Stage win for Viladoms; Coma still leads

From KTM Racing

Victory in Stage 10 of the 2009 Dakar went to KTM factory rider Jordi Viladoms on Tuesday with factory teammate Alain Duclos coming home second. Marc Coma made it a perfect KTM day to maintain his commanding overall lead as the rally re-enters Argentina.

While Coma maintains his overall lead on the Frenchman David Fretigne (second at 1:24:50) and Cyril Despres (third at 1:31:11), the big change at the top of the leader board is that Despres now trails Fretigne by just over six minutes.

"I arrived at the first refuelling in more or less the position I expected," Viladoms said. "So I was very surprised, not to say a little concerned, to see that at the second refuelling Marc wasn't there. Much to my relief, he arrived two minutes later, with Cyril and Chaleco [Lopez]. On leaving the refuelling CP Alain and I waited for our respective riders and then all four of us rode through the camel grass together - a lot of fun.

"Then, not far from the end, we couldn't find the waypoint. We headed off up this huge dune, more like a mountain, to get to it and in the process all split up. I started to get worried again and then two dunes later I saw an orange bike in the distance and fortunately it was Marc - a big relief."

"We left the bivouac at about 6 this morning, but because of the fog and the fact that the helicopters couldn't fly, we didn't start till 10," Coma said. "Then this evening we didn't get back to 17.30 - it was a very long day - and quite a stressful one!

"Everything was going fine until we got lost after the refuelling CP and lost about 20 minutes Then nearly at the end we struggled to find a waypoint and had to ride through some pretty soft sand. If yesterday resembled Morocco today was a bit like Mauritania."

Regrettably, what promised to be a spectacular Stage 11 that was billed as the most majestic of the entire rally was cancelled on Tuesday evening due to predicted bad weather. Riders will now just go to Fiambala across the border in Argentina in liaison and restart from there the next day.

Provisional results of 10th stage
1. Jordi Viladoms, Spain, KTM
2. Alain Duclos, France, KTM
3. Helder Rodrigues, Portugal, KTM
4. David Casteu, France, KTM
5. Cyril Despres, France, KTM
6. Marc Coma, Spain, KTM
7. Henk Knuiman, Netherlands, KTM
8. Pal Anders Ullevalseter, Norway, KTM
9. Frans Verhoeven, Netherlands, KTM
10. Teus Visser, Netherlands, KTM

Provisional overall standings
1. Marc Coma, Spain, KTM
2. David Fretigne, France, Yamaha
3. Cyril Despres, France, KTM
4. Jordi Viladoms, Spain, KTM
5. Helder Rodrigues, Portugal, KTM
6. David Casteu, France, KTM
7. Pal Anders Ullevalseter, Norway, KTM
8. Francisco Lopez, Chile, KTM
9. Frans Verhofen, Netherlands, KTM
10. Henk Knuiman, Netherlands, KTM