Clay Legs Create Dakar Champion

At the end of the Dakar, the French driver did not celebrate after crossing the line. He knelt on one knee in the sand, hugged the ugly racing car with both hands, and pressed his face tightly against the weld scars on the frame—the seams between scrap steel bars and titanium alloys, like fish scales and scabs. Then he stood up, threw the championship trophy into the hands of a Chinese man, turned around, and cried like a child. The whole place was dead silent. The KTM technical director was holding the laser gauge and forgot to press the switch. More than 20 years ago, this man was just a welder in rural Hunan. He couldn't write, and even his name was drawn like an earthworm crawling. When you put your ear against the steel pipe, you can hear a 0.1 Mm gap, but you can't understand the FIM standard or French swear words. In the review tent, the organizing committee pointed at his notebook and shouted: "Graffiti! This is kindergarten homework!" The KTM director sneered: "Chinese monkeys should not touch God's car." Even his own rider spat at the wheel: "Chinese scrap metal." Then—— In the third stage, the KTM engine exploded, and the five doctors were helpless; in the fourth stage, his scrap iron frame ran over the soft sand, and the CNC titanium alloy floated into paper boats behind him; in the fifth stage, the organizing committee forced him to withdraw from the race, and he knelt on the 70-degree sand, his knees bleeding, and he rebuilt the frame with steel wire, saying only: Give me a night. From welding tractors in rural Hunan to the championship podium in Dakar. Twenty years. That ugly weld scar is the hardest bone made in China. [You weld, I ride. You have to run only if you are not in the race.