BarcelonaParticipating in the Dakar is a show of love and recklessness in equal parts. The desert of Saudi Arabia hosts the toughest rally in the world, where year after year the best drivers are summoned to embark on a unique adventure. Nothing compares to the Dakar, which becomes dazzling. There are few riders who have surfed the dunes and not been captivated by the experience. A unique communion is created, the result of adrenaline, fear and adventure. Joan Barreda (Torreblanca, Plana Alta, 1983) knows this feeling very well. The touch of the sand, the smell of the desert, the hardness of the mud… This year was to be the last edition in which he would contest the event, and the desire was at its peak. He wanted to leave with all the honors and doing justice to his brilliant career. But the Dakar, in addition to being majestic, is cruel: after the accident he suffered on Tuesday, he was unable to take the start and had to abandon it.
This year’s edition has been a nightmare for Barreda. The debut went well, but it was a mirage. On the second day of competition he hit a rock and broke his big toe. The pain was unbearable and the size of his swollen foot multiplied. He had to sleep with an ice pack tied to his foot and when he woke up to compete in the third stage the boot wouldn’t fit. She had to take one of a larger number. The third day was filled with bursts of pain and the fourth was the great feast. He left everyone speechless when he won the fourth stage with a broken finger. It seemed that luck was smiling on him again. But nothing could be further from reality. In the fifth stage he was born again. Toby Price’s KTM, which was following him closely in an area of scrub and sand, rammed him from behind and went over his head with the front wheel. The man from Castellón lost consciousness for a few minutes, but was able to finish the stage miraculously.
“Looking at it in perspective, I was very lucky, the helmet is destroyed”, he explained once he arrived at the bivouac. After the scare, the next two stages passed without incident, but the eighth and ninth were fatal. On the eighth day, in the middle of the race, the pilot shot out of his Honda doing a somersault in the air that awakened all the evils accumulated during the first week of the Dakar. But with the day of rest and renewed energy and strength, the ninth stage was to be a one-and-done for Barreda. A week and a new opportunity, but the old habits ended to sentence the 13th Dakar of the pilot from Torreblanca.
Just starting the day, at kilometer 16, he was on the ground and hurt his back. The Dakar medical services immobilized him and took him by helicopter to the hospital. From there the worst news was confirmed: he had a broken L2 vertebra and had to abandon the Dakar. “We went out in the special with the motivation to go for the race. We were well positioned and it was a stage to try to take advantage of it. But the desert does not forgive. We tried”, he said on Instagram hours after the accident .
Barreda has resisted leaving the Dakar in all the editions where he has been hurt (which have been many). Without further ado, he finished the world’s toughest rally last year with a broken collarbone after a crash on stage five. He is stubborn, irreverent and non-conformist. He has been to the starting line of the Dakar thirteen times and has finished it in seven editions. He is the Spanish driver with the most stage wins in rally history and has never given up without a fight, without overcoming the physical pain and mental noise of his crashes. And this year, what will have been his farewell did not end as he wanted. That’s why it might not be the last time we see him plowing the dunes.
