Three-time Ladies’ Enduro World Champion Jane Daniels has settled in well to her first Dakar Rally, riding for the Fantic Motor team with #110.
Words: Ben Rumbold / Fantic Motor. Images: Fantic Motor
After Stage Five of the Rally, on the 10th of January, Jane has stayed super-consistent and lies within the top 55 overall.
Here we can see Jane’s progress through the stages so far.
| Stage | Stage Position | Overall Ranking |
| Prologue | 56th | 56th |
| One | 61st | 61st |
| Two | 60th | 60th |
| Three | 59th | 55th |
| Four | 55th | 55th |
| Five | 61st | 55th |
With the departure of Sam Sunderland, Jane is currently the top British rider in the entire Dakar, just 8 positions ahead of David McBride from the Vendetta UAE team.
At the end of Stage 4, Jane updated us with the words, “So far, so good, I’ve been really enjoying it, something completely new, the amount of kilometres that you cover in a day, and the different terrains you go on is just mad, you’ve got to experience it to believe it. On the first day we were driving next to dried lava, it said on the roadbook ‘Lava – stick to the left!’, so that was mad.
“It’s good, it’s fun, something new just a massive adventure. My hands have got a couple of little blisters from clinging on, but yeah just trying to relax and get the navigation dialled, that’s my main downfall. Sometimes I don’t trust myself when really I was right and I kick myself for not following my head but yeah I’ll get there eventually.
“For stage five I’ve gotta get up at 4:30am and ride from 6am, then go 508km to get to the special stage, which will be the single longest journey I’ve ever done on a motorbike! I don’t know if there are many other days like that!”
UPDATE: After Stage Five, Jane posted that “After 500 mind-numbing kilometres to get to the special, I started thinking about jobs I have to do when I get back so that passed the time! I enjoyed the dunes, my suspension was a bit soft so I’ve hardened that up for tomorrow because we start 48 hours to do 600 km in the dunes! So that should be fun! There will probably be no signal tomorrow so I’ll let you know how we get on after the 48 hours.”
Fingers crossed for Jane, she’s lasted longer than many others and has another week to go!
