One of the few Canadians to race in the off-road Dakar Rally is out of hospital after a spectacular high-speed end-over-end crash in the Bolivian desert.
Calgarian Matt Campbell, 64, and two of his El Martillo Racing teammates – Luis 'Fito' Ramirez and navigator Nico Ambriz – were hurt and taken to a South American hospital on the weekend, but only suffered minor serious injuries after flipping the vehicle while travelling at close to 200 km/h.
"When you go through something like that, you tell yourself it's going to be bad and you just brace for it - that's all you basically can do," Campbell told The Globe and Mail en route back from Argentina. "You just hope you come out the other end in one piece."
"He's black and blue, he's sore, he's extremely banged up, but not a broken bone," Judi Palmai, Campbell's executive assistant, told The Globe and Mail. "His helmet apparently split, but he has no concussion."
Campbell is the team's principal driver as well as the CEO of Rocky Mountain Equipment, which sells farm and construction equipment across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Shortly after the crash, a video showing the car flipping numerous times before being engulfed in flames was posted online.
"The race car was moving at a speed of 174 km/h when suddenly they found the water cut five feet deep …There was not much to do but hang on and resist the crash," reads a post on the team's Facebook page. "At the 50-kilometre mark on the road book of the seventh stage, the first part of the marathon stage, the water crossing where the accident happened was marked as 'Danger 2', when in fact it should've (been marked) 'Danger 4' at least."
"It's surreal," said Palmai. "It was by the grace of God that they walked out of there."
The injured teammates were airlifted to a Bolivian hospital and then moved to a Chilean hospital where MRIs and sonograms revealed only bumps and bruises.
Palmai said that Campbell believes they were able to escape serious injury because of the safety equipment in the car and the fire-retardant suits they wear.
Don't panic, the car crashed, the guys are ok. / Sin paniquearse, el carro chocó, están todos bien
— El Martillo Racing (@Teamelmartillo) January 10, 2015Campbell's team finished 52nd in its rookie year last year and was 36th this year when the crash happened. "They were doing so well," said Palmai. "Everything was going great, but it was a freak blip in the navigation."
Drivers in the race don't use GPS systems, instead relying on a navigator with a paper road book to manually figure out the route and obstacles metre by metre. Campbell was at the wheel when the team thought it could skim across a stream, but plunged the front end into the water instead.
This is the worst crash of Campbell's career, but it won't keep him from racing.
"This doesn't deter me. I believe in our safety equipment, I believe in our car build and the crash doesn't bother me a bit, quite frankly," he said. "We're looking forward to Dakar 2016."
"I'm sure he'd like to be home and getting on with repairing the car and getting on with the next race," Palmai said. "Even this can't keep that man down."
The team is already planning its next race, the Mexican 1,000.
With files from Jeremiah Rodriguez
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