van de offiele dakar site:
The KTM Gauloises Team returns to the Dakar with the ambition of recovering the title lost last year by Cyril Despres (Marc Coma won the 2006 edition) and has hired Frans Verhoeven as a support rider for its team leaders. Frans is the first Dutchman hired by an official motorbike team for the Dakar and is working very hard to prepare his biggest challenge of the year: “I still ride every other morning, for six or seven hours, in the woods in the region where I live in Belgium. I need to keep practising in order not to lose pace”, explains Verhoeven. His team mates, Cyril Despres, Isidre Esteve and David Casteu have chosen to take a rest after their last group practice in Pordenone, Italy where the team trained for two days and adjusted the suspensions of their KTM 660.