Dakar Rally: Quick has surgery after crash

The British motorcyclist Patsy Quick was rushed to hospital with a suspected ruptured spleen after crashing in the Egyptian desert during the Dakar Rally's 11th stage yesterday, which was won by the Italian racer Fabrizio Meoni.

Quick crashed her Honda 650cc 26 miles into the 271-mile stage, which ended in the Egyptian oasis village of Siwa. Initial examinations suggested Quick had ruptured her spleen. She was taken to a hospital in Siwa for surgery.

Meoni, riding a KTM, won the stage in 3hr 45min 52sec beating his French fellow KTM riders Richard Sainct and Cyril Depres into second and third respectively. In the overall standings, Sainct leads Depres by 12 minutes, 47 seconds. Meoni is third overall.

In the cars, the Frenchman Stephane Peterhansel maintained a 16-minute lead over his Mitsubishi team mate Hiroshi Masuoka, from Japan, after winning the stage in 3:32:53. Peterhansel finished 1min 30sec ahead of his countryman the BMW driver Luc Alphand, and another minute or so ahead of Masuoka.

In the truck category, Holland's Gerardus De Rooy maintained his overall lead over Vladimir Tchaguine by beating the Russian across the line to Siwa. Fellow Dutchman Jan De Rooy finished third.

Organizers and Egyptian authorities closed a section of the race after an explosion destroyed the back wheel of one of the truck teams near the Egyptian-Libyan border. The Austrians Gunder Pichlbauer and Johann Peter Reif and Italian Arnaldo Nicoli escaped unharmed. Competitors near the section were ordered to stop until the truck was removed and the area secured.

It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion, though World War II land mines litter the Egyptian desert.

The Siwa stage was the first raced on Egyptian soil and comes a day after the French co-driver Bruno Cauvy was killed in an accident in Libya. His driver, Daniel Nebot, escaped unhurt from the accident, 167 miles into the stage between Zilla and Sarir.

Cauvy was the first competitor killed since the French rider Jean-Pierre Leduc in 1997. Last year, the Toyota mechanic Daniel Vergnes died in an accident, while in 1998 five people were killed when a car that had dropped out of the rally collided with another vehicle in Mauritania. In all, 13 competitors have died in the rally since it was first run in 1979.

On Thursday, the Japanese driver Kenjiro Shinozuka was seriously injured when his Nissan flipped over during the eighth stage in the Libyan desert. He underwent an operation yesterday and organisers said he was out of danger and was breathing again without assistance.

The rally is scheduled to end in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on 19 January.