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| Hans Saaijman still smiling before the Dakar |
ONLY one South African racer managed to win a stage in this year’s
Dakar, and that despite riding with a broken throttle hand.
Hannes Saaijman, for Team Rhide, finished eight overall on his
Yamaha Raptor 700 after both he and the quad had survived over 9 000 km of hard
cross-country racing that forced over 63% of the quad entries to retire.
Many of these riders withdrew because they suffered badly from
hypothermia in the high altitude racing while a lot fell victim to brine that
stopped their bikes in their tracks.
Saaijman remembers the extreme cold with a shiver and said after
the race he would rather ride naked in Lesotho’s snow that ever be that cold
again.
His team-mate, Brian Baragwanath, was one of the earliest
withdrawals with engine problems on the first day. Saaijman towed his
Baragwanath 620 km to the overnight bivouac.
In the process he suffered two flat rear tyres that later
disintegrated and he had to be airlifted to the finish.
Due to the amount of time the Rhide pair had lost on the first day,
Saaijman started the second day at the back of 150 racers. Over the next two
weeks he worked his way to the front until he was in the top 15.
Saaijman rides with three shortened fingers on his right hand due
to a old car crash. This normally makes holding the throttle a bit of a chore,
but on top of this he broke his right hand — including his remaining finger —
only 10 days before the start of the Dakar. The 32-year-old soldiered on until
he breached into the top 10, finishing ninth overall in the quad category,
winning the First Timers Class and ending eight in the class for 0-900
bikes.
“The Dakar is not a race,” Saaijman said afterwards. “It is
survival! The terrain is extremely rough and the [fesh-fesh] dust is very, very
bad,” he said at the halfway mark in Chile.
“It is not like any race we know in South Africa and you have to
approach it differently. That is what I decided to do after starting the race a
bit too fast and making mistakes.”
Looking back, Saaijman remembers a few days he describes as “some
of the worst days in my life”. These few days were in Bolivia, where it was
close to freezing and he did not have enough warm clothes. It also rained
heavily while they were on their way to the start of the stage and the rivers
were in flood. While some competitors wanted the organisers to cancel the stage
due to the rain and flooding, he was determined to push through.
He explained how he looked for a safe place to cross the flooded
river and found a train bridge to continue on the route. Afterwards he
discovered that many riders suffered from hypothermia because of these extreme
weather conditions.
Luckily the altitude (they climbed to almost 5 000 m above sea
level when racing in the Andes Mountains) did not affect this Gautenger,
although it did affect his Yamaha as the engine lost some of its power.
The first of the two marathon stages (Stage 8 in Bolivia) over the
world’s largest salt flat, the Salar de Uyuni, also took its toll on numerous
quads and bikes including SA motorcycle rider Riaan van Niekerk who was 12th
overall at that stage. The pan was under water due to the heavy rains and the
brine got in anywhere, damaging electronics and other parts on the bikes and
quads.
Saaijman will remember this day as he lost more than three hours
before he could start the stage due to a faulty ignition solenoid. This meant
that he had to play mechanic while it was bitterly cold before he could even
start racing.
He then picked up penalties (time added to his final result) when
he missed two waypoints as he decided to rather get to the overnight bivouac
before sunset than getting stuck in the dunes after dark.
After racing for 12 days (the race was on for 13 days, but one day
was a Rest Day) Saaijman, who claimed a podium result at Stage 11 by finishing
the stage in combined third place, has moved up to the ninth place in the quad
category and it was time for the last day’s stage in Argentina.
It proved to be a highlight of his “Dakar” when he posted the
fastest time of the quads to become the only South African competitor to win a
stage during the 2015 Dakar Rally.
Team Rhide returns from the Dakar Rally scarred but wiser. They
admitted that although they were quite well prepared for a newbies on an
extremely limited budget, they still learnt a lot.
