Libor Podmol fights the pitfalls of the Dakar Rally with a swollen eye that he can barely see. His courage was appreciated by the head of the competition.
All of this is the result of Monday’s crash. The Czech rider hit a stone and hit another one with his head. Like a true “tough guy” he refused to be taken to the hospital and right on the track the doctors sewed up the bloody wound above his eye with nine stitches.
“They call me Rocky here,” he laughed in the bivouac after the finish of yesterday’s fourth stage of Podmol, who is also in the Original by Motul unassisted category and no one helps him with the bike.
But he got a surprise at the finish when he received an award for courage from race director David Castera. It is a special statuette of a Bedouin, with which the management of the competition does not waste and only the real heroes of the rally will receive it.
It was a brief moment of joy during an evening in which he spent a long time on his motorcycle. He finished just before 10 p.m. “I get up around half past four in the morning, so it’s going to be miserable again. I’ll take a quick shower and go to bed,” added the tired Podmol, who has a short but demanding stage in the dunes today.
He is currently in seventh place in the category of riders without assistance. “The important thing for me is that I don’t have a broken arm. I felt a lot here after the fall in the rocks on Monday, luckily they didn’t reveal any fracture on the X-ray at the health center. I only have strained ligaments, so it just hurts,” added Podmol.
