Toby Price is wearing shorts and when he sits down the skin missing from his leg is obvious.
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A souvenir of the big race, I ask?
“Nah,” he says sheepishly, “I fell off my pushbike.”
He rolls his eyes and it’s obvious the irony is not lost on him.
After all, this is the same Toby Price who has just returned from competing in his first Dakar Rally – the most demanding, unforgiving, torture test for enduro riders on the face of the Earth – finishing third.
To come through that 9500km ordeal unscathed – well, not totally, but we’ll come to that later – only to fall off his pushbike is too silly for words.
We’re in the 27-year-old’s Maitland home two weeks after the completion of the 13-stage race that started in Buenos Aires in Argentina, then headed into Chile, then Bolivia and back into Argentina, finishing where it started, in Buenos Aires.
It has been a hectic two weeks for him, with media engagements, photo shoots and so on, and we’ve already had to postpone our interview once.
The first thing you notice about Price’s home is that it’s clearly a man’s house. He has a girlfriend in Melbourne, Misty, but he lives alone.
The 60-inch television on the lounge room is framed by cabinets four shelves high. And on each shelf is an autographed racing helmet. There are trophies everywhere, some on walls and cabinets, others on the floor where it’s obvious he has run out of room.
Over against another wall is a motorbike – “That’s a KTM 450 SFX – the bike I rode when I won Finke in Alice Springs in 2010, one of only three riders to ever do it first go.”
A sort of life-sized trophy.
Through to the open-plan kitchen/living area there’s more of the same – a dummy dressed in his friend Bryce Menzies’ autographed Red Bull racing suit, numerous framed race jerseys, all signed by some of motorsport’s biggest names, a pair of race boots on the floor, one picture on the wall – yep, you guessed it, a rally rider zooming over a dirt road – riding gloves still in plastic on the floor and heaps more trophies side by side around the wall, the tallest is probably just under a metre high.
Just ask and there’s a story, or a signature for each.
“That one? That’s the helmet I was wearing when I broke my neck nearly two years ago – eight screws and three bits of rod I’ve got in there.”
Clearly, it’s all part of the game. There’s no bravado or arrogance, just a forthright character who has his feet on the ground and who answers every question as honestly as he can. A really nice bloke.
What does Misty say about the decorating?
“She’s pretty diplomatic, but she admits there are changes she’d make,” he says in what is clearly a major piece of understatement.
After a short pause, he confides “you should see the shed” and he breaks into a big smile.
I do take a look. It’s like the lounge room on steroids, a motorsport fan’s Shangri-La, but that’s another story.
Price is a rider who is on the up. He doesn’t pull in the massive money of the 500cc road bike riders, but he’s doing pretty well for himself and, after Dakar, it would seem it’s only going to get better.
A decent season now will bring in six figures, up to say, $150,000. But post Dakar and that figure should head north, especially if he can land a full-time contract as a factory rider for KTM or one of the other major franchises.
His effort in finishing third in his first Dakar can’t be overstated.
It’s a race like no other, over all
terrains – sand, riverbeds, rocky slopes, dust, wheel-clogging mud, hard surfaces – and major temperature swings. One day he was in sand dunes in 45-degree heat, and two days later he was riding at minus 12 degrees, wearing multiple layers including two thermal jackets,
T-shirts, five sets of gloves “and I was still freezing, I could barely feel the handlebars”.
For two weeks you pound your bike and yourself, existing on about four hours sleep a night before dragging your tired frame out of the campervan in the wee small hours to get to the starting line in time for a quick breakfast to go through it all again
Price, though, has one thing in his favour – speed. In enduro racing they can teach you to navigate, teach you pretty much everything you need – but the one thing they can’t teach is speed. And Toby Price is fast.
Give him a decent piece of terrain and he’ll hit 160km/h no problems while glancing down and reading a map. It’s as skilful as it is crazy.
“The map’s in French too. Geez, I can barely speak English.”
As he says, at that speed a rock on the road that you don’t spot and ... he doesn’t finish the sentence.
He doesn’t need to.
A fellow KTM rider, Michal Hernik of Poland, was killed during this year’s race.
“He was part of our team,” Price says. “I was talking to him the night before.”
For a guy like Price, who had his first bike at age two and entered his first race at four, the thought of hitting these high speeds on rough, unpredictable roads doesn’t phase him at all.
“I know I can ride fast,” he says by way of explanation.
“I grew up on a 43,000-acre property at Hillston, outside Griffith where my family grew wheat and lucerne and had sheep and cattle. There weren’t a lot of other kids around, so if you don’t get on your bike there’s not much else to do.
“I’m at home on a bike.”
His contract with KTM is not as a full-time factory rider. Rather, he is contracted to ride the major events for them – like Dakar, the Australian Rally Championship and the Finke Desert Race. A full-time factory rider contract would be more lucrative and financially reassuring.
That’s one of his goals – a full-time contract. And if not that, then to ensure he has enough sponsorship to be able to compete internationally again. For now though, top of his list is to make sure he competes in Dakar again.
“There was never a day where I thought I wanted to quit,” he says.
“But there was never a day when I didn’t think, ‘why am I putting myself through this torture?’ It’s incredibly demanding.
“But when I finished ... the feeling was unbelievable. It didn’t matter that I finished third; it was the sense of achievement at just finishing.
“Really, it’s that hard.”
The hardest day?
“We were up at 2.30am and on the bike racing at 3am. We rode 600 kilometres to get to what we call a special stage, and the special stage, which was another 350 kilometres. So that was a 950-kilometre day, and we finished racing about 6pm,” he says.
Which brings me to my earlier point about him coming through unscathed.
That’s not exactly true.
“A day like that must be pretty hard on the backside,” I say.
He gives me a half smile, half grimace.
“We call it monkey butt,” he says. “Your bum is red raw by the end of it, and numb. We all get it. Mine’s only starting to come good now.”
Then again, every good story should have a sting in the tail.
If you would like to sponsor Toby Price, email contact.tobyprice@gmail.com
