Dakar Rally, Stage 4, San Juan to Chilecito
Dakar Rally Media - Jan 10, 2012

The defending champion, Coma, took his 18th career stage win at the Dakar, but his goal of conquering the general classification will have to wait. He was only able to claw back 2' from Cyril Despres, whom he still trails by 8'10".

One cannot build a bridge across the ocean, or so the saying goes. Marc Coma sometimes faces the same problem. Especially when he is targeting Cyril Despres, the leader of the Dakar general classification. There is something of a déjà vu to this situation, and the Spaniard has already proved on several occasions that he is more than capable of closing a gap of ten minutes or so.  

Coma set a high pace from the very beginning of Stage 4, and had already overtaken Casteu, Rodrigues, Gonçalves and Verhoeven by km 137. Despres, leading the field at top speed, was losing 1'51" at that point, which increased to 3'49" at CP2, 115 km later. It looked like the Catalan rider was going to halve the gap in the general classification. In the end, he posted the best time but was unable to steal more than 2'02" from his rival.

Despres reflected on Stage 4: “It was difficult because the rainfall in the region these last few days furrowed the tracks and exposed big rocks. Moreover, with this the heat it is physically demanding to maintain a high pace in these conditions... So I am quite happy with my performance today. At the beginning I saw Marc surge ahead and I knew he would claw some time back, but I focused on the navigation to avoid making any mistakes, slowing down a bit before every note. Since we had almost 400 notes today, I will be quite happy if I only lose two minutes.”

The impossibility of competing "on a fair level" is becoming more and more obvious behind the KTM stars.  

After four days of racing, the candidates to the final podium already lie roughly half an hour back. Frans Verhoeven was the best of the rest, 8'26" back, despite suffering electrical issues which took him a few minutes to repair. Just behind him, Hélder Rodrigues is the best placed rider in the general classification to take advantage of any mistake made by the duo of favourites. But he still lies 26'48" back! The Yamaha pilot, who already got a spot on the final podium last year, overtook David Casteu in the GC after the latter made a navigational mistake at the beginning of the stage. In one fell swoop, he also overtook "Chaleco" López, who joined Casteu in the group of riders who lost around 15 minutes between San Juan and Chilecito.