In one scene of the movie "Bull Durham," Kevin Costner, doomed perpetually to the minors, begins teaching cliches to a young pitcher on his way up to the big leagues. There must be a comparable school for football announcers. There's a time out on the field, as opposed to a time out somewhere else; somebody has the momentum or somebody's losing momentum or somebody doesn't know what momentum means; a steroidal, pre-limbic mutoid is giving 110%; and the hallowed, "Time is becoming a factor." I took it for as long as any rational human being could. Five years ago I stopped watching football games. It was either that or double up on the Valium.

In the Paris-Dakar rally, time is becoming a factor. The big days are behind them, there will be no more time outs on the field, and they stand this morning just 3,300 kilometers from the beach in Dakar where the rally will end next Sunday. Stephane Peterhansel has the momentum. Carlos Sotelo, some 49 minutes behind Peterhansel at today's start, needed to give 110%. By actual measurement, he gave 113.4%, banged through the 420 km leg at almost 107 km/hr for his first stage win on the event, and left Peterhansel in the dust . . . by thirteen seconds.

I looked the stage results and just started laughing. Sotelo is not going to need a mechanic from here on out; he's going to need a full-time psychiatrist and a security squad for a suicide watch. For nearly four hours today the poor man beats himself senseless, to the point where hardened flagellants must be envious; turns a magnificent motorcycle into a piece of hot, whimpering metal; calls in favors from every saint in the diadem; has the entirety of Spain on its knees at ten thousand cathedrals, eyes upraised and imploring; and what does it get him? Thirteen crummy seconds and a night in Timbuktu, a place that five-time Dakar winner Cyril Neveu described so viciously that I can't bring myself to repeat it. Sotelo's not 49:36 minutes behind Peterhansel any longer; now he's 49:23 behind. And even there he was luckier than teen-age sin. Peterhansel had developed overheating problems on his bike and stopped for five minutes to add some water to his radiator. No worries. Give five minutes to the field? What the hell. Get lost for twenty minutes the other day? Big deal. Maybe Spiderman can stop Peterhansel, but I don't see anyone else around who looks up to the task.

The Frenchman didn't need to whack Sotelo. He needed to whack guys like Richard Sainct and Fabrizio Meoni, who stood a little closer to him this morning than Sotelo did. So Peterhansel whacked them. He's now twenty minutes in front of the second-place rider, Sainct, and tomorrow he'll whack them again, if that's what he has to do. The man is a machine. He just gives you that terminator look and says, "I'll be back." And back he comes, up the front steps, through the door, and over a wall of some of the best motorcyclists who ever lived. I've never seen anything like it.

Tomorrow they continue on a westerly course back into Mauritania. It's a 559 km leg, all but eight kilometers of it being a stage. It is a route that the rally has not taken before, so it might turn out to be a repeat of the siege of El Mreiti. This much seems certain: Peterhansel has definitely established his running game.

   	1	PETERHANSEL	YAM	FR	0:00:00
   	2	SAINCT		KTM	FR	0:20:06
   	3	MEONI		KTM	IT	0:25:10
   	4	SOTELO		CAG	ES	0:49:23
   	5	HAYDON		KTM	AU	1:03:29
   	6	COX		KTM	AF	1:51:30
   	7	SALA		KTM	IT	1:55:10
   	8	DEACON		KTM	GB	2:13:56
   	9	MARQUES		KTM	PO	2:34:22
             10	JIMMINK		KTM	HO	2:37:36
             11	VON ZITZEWIT	KTM	AL	2:58:16
             12	BERNARD		KTM	FR	3:14:53
             13	GALLARDO	BMW	ES	3:53:08
             14	ARCARONS	KTM	ES	3:54:39
             15	MAYER		KTM	AL	4:31:28

© 1998 Iron Butt Association, Chicago, Illinois

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