The Repsol rider will look for his fifth victory in a round where he will share prominence with rivals such as Cyril Despres and the historic riders Stéphane Peterhansel and Cyril Neveu
The third round of the 2011 Raids World Championship will take place in the next five days in Sardinia, with Marc Coma as one of the main favourites to take victory. The Repsol rider, current winner of the Dakar, has already won in the Italian island in another four occasions (2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010). From tomorrow, Saturday, to next Wednesday, June 1st, he will try to get his second victory in the current edition of the Raids World Championship, after the one he achieved last April in Abu Dhabi.
It will be a very special edition of the race that will have a deluxe entry list to face the 1700 kilometres, divided in 5 stages. The round will gather the winners of no less than 20 editions of the Dakar. Apart from Coma, with three victories, his great rival Cyril Despres – with another three victories – will also compete, as well as two living legends of the race, such as Stéphane Peterhansel and Cyril Neveu. Peterhansel will gather no less than nine winner’s trophies of the race. Neveu, apart from being the first winner in 1979, achieved another four victories -in 1980, 1982, 1986 and 1987.
Marc Coma
“I am eager to face this race. We had a lot of time to prepare for it, but we know that it is a very special race, and also the local riders are very fast. It is a very difficult competition, because the navigation system is different to the normal one, as we will not have GPS and the distances will be much shorter than usual, in a terrain with a lot of tracks that require you to focus on the roadbook indications and you must not skip a single note. At the end of the day, it is a race where the battle is manly yourself against the race. It is not always the faster who wins the race, but it is decided by small details such as not making mistakes and not having any trouble. It will be a special edition, as Stéphane Peterhansel and Cyril Neveu will compete again and if we add Cyril Despres’ track record, who also takes part, and mine, I think we have 15 or 20 victories in the Dakar among us, and that is not something you see every day”.
