“I really don’t understand what happened,” Fretigne said. “According to me, he was maybe looking at his road instruments. We had just refuelled so the bikes were pretty heavy, he maybe lost balance on a small dune with the weight. The scene of the crash wasn’t dangerous. We had just lost ourselves and we were looking for the right track. Cyril [Despres] was on the good track and took off. Fabrizio followed in his dust and 300m later I saw [Marc] Coma with his hand in the air so I stopped. I immediately knew it was serious. There was a lot of bleeding. I had trouble finding the distress signal and finally launched it. I then waited for the helicopter because I couldn’t just leave. I think that we should carry on for him and for Richard [Sainct]… He would have wanted us to. It was his passion.”
