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Stage 14 - Saturday 17 January 2009 | Cordoba > Buenos Aires

  • Connection 224 km
  • Special 227 km
  • Connection 341 km

Interviews

Cyril Despres (Fra - KTM) - 001

It was a great finish just like a Tour de France finish on the Champs-Elysees. It was really fast; there were no tricks, no navigation, but the Latin America circle has been closed. It would have been hard to finish worse than the rally had started for me. I don’t have many regrets.

Marc Coma (Esp - KTM) - 002

Copyright A.S.O. / Amaury Sport Organisation

"There were so many days of racing, so much work. I am really very happy. It was a very tough race. We did not know the terrain too well and it was therefore hard to have a good race strategy. I must thank all my team who did a wonderful job. There are a lot of people working behind the scenes and they deserve this victory as much as I do. Now I can enjoy the moment."

David Frétigné (Fra - YAM) - 012

Being on the podium on a Dakar was really important. With my 450cc, I think I did something pretty exceptional; I wanted to be the first to get that bike on the podium. I was the first one to believe it was possible, even if everyone was telling me it was impossible. Today, I am third and I am on the podium and I spent most of the rally in second place. I am very happy because with Yamaha we have the reliability we need from the bike. I had a blast: in addition to the performance, I had fun driving; I managed to do all that at the same time. The rally was tough but I expected something even more difficult and I had prepared myself accordingly. This is also why I had such fun for the last two weeks.

Giniel De Villiers (Afs - Volkswagen) - 305

"It’s just incredible. I never felt this way... I was so nervous in the last kilometers. I kept looking at how many kilometers we still had to go. But I must say this is an incredible feeling. I am so thrilled for the whole team, for Volkswagen that supported us for 5 years before we could get to this victory."

Mark Miller (USA - Volkswagen) - 308

"The team won and that was our goal. It’s really awesome. Finishing second is great. It could have been Giniel (De Villiers) or me; that’s the race. I am still young and I will have plenty more opportunities to win this raid."

Guerlain Chicherit (Fra - BMW) - 306

Am I satisfied? Yes and ... no. Yes because we finished it and no because we wanted to be on the podium. But it was a tough Dakar, with a lot of problems from the first stage onwards, we had lost 8 hours already; Now, we are here at the finish, and we fought hard to get here: looking back, the end is a bit more positive than the beginning, so it’s ok. My goal was to be on the podium. The race decided otherwise and so did the car. We made a few mistakes with Mathieu, we are almost rookies. We learned a lot and we will try to use these lessons the best we can. This Dakar was a tough kid. We did not expect this route at all, with a terrain that is so different from what we know: we got caught up in a sand that was so much softer than in Africa, in dunes that were harder to understand and on trails that were way trickier.

Firdaus Kabirov (Rus - KAMAZ) - 506

Copyright A.S.O. / Amaury Sport Organisation

Today there were no problems. It went very fast. It was trails only... a great route. We had to always stay at the top speed authorized i.e. 147-148 km/h. That’s all there was to do. It’s great for me and for Kamaz.