Double winner of the Dakar marathon rally Andrei Karginov in an interview with , he said that in 2019, the race organizers acted as harshly as possible towards the KAMAZ-master team, disqualifying its crew for hitting a spectator.
Karginov was disqualified during the fifth stage of the 2019 Dakar.
— The hardest moment of your career was the disqualification at the 2019 Dakar, when a fan threw himself under the wheels?
– Yes. To this day, it sticks in my head. Very unpleasant memories, sad experience. This story is very morally striking. We could fight for victory, there was every chance for the title. If I’m not mistaken, our crew was at the top of the general classification at that time. And it is extremely disappointing that the organizers acted as harshly as possible towards the team and imposed the most severe sanctions on it in the form of disqualification.
— The blow was not aimed at you, but at KAMAZ-Master, in order to remove the leader from the road?
– Without a doubt. I remember the look on Roy’s face when he came to our bivouac. At first, Gérard regretted the organizers’ decision, then he saw the crossed out numbers on Airat Mardeev’s truck. One day, our team lost half of its crews: mine due to disqualification, Mardeev due to engine failure. For KAMAZ-master it was a big blow.
— You visited the victim in the hospital. What did the grandfather say when he was run over and escaped with a slightly broken leg?
— He admitted his guilt and declared that he was in a forbidden place where a car could pass. And when he learned of the judges’ decision, he was very worried and apologized. For our part, we also apologized to him, because we felt responsible for what had happened. This was a big lesson for the team: in any suspicious situation, it’s best to play it safe and stop.
— But how to understand this when in the cabin you will not feel the impact and will not hear any extraneous noise?
— There must be an inner feeling. It is better to stop once again, waste a few minutes, but be sure that the person is alive and needs help,” Karginov told .
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Source : MatchTV
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