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Simple Mistakes

17.05.2006

Stage 4 - Day 23; The current leader of the Land Rover G4 Challenge, Dmitry Timokhin, is in danger of losing his hold on the top spot after losing his electronic scoring key (or dibber) during Tuesday’s round of competitions in far southwest Bolivia.

“I had it after the running competition but not when we arrived at the next, compulsory competition,� he explained.

Having to drive over an hour back to try and find the dibber cost Dmitry and his Japanese team mate, Takashi Sugiyama, all of the points scored on Tuesday as they failed to make the start of the day’s compulsory competition. In the end, Dmitry failed to find the dibber.

“It had been a great day,� said Tak, head in hands. “We did really well, getting to three competitions. But then we had one disaster - a really big disaster. We forgot to check each other’s dibbers and when we got to the compulsory competition we found that Dmitry did not have his dibber. So now we have no points from today.�

Unless a replacement is available for Wednesday’s competition Dmitry and Tak might also lose all points from that day too. Regardless, the loss of an estimated 50 points from Tuesday will have almost certainly handed Dmitry’s lead to South African Martin Dreyer.

“I must not think about not scoring on Wednesday,� revealed Dmitry. “I must only think about fighting back. It was a stupid mistake and I was the one saying before this event that making mistakes would be costly. This is the second mistake in two days.�

None of Dmitry’s closest rivals will know until the end of Stage 4 on Friday if his mistakes today and on Monday will give them a chance of squeezing into the top four.

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