In May, Gioele Meoni went to Mauritania to revisit the site of his father Fabrizio’s fatal accident at the 2005 Dakar Rally. While looking around, he spotted an interesting piece of bodywork on the ground: a piece of the fairing from his KTM 660 Rally that was left behind on January 11, 2005.

Fabrizio Meoni was running second overall in bikes entering Stage 11, a 695-kilometer leg from Atar to Kiffa. He and KTM teammate Cyril Despres got lost while getting to the first checkpoint at KM 175, so they had to find their way back. As he prepared to rejoin the course, Meoni reset his tripmeter and roadbook to ensure the data was correct, but doing so caused the hazards ahead to not be marked on the device.

Consequently, he was unaware of sandbars just ahead at KM 184. He hit one while going 80 to 90 km/h, causing him to fall off his bike. Despres, who was riding ahead, didn’t notice until he turned to look.

The crash itself was not particularly bad and the KTM was still intact, but the fall caused him to have a heart attack. Paramedics arrived and tried to resuscitate him for 45 minutes, to no aval. He was the second fatality of the race after fellow rider José Manuel Pérez died in a Stage 7 crash. Stage 12 was subsequently canceled for motorcycles.

The bike was repatriated to Italy and returned to the Meoni estate. The remnant of the fairing that came off, on the other hand, stayed in the sand for the next two decades until Gioele showed up.

“This piece here is a chunk of the original fairing that we found in Mauritania, right at the site of the accident in 2005, when we went in May to the crash scene,” he explained. “This piece was still lying on the ground. The bike had practically no damage after the accident. They only replaced a fairing and an exhaust.”

While his dream of racing Dakar alongside his dad would never be realized, Gioele has been keen on carrying Fabrizio’s legacy. He occasionally takes his father’s bikes out for test rides, most recently bringing his 2002 KTM 950 LC8 to Africa in December when he and Andy Winkler followed the route of the 2003 Dakar’s Stage 5.

Gioele revealed the fairing in a video showcasing his family’s bike collection, which includes Fabrizio’s 660.

“2004 was supposed to be the farewell year for Fabrizio, but he made an agreement with my mother. He said, ‘You know, I could’ve won Dakar this year if I didn’t have the problem with the mousse, so I want to finish with a bang,’” Gioele recalled. “Unfortunately, the rules went against him a bit because they said, ‘You can’t race Dakar with a twin-cylinder anymore. You have to race with a 660.’

“He took a step back and went back to his old bike, the one he won the Dakar with in 2001. Unfortunately, this is the last bike my dad raced Dakar with.”

Featured image credit: Gioele Meoni