Red Bull KTM Factory Racing’s Sam Sunderland and Matthias Walkner have successfully completed an eventful stage nine of the 2021 Dakar Rally where unfortunately, due to a crash around kilometer 155, Toby Price was forced to retire from the event. 

Featuring a loop stage starting and finishing at the coastal city of Neom, day nine at the 2021 Dakar turned out to be a testing one for the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing team. Covering a total distance of 579km, riders faced a 109km liaison that led into the 465km timed special. A mixture of fast gravel tracks and sandy valleys proved to be a huge challenge to all competitors as they made their way through the stage.

Third overall coming into stage nine, Sam Sunderland was the fourth competitor to take to the start of the special. With times between the top riders being very close, the Brit successfully passed the first three checkpoints inside the top five. Two kilometers from the fifth checkpoint, Sam unfortunately came across teammate Toby Price who had crashed heavily and needed medical assistance. Staying with Price until he was airlifted to hospital, Sunderland then continued on with the remainder of the stage. Finishing in a commendable fourth place once his time lost helping Price was recovered, the 2017 Dakar Champion lies third in the provisional overall standings.

“Obviously it’s been a pretty rough day today ," Sunderland said of the accident. "I started off strong, and was making good progress, handling the tricky navigation well. Then I came across Toby lying in the riverbed with Brabec already stopped with him. I helped there till the helicopter arrived then set off again and tried to get back into a good rhythm. Around 100 kilometers or so after that I was opening up for the group I was with and was looking down at the road book, hit a rock and was sent over the handlebars. It was quite a big crash, quite a big impact, and luckily I wasn’t too badly hurt. But I damaged the road book tower on the bike had no navigation from then on. I managed to reach the finish by following others but that’s always hard. A really tough day for the team, but this is Dakar and it’s always a challenge. We’ll regroup and do our best again tomorrow.”

“Today was definitely tough," Brabec said. "We started third. We all had a long day today – there were 465 kilometres – that’s a long day for the navigation and it’s a long day in the desert. Unfortunately, Toby had gone down and I stopped for him for about 20 minutes. I was just waiting for the helicopter to get there. It’s a shame. He was definitely up there, fighting for the win. It happens. Every morning when we put our gear on, things like this can happen and we know it. It’s just the risk that we are willing to take. Unfortunately, the second week is going to be brutal.”