Friday, January 14, 2011

2011 Dakar Notes: Stage-9

After suffering two miserable stages back-to-back, including when the camera-eye focused upon him on Stage-7 – to which Jonah Street could be heard saying: It WON’T Kick-start! To which Street spent a considerable amount ‘O time (1hr+) tracking down an errant wire that had melted upon making contact with the ‘YamaHopper’s exhaust; dropping Jonah from seventh overall to 15th, the ‘Warshintonian rebounded spectacularly two stages later.

Stage-9 saw the Bikes start in Group fashion, in waves of 10-riders apiece, with Jonah waylaid in the third group. Yet inexplicably, nine of the first Group’s 10-riders made a navigation error, whilst the remaining solo competitor would run out of petrol just a scant 9km from the stages end. Thus, whilst the others scrambled to fix their mistake, Street bound his way forward and won his second Dakar stage, some two-years after his first Dakar stage win.

And it was great to hear Jonah being interviewed by Gernot Bauer; who I must say is growing upon me – As Street told him it’s just AWESOME! And it’s something extremely special which doesn’t happen often, whilst alluding to his tears of joy at the day’s finish...