Michael Docherty probably had a hard time falling asleep last night. The last time he had entered the ADDC, back in 2022, the South African had made a premature exit during stage 2 at a time when he was leading the race.
His victory in yesterday’s stage put the Emirati-based rider in the exact same position going into today’s special. Disaster struck a mere 5 km into the course, when he crashed and hurt his leg. Aaron Mare and Konrad Dąbrowski spent almost half an hour at his side, leaving Jean-Loup Lepan, Ross Branch and their pursuers to duke it out at the front.
The duo capitalised on the traces left by the latter to storm to victory ahead of the Frenchman. The Botswanan, on the other hand, was slapped with a 15-minute penalty for changing his engine the day before.
At the end of the day in Mezaira’a, one Saffa has replaced another at the top of the ADDC leader board. Aaron Mare is the new top dog with 7′28″ in hand over Konrad Dąbrowski and 21′13″ over Jean-Loup Lepan. Ross Branch slipped a bit further away from the top 2 and is now 45′52″ behind his teammate with just three days to go —a daunting challenge even for the runner-up in the last Dakar. Jan Brabec (Strojent Story) is fifth, more than one hour off the pace.