RIYADH: Reigning motorcycle champion Daniel Sanders vowed to battle on in the Dakar Rally on Wednesday despite suffering a suspected broken collarbone on stage 10 in the Saudi Arabian desert.
The Australian KTM rider crashed over a dune after 138km of the 371km stage from the overnight bivouac to Bisha and dropped from the lead to fourth overall, with American Ricky Brabec taking over at the top on a Honda.
“It looks like for sure a snapped collarbone… We’ve let the rally go now. We’ll go back to the team and re-evaluate the injuries and the situation and see if its safe to continue I guess,” said Sanders.
“I want to continue, I wouldn’t finish today if I didn’t want to continue… I’ve just done 150k in the sand dunes, it’s all rocks now so I can just stand up and cruise along.
“On the gravel roads its a little bit easier, but we’ll see. We don’t quit. Mum and dad didn’t raise no quitter, so I’m not pulling out now. Until someone else tells me to pull out, or they drag me out of the race, I’m not stopping.”
Honda’s Adrien Van Beveren won the stage ahead of Brabec, who was credited with a minute and 37 seconds for assisting Sanders and assumed the overall lead.
The American leads Argentina’s KTM rider Luciano Benavides by 56 seconds with Spaniard Tosha Schareina third for Honda but 15 minutes and 43 seconds off the pace.
In the car category, Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah returned to the top for Dacia and opened up a 12 minute gap on Toyota’s South African Henk Lategan and a further 50 seconds on Ford’s previous leader Nani Roma.
“It was very tough,” said Al-Attiyah. “My head and body have taken a real beating. But we really attacked from start to finish.”
Lategan had described Tuesday as a bit of a disaster and it continued on stage 10 where he made a navigational mistake and ran out of fuel.
“I don’t know what to say any more. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in this race,” he said. “We lost power steering yesterday, ran out of fuel today and got lost twice missing waypoints. This isn’t how you win the Dakar.”
France’s nine-times world rally champion Sebastien Loeb was fourth overall, 23 minutes behind teammate Al-Attiyah.
Mathieu Serradori won the stage for the Century Racing team, with Al-Attiyah second and Loeb third.
The race, which ends on Saturday on the Red Sea coast, is also the first round of the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) season.
Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2026
