Pepper grower Arjan Bos finishes in Dakar Rally

It was tough. He has suffered. A couple of times it was a close call and he was saved by stages being canceled or shortened. Sometimes the equipment abandoned him, a few crashes almost ruined it, the heat and the altitude were his greatest enemies, but pepper grower Arjan Bos simply refused to feel the pain. "You can't. You have to carry on." And he's done it, he has achieved his goal. Completely exhausted and with a broken collarbone, he finished the Dakar Rally. "I still can't quite believe it."

Early last week Arjan Bos counted his blessings. One canceled stage, one shortened stage and a day off so the pepper grower from Bergschenhoek could catch his breath for the second half of the Dakar Rally. But the first part of stage 7 (Monday) wasn't exactly a piece of cake either.

Thin air
The motorcyclist suffered a lot in the mountains of Bolivia due to the thin air. "A straight dirt road looked like a plate of spaghetti. It was all over the place. That wasn't good. I stopped at a medical vehicle from the organization and I was hooked up to oxygen for a while. Then I was okay again."

Bos was one of the last riders to arrive, at around 2 am, at the marathon bivouac in Uyuni. After he had eaten, provided his engine with some necessary maintenance and prepared his road book for the next day, Bos retired to the dormitory in the barracks that had been made available to the riders. "But at that hour the dormitory was full," said Bos.

When the ninth stage was canceled (although still a trip of almost 1,000 kilometers on the road to Chilecito, and some parts of it offroad) Bos dared to think about the finish for the first time after Tuesday's stage. "I'll make it through today and it's still three days to Buenos Aires. I should be able to make it," he thought. But at the beginning of the tenth stage things took a bad turn. At the start of a stage that was completely focused on navigation, he noticed that his digital compass didn't work. "It was stuck at zero. That's useless when riding on track. I did have a backup from the organization, but that was full of condensation, so I could not see anything. Then the tripmeter stopped working and of course that happened on the

The second to last stage of Dakar 2017 wasn't easy either. A 288 kilometer race test consisting of two parts separated by a road of 370 kilometers. Arjan Bos was exhausted when he arrived at the bivouac in Rio Cuarto. "They try to break you on the last day," the Dakar debutant sighed. "Well, they almost succeeded." But with only 64 kilometers to go, the finish was getting close for Bos. "I have some pain in my shoulder. I will need to visit the Veka team's doctor. I will make it through those 60 kilometers on Saturday one way or another. I will carry my bike if I have to!"

The twinge in his shoulder turned out to be a broken collarbone. He would be able to finish the last 64 kilometers, but Bos has been scared. That's the reason he still wasn't reassured once he passed the finish. "You have to keep going, and it's a long way to Buenos Aires. I have to make it to Buenos Aires," he kept repeating. Luckily, it was his left collarbone. The debutant's rally would have ended a day early if it had been his right one.

"It still hasn't quite hit me. You're so focused on that one goal, that takes priority over everything else. I've already forgotten what happened a week ago," he said. See more pictures of Arjan on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.