Held together by sticky tape, Brock conquers the Saudi sands

Overcoming more than 8000km of treacherous terrain, heavily swollen fingers, a hell of a sore back and near disqualification, David Brock has returned home a Dakar Rally finisher. The recently retired Wangaratta firefighter spent two weeks in the Saudi Arabian desert to tackle one of the world’s toughest motor races from 3 January to 17 January. The 55-year-old entered as one of 115 motorbike participants and would go on to finish 82nd out of the remaining 91 bikers overall and 72nd in the Rally2 division. Speaking from his Murmungee home on Thursday, Brock said an enormous wave of relief and sense of accomplishment swept through him as he achieved a dream he had dedicated his last 18 months towards. “The conditions they had us riding in from day-to-day were extremely challenging; I’d done it before, but I just hadn’t done it to that extent for that long,” he said. “There’s just so many different stories from the 14 days of the rally that I’m going to have to sit down at some point and try and piece it all together. “I had to dig a bit deeper and fortunately I was able to do that and push some of the pain aside to continue… I was really happy that I was able to do that.” Travelling more than 600km day after day on gruelling, steep terrain was never going to be smooth sailing, but Brock certainly hit his fair share of obstacles. Multiple crashes in the early stages began to take its toll before coming to a head in the sixth stage, a day before the rally’s halfway mark. Brock would be unable to complete the stage due to a back injury and was initially ruled out of the official rankings. “A small injury can become a, a big annoying one after a period of time if you, if you keep knocking those parts,” Brock said. “That's certainly what happened in the first few days.” But his team Joyride Race Service had discovered an anomaly in the disqualification and took it to the race stewards, who revoked their decision and instead handed Brock a two-hour time penalty. From there, the 55-year-old said he had one simple goal for the second week of the rally: survive. “I tried to find ways to rest when I could, and some of that was certainly throughout the stage.” “If I felt that I was getting untidy with my riding and I needed to have a one minute or three minute breathe, then I would do that. “That became important as things were really tough… it really helped to get me through.” Brock said he spent 60-90 minutes per day with his team physio. “I was held together by sticky tape and all sorts of things trying to keep me going,” he said. If the back pain wasn’t enough, Brock had a lot of trouble with his fingers, not only from hanging onto the bike’s handlebars days on end, but after injuring them in a crash on the rocks. They had become so swollen the team had to cut the sides of his gloves to fit his hand in. ”The rocks were relentless; on a bike it’s really hard work because one rock on the wrong side of the wheel and you’re off,” he said. On multiple occasions Brock said he was helped by his fellow competitors following a crash to get back on the bike, and he made sure to return the favour down the track. “That’s the spirit of rally and the type of competition it is,” he said. “The people I was riding with were people who probably had similar goals to me, they weren’t trying to win, they were just trying to finish the event. “When you’re around people with similar goals and expectations you’ve automatically got a sort of bond with them.” Having landed back home this week, Brock said he would enjoy putting the feet up and doing some jobs around the house which have been put to the side while he pursued his Dakar dream. Brock said he would be eager to continue his rally riding across the world once his body had healed, and while he didn’t have sights on another Dakar in the near future, he wouldn’t rule out doing it all again. “We'll see,” he said. Brock thanked his team at Joyride Race Service for supporting him through and in particularly his wife Cynthia who rode the bumps with him. “She's such a huge part of it,” he said. “She was definitely on top of making sure I was keeping up with nutrition and was rested and it really helped towards a strong finish.”

Held together by sticky tape, Brock conquers the Saudi sands

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