“When a Dakar ends, the next day we start preparing for the next one,” I had told him Kevin Benavidesfootball fan, Clarion on December 26, 2022, just four days after the Argentine National Team won the World Cup in Qatar and while preparing for what he defines as “the toughest race in the world.”
And so goes the career and life of this 35-year-old Argentine motorcyclist, who suffered an accident while training in his native Salta for the Desafío Ruta 40 “and currently has a reserved prognosis,” according to the latest official medical report. It turned out that He fractured his left arm and suffered a traumatic brain injury.
For Benavides there are no limits: “I always believe in my possibilities. And I always deliver everything. I’m going 100 percent. Maybe physically I am at 70, but I give everything.” It is his way of approaching this sport. And while today it keeps the farreros, pending his recovery, it was also that mentality that led him to win the Dakar twice, in 2021 with Honda and in 2023 with KTM.
His father, Norbert, from whom both Kevin and his brother Luciano inherited the passion for speed, suffers from the danger that this type of racing implies for his children. And these days he is one of those who is suffering the most. “I’m happy in life with their achievements. But the day they tell me they don’t run anymore, I’ll be happier. But the truth is, I’m scared shitless (laughs). What do you want me to say? “You suffer a lot,” he confessed some time ago.
However, Kevin seems to have other plans. During the last edition of the Dakar, in which he won three stages on his way to finishing fourth in the general classification, he especially valued each of those triumphs given that he suffered a fracture of the tibia and fibula of his left leg just a month ago. before the demanding race in the desert.
“It is a great emotion and a caress to achieve a victory after difficult days. I sincerely thank all the people who helped me and trusted me. “I’m going to stay focused, because there’s still a lot of racing ahead.” he said at the time. And today a new accident, this time the most serious of those he suffered throughout his career, affects both him and his family.
In addition to his two titles in the Dakar, which stand out in his showcase, he was also champion of the Andalusia Rally in 2020 and the Atacama Rally in 2017, he won the Motorcycle category of the Argentine Cross Country Championship in 2016 and 2017 and was 1 ° in the Ruta 40 Challenge, for which he was just preparing when he suffered the accident. In addition, he won the Latin American Enduro Championship, category E3.
Lucianowho is seven years younger and an admirer of his brother, told Clarion how he suffered the comparisons:
It was very difficult, at first, being so far away from Kevin. The thing is that he was Dakar champion twice and made history like no other. And just because he’s my brother I wouldn’t have to do the same. I felt that pressure from people. The key was to never stop trying, accept that we are different and how he always supported me. I absorbed everything I could see from him and today I feel like I have completely freed myself from all that pressure.
Luciano Benavides visited the Clarín newsroom in December 2023. Photo: Guillermo Rodriguez Adami“How did Kevin help you?”
―In 2016, he had a great Dakar: he came 4th. He was racing for Honda and KTM wanted to hire him. They sent him an offer and he had to reject it because he already had a contract. So, in that exchange of emails he commented that I was switching from enduro to rally. Three weeks passed and an offer came for me; They offered me a professional contract for three years. That’s how I became a professional driver without knowing what rallying was. It was one in a million. Obviously, later I had to prove and those pressures led me to a year and a half in which I broke five vertebrae in my first Dakar, then I broke ribs and a shoulder. I broke down a little the first few years until I understood how it worked. I began to mature, to have more experience and there I was able to grow my career.
Now it is Luciano who is close to Kevin, attentive to his recovery, as well as the speed fans.
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