Carles Falcon, 1978–2024

Carles Falcón Brunet died from his injuries Monday, a week after crashing during Stage #2 of the Dakar Rally. He was 45 years old.

Falcón, racing in the Rally2 category and Original by Motul subclass as a Malle Moto solo rider, crashed 448 kilometres into the second stage. He had been running fiftieth overall in Rally2 (fourteenth in Malle Moto) after finishing seventy-second in class in the Prologue and forty-ninth the following day.

Fellow riders stopped to administer aid until medical help arrived, and he was discovered to not have a pulse from cardiac arrest. He was subsequently resuscitated and airlifted to hospital in Dawadmi, where he was placed in a medically induced coma and diagnosed with a fracture in his C2 vertebra (a hangman’s fracture) and edema in his head. After being transferred to another hospital in Riyadh, he was flown home to Spain on Friday.

“Carles was a smiling person, always active, who passionately enjoyed everything he did, especially motorcycles,” reads a statement from his TwinTrail Racing Team. “He left us doing something that was his dream, participating in the Dakar. He was enjoying it, he was happy on the bike. We must remember him for his smile and the happiness he generated in everyone.”

TwinTrail, who also fielded a bike for his friend Isaac Feliu, withdrew from the rally shortly after his accident. Feliu had undergone a similar series of events during their Dakar début in 2022, when he crashed and suffered a concussion and C7 fracture that left him in a coma for two weeks. After recovering, he and Falcón decided to pursue the 2024 Dakar. Had tragedy not struck, Falcón would be looking to improve upon his sixty-eighth overall and sixteenth in Malle Moto from 2022.

A former computer engineer, Falcón was the company manager at Feliu’s TwinTrail Experience, a Spanish adventure motorcycle firm that Feliu founded in 2015. As part of his duties, he was an instructor and adventure bike route guide, and the duo also ran a daily Dakar recap show on YouTube.

“I used to tell you very often that I love you. And now, even though you are no longer here physically, I will continue to love you very much until the end of my days,” began a post from Feliu. “You have been an example to follow, a brother. I will always carry you within me, and as I told you in the last post, you will accompany me in all adventures and continue to teach me things. Hugs to the sky and a million thanks for the time we have shared.”

Falcón is the forty-sixth person to die from incidents connected to the Dakar Rally since its inception in 1979, the thirty-third race-related personnel, and the first competitor since Pierre Cherpin in 2021. A fatal accident has occurred every year since the Dakar moved to Saudi Arabia in 2020, including the deaths of bike racers Paulo Gonçalves and Edwin Straver that year, Cherpin in 2021, Dakar Classic mechanic Quentin Lavallée in 2022, and a spectator in 2023. The first stage of the 2024 Dakar narrowly avoided another tragedy when another fan was hit by Lionel Baud’s car at the start, though he only suffered a fractured tibia and fibula.