One of the casualties of day four was Australia's own
Ben Grabham who was forced to retire from the event after a heavy crash. The good news is though bruised and sore, Grabham is doing fine and was able to check out of hospital after an examination. For more information on Grabhma's day four experience,
CLICK HERE Clayton Jacobsen is another Australian rider to be ruled out of the 2014 Dakar during the marathon stages due to a technical error according to a post on his
FACEBOOK PAGE.
"Seriously disappointing news - Clayton has been disqualified with six other riders due to some technical error, they argued for hours with officials to let them stay in the race but all six were not allowed to continue." a post that was posted the page read today.
The third Australian who looks to be out of the race is
Mark Davidson who has not posted a stage result for the second straight day. We have spoken to
Linden Forbes who is part of Australian Yamaha rider
Shane Dieners support team and he has reported that it looked as if all three of the retired Australian riders were OK but had retired from the event for various reasons.
Shane Diener himself was able to make it through stage three and four, that has lost over 3 hours on course which was compounded by a 2 hour time penalty and he now sits 73 in the motorcycle classification over eight hours behind the race leader.
The other Australian's that remain in the race,
Allan Roberts and
Troy O'Connor finished stage four in 35th and 44th positions respectively with Roberts dropping 1 hour and 39 minutes on the stage and O'Connor a further six minutes on top of that.
Roberts now sits in 52nd position 5 hours and 18 minutes behind Barreda while O'Connor is one position further back in 53rd 17 minutes behind his fellow Australian.
With very little rest riders now the biggest stage of the race that will see them cover 911km and face 527 km under the clock as they make their way from Chilecito to Tucuman.
