In 2025, Ricky Brabec will compete in the Dakar Rally for the tenth time. Once again representing Monster Energy Honda, he aims to replicate his victories from 2020 and 2024, despite having recently suffered an injury.
Speaking to the Dakar’s official website, the American admitted that the injury sustained during the Rallye du Maroc affects his training, though he sees a silver lining: ‘My knee and ligaments are 100% fine, which was the scary part after my crash in Morocco. It does suck that there’s still an injury and I couldn’t continue the rally, but it’s small compared to having a whole knee replacement or ligament damage. The only downside is how it affects my training, but there’s other things I can do off the bike. I feel like it might almost be better to be in this situation. Sometimes we train so hard when we’re at 100%, that by the time the Dakar comes around we’re kind of burned out’.
Reflecting on the 2024 edition, Brabec expressed satisfaction with his performance and the route: ‘I was really happy with my riding last year. At the previous Dakar in 2023 I crashed, so I kind of wanted revenge on that. Our new bike is super awesome, really comfortable and nice to ride. I also feel like the route at Dakar 2024 was just a lot better suited to my riding style, it was a proper offroad motorcycle and car route. Everyone asks me, where do you go training for the Dakar if it’s all sand dunes? But we’re not stuck in the sand dunes all day for two weeks. It’s really cool that we can go from rocks to dunes to fast flowy rivers back to the tracks. I like how we can have that variety all in one day. And where I live and train every week is like that too, a mix of everything’.
The rider will try to win the Dakar Rally for the third time, but the task will not be easy as he recognized: ‘To get a first Dakar victory or even a podium is not easy, people might say you got lucky. To get a second one is not easy. So to get three is definitely not going to be easy, especially after winning in 2024. You have a big target on your back and everyone wants to beat you. To back up what I did in 2024 and get three wins would be really awesome. In 2025 I want to chase the W2RC title and do every single event’.