At almost 61 years old, Carlos Sainz is giving a real lesson in resilience, sportsmanship and courage in this edition of the Dakar.
After winning the opening stage, the man from Madrid suffered accidents in the fourth and sixth, the latter being the cause of being left out of the fight for the rally.
Despite this, ‘El Matador’ refused to give up and, in fact, in the seventh he had the enormous gesture of slowing down his course to help Ekström.
Well, this Tuesday during the ninth stage, another blow has come for Sainz. At the beginning of the morning, at kilometer five, his Audi RS Q e-tron E2 he landed on his nose and was ‘wheels up’ after taking a low doubt very quickly.
your co-pilot, Lucas Cruzwas fine, but Carlos complained chest and back painfor which he required transfer to the hospital by helicopter.
From “giving up on continuing in the race” to “giving yourself a new opportunity”: that was the headline of the following minutes. Upon returning to the hospital in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), the Spaniard asked “to the medicalized helicopter that was taking him to the hospital to turn around and take you back to your vehicle”, as reported by the organization.
It should be remembered that the Dakar regulations allows to re-engage on the run despite even being in the helicopter on the way to the hospital… and the word surrender is not in Sainz’s dictionary.
🎥 First footage of @CSainz_oficial and @LucasCruz74‘s crash, after only 6km in the special. 🚗#Dakar2023 pic.twitter.com/se7SKV27YD
— DAKAR RALLY (@dakar) January 10, 2023
