RR) 58:47:52