2017 Dakar Rally got off to a flying start and Stage One was completed successfully by CS Santosh and Aravind KP, the two India riders for the Hero MotoSports Team Rally and TVS Sherco Team respectively.
However, it was in Stage Two that Aravind KP suffered a crash when a slow rider in front of him was not able to clear the path. It was just 1 km ahead of the finish line as seen in the video below. The crash caused Aravind to fracture two bones in his left hand while he was seen to be coping with a great deal of pain. Aravind completed the second stage with some difficulty and ended 127th while in overall rating, he is at 125th.
Aravind KP was keen to continue riding and not let this injury keep him from completing his first ever Dakar. However, it was at Stage Three that he suffered another fall and injured his shoulder due to which he is out of the race thus ending his Dakar dreams. Below is a vide of him explaining what happened.
Aravind describes his crash. #Dakar2017 pic.twitter.com/CXun5S6Yw7
— Sirish Chandran (@SirishChandran) January 6, 2017
Aravind KP is however, determined to come back next year to race for the 2018 Dakar Rally but till then the Third Stage of the rally has concluded and CS Santosh has successfully finished the stage in 104th position.
CS Santosh had to deal with navigation errors and lost over an hour trying to get back on track causing him to lost position while overall standings have also dropped to 67th position. Santosh’s teammate Joaquim Rodrigues too lost his way resulting in loss of 35 minutes while he was soon back on track and finished the stage at 19th position while he is on a 20th position in overall ratings. Below is a video of CS Santosh describing yesterday’s stage.
Santosh describes his Day 5 #Dakar2017 pic.twitter.com/2cDd37hQTi
— Sirish Chandran (@SirishChandran) January 6, 2017
