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Last Chance Saloon

18.05.2006

Stage 4 – Day 25; Twelve hours after being penalised a whole days score for losing his electronic dibber – or time key - Land Rover G4 Challenge leader Dmitry Timokhin has been given a replacement dibber but also a warning from the event competitions staff. Lose another and you are out of the event.

Dmitry estimates he lost up to 50 points after losing the dibber on Tuesday. The day before he left the dibber behind at a time control on the world’s largest salt lake but was able to retrieve it.

“It has given the other competitors a big chance,� he admitted after knuckling down on Wednesday to try and catch up the lead he reckons he has almost certainly lost. “I think Martin (Dreyer, of South Africa) has probably passed me but I will give everything to stay in the top four and make the Challenge Final on Saturday.�

Dmitry is likely to still be in the top four at this point, having set up a sizeable lead over the last three weeks. But the rest of the field have sensed that the tough Muscovite has a chink in his armour and are ramping up the pressure with just one more day of team competitions on Thursday and the individually-scored Stage Final on Friday.

Smelling a chance to pull out the lead almost certainly handed to him by Timokhin, Dreyer set the benchmark for all competitors on Wednesday, scoring on five optional and the one compulsory competitions held on the Bolivia/Chile/Argentina border. No other team managed so many scores.

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