The experienced Belgian fifty-year-old rider Eric Palante was taking part in his 11th Dakar. In the Dakar Argentina-Bolivia-Chile 2014 he rode his Honda CRF450X Rally #122, competing without assistance crews in the amateur trophy for motorbikes.
Despite no alert was received by the organizers, Palante failed to reach the finish line of the fifth stage of the event, Chilecito - San Miguel de Tucumán, held on Thursday, 09 January 2014. He was found at about 08h30 the following morning, by the crew of the broom truck that was plotting his position to pick him up. The Belgian rider was lying at the side of his bike, at kilometre 143 of the stage, in territory of Belén, a small village in Tucumán province, Argentina.
It was determined that Eric Palante died due to hyperthermia. During the stage conditions were extreme. It is believed that while travelling the rider felt he was about to lose consciousness, and stopped his run. He was found kneeling beside his motorcycle, still wearing his racing equipment, helmet and overalls. Possibly his condition was already so severe that he was unable to make any decision.
A member of the ATOC-Moto (Africatwin Transalp Owners Club), Eric Palante would have turned 51 on 21 January 2014.
Two other rally-related deaths were reported that same day. The Argentine journalists Daniel Eduardo D’Ambrosio and Agustín Ignacio Mina, following the rally for an Argentine magazine, were killed when their vehicle marked by sign "Prensa Dakar", overturned in rough terrain in province of Catamarca. They were traveling towards San Miguel de Tucumán, where the finish line of the stage was located.
Eric Palante was the fifth Belgian to die during the Dakar Rally. Two of them lost their lives in territory of Mauritania, in 1994 the BMW rider Michel Sansen, and in 2002 Daniel Vergnes; team members Mark Delvigne and Michel Lemaire were killed by an assistance truck in 2005, near Dakar.
R.I.P
