The tragedy at the ral­ly occurred on Jan­u­ary 7, when the Spaniard was mov­ing along the sec­tion from Al-Henakiya to Al-Duwadi­mi. Then footage spread on the Inter­net show­ing the rider’s bro­ken motor­cy­cle, as well as the process of pro­vid­ing med­ical assis­tance to Fal­con. The ath­lete was diag­nosed with mul­ti­ple frac­tures, includ­ing bro­ken ribs and spine, and also suf­fered car­diac arrest.

Fal­con was quick­ly tak­en to a hos­pi­tal in Riyadh, and then trans­port­ed to Spain, where doc­tors fought for his life for sev­er­al days. All this time he was in an arti­fi­cial coma, from which he nev­er emerged. He died on Jan­u­ary 15; Car­les was 45 years old at the time of his death.

The team’s press ser­vice, cit­ing doc­tors, named the cause of the ath­lete’s death as neu­ro­log­i­cal dam­age in his body. “The med­ical team con­firmed that the neu­ro­log­i­cal dam­age caused by car­diopul­monary arrest dur­ing the acci­dent was irre­versible.”, reads the state­ment. Team offi­cials said Fal­con had excel­lent per­son­al qual­i­ties: he always smiled, remained active and enjoyed every­thing he did — espe­cial­ly motor­sports.

The com­pe­ti­tion orga­niz­ers also expressed con­do­lences to Fal­con’s fam­i­ly and friends in con­nec­tion with the tragedy. “It is with great sad­ness that we learned of the death of Span­ish rac­er Car­les Fal­con from his fam­i­ly. The orga­niz­ers and par­tic­i­pants of the com­pe­ti­tion express their most sin­cere con­do­lences to his fam­i­ly and friends.”says the state­ment pub­lished on the tour­na­ment web­site.