The French motorcycle rider Pierre Cherpin, who suffered a head injury last week after a crash on the seventh stage of the Dakar 2021, died while being transferred to France, the organization of the rally-raid announced on Friday.
“During his transfer by medical plane between Jeddah and France” this 52-year-old businessman “died as a result of injuries sustained after a fall that occurred in the 7th stage Ha’il-Sakaka (Saudi Arabia), on January 10,” according to the release.
Cherpin’s death is the first in the 2021 edition of the test, which ends this Friday.
A year ago the Portuguese Paulo Gonçalves died in the seventh stage, between Ryad and Wadi Ad-Dawasir, also in Saudi Arabia.
Cherpin participated for the fourth time in the race (2009, 2012, 2015 and 2021). After his fall “the rescue services came by helicopter and found him unconscious.” He was taken to Sakaka Hospital with a severe head injury with loss of consciousness, according to a statement.
“Undergoing emergency neurosurgery, he had been kept in an artificial coma, his condition was stable in recent days. He was transferred from Sakaka to the Jeddah hospital and then to France, he was going to the Lille hospital,” the organization said.
In statements added to the statement, Cherpin claimed himself as an “amateur”: “I am not going to win, I am going to discover landscapes that I would never have the chance to see, riding a racing motorcycle, living this passion is learning to know yourself”.
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