Dakar 2020: Pilot Edwin Straver dies after his accident in the Dakar Rally

He had been admitted to the hospital for a week after breaking the upper vertebra of the neck and suffering brain damage

The Dutch Edwin Straver, who had been in a coma since last week for an accident suffered during the Dakar Rally, has died due to the damage suffered in that accident, according to local radio Omroep Brabant.

The 48-year-old rider crashed while rolling at 50 km / h during the penultimate stage of the Dakar, played on February 16 in Saudi Arabia, when he occupied the thirty-eighth position in the general classification of the third Dakar of his career.

As a consequence, the upper vertebra of the neck was broken and suffered brain damage that has finally proved too serious. Thus, last morning he died at the Dutch hospital where he had been admitted since last Wednesday.

This is the second deadly victim charged by the recent Dakar Rally after Paulo Gonalves. The experienced Portuguese pilot, who disputed his thirteenth Dakar, suffered one each during the seventh stage that produced a cardiorespiratory arrest and was transferred by helicopter to a hospital in the area where he died.

Straver is also the number 30 of a long list of pilots who have lost their lives in the motorized adventure par excellence. Since the French biker Patrick Dodin it became the first victim of the Dakar in its first edition, in 1979, the competition has only lived two cheerful streaks, of four years, without having to regret any fatality, between 1998 and 2001 and between 2015 and this Sunday. The last pilot killed until Straver and Gonalves, both in this edition of the Dakar, had been the Polish Michal Hernik, which was found dehydrated in 2015, and the previous years perished the Argentine Jorge Andrs Martnez, the French Thomas Bourgin and the Belgian Eric Palante.