"I'm not going to give up my style,"

Joan Barreda

promises

and the promise has nothing to do with aesthetics, it's pure stubbornness: he runs and if he wins the Dakar one day, it will be running.

It does not matter that he has suffered all the possible calamities and that his body asks for mercy after multiple injuries, Barreda's virtue is speed and, although the rally demands prudence, he will continue with his hand on the throttle until the goal of Jeddah .

What if it doesn't work out?

Well ... "I don't want to give up the way I drive, everything I've achieved in this rally, it's where I feel comfortable, it's how I understand this sport," he proclaims, and if anyone thinks it's an exaggeration, two facts : Barreda is the third driver with the most stage victories in history (27) only behind the myths of the two wheels like

Stephane Peterhansel

(33) and

Cyril Despres

(33) and despite this he has never won the event, in fact, he has not even been on a podium.

Barreda already carries that 'Poulidor effect' by which, although he is the leader, although everything is going wonderfully, all his rivals, all those present at the Dakar bivouac await his misfortune, even his goodbye.

A good example is what happened in the last few days.

On Friday's stage, before the rest day, he did not want to win, he braked in the last kilometers to finish second and thus did not have to clear the way, but he miscalculated his advantage, he won another stage without wanting to and this Sunday he started first position on very difficult terrain.

A serious strategic mistake.

In the 453 kilometers between Ha'il and Sakaka he lost almost seven minutes compared to the leader, the Chilean

José Ignacio Cornejo

, and fell to sixth place overall.

The final triumph is not impossible, but he must already risk, come back and with his history that is the worst possible situation.

In a rally like the Dakar and with its tactic, front door or infirmary, it almost always ends up in the same place: the infirmary.

A heap of fatalities

In the year of his debut, in 2011, he fell twice in the first two stages and had to retire.

In his third year, in 2013, a gas pump failure in his Husqvarna left him three hours in the desert.

In his fifth year, in 2015, already a Honda star, he lost the handlebar due to a blow and ended up towed in the Uyuni salt flat.

In his sixth year, in 2016, he experienced his second retirement due to another blow near Uyuni.

In his eighth year on the Dakar, in 2018, he left again before finishing, this time with a broken knee.

In his ninth year, in 2019, he dropped out for the fourth time after being trapped in a ravine.

And last year, when he was a decade into the rally, he came bruised from a previous fall in practice and fell, fell and fell until he finished seventh overall.

Despite this, he managed to win the tenth stage in a show of his talent.

His trajectory of fatalities, in fact, is only understood if you take into account at the same time his multiple partial victories and the countless occasions in which he has led the race.

One edition after another, Honda trusts him, although in recent times the team has already given itself over to Cornejo himself and American

Ricky Brabec

, winner in 2020 and for many the future of the competition.

At 37, Barreda has already declared that this Friday, when his eleventh participation in the Dakar ends, he will abandon the motorcycle forever to perhaps switch to cars, a transition that Peterhansel,

Nani Roma

and others

have already made before

, but if Honda He renews him - he has just finished his contract - it may be that he will hold out a little longer to try to fulfill his dream of winning the rally.

It would be the third Spaniard after

Marc Coma

and a Roma that this Sunday rose to fifth place by car while

Carlos Sainz

lost minutes again with respect to the two leaders, Peterhansel and

Nasser Al Attiyah

.

«I want to win the Dakar, of course I want to.

Every year something has happened to me and it has not always gone the way I want, but I am what I am thanks to this rally ", says Barreda, before several stages that will tour parts of Saudi Arabia already known, that is, before several stages in which will be able to follow its maxim.

"I'm not going to give up my style," he promises and no, it's not aesthetic, it's pure stubbornness: he runs and if he ever wins the Dakar it will be running.

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