While the Belgian Pieter Heemeryck hoped for a carefree trip to Challenge Daytona, it turned out to be the opposite of it. Upon arrival he received some bad news from his airline: his race bike would not have been taken by his plane and would even be untraceable.
Heemeryck of course was very shocked. “You just don’t know where your bike is and that makes it very irritating. If you at least know that your bike stayed behind at the airport and could be taken on the next flight, it would save a lot of stress. Now I just didn’t know if my bike would arrive at all.”
Still, Heemeryck was lucky in the end, because not much later he got the message from the airline that his bike had only been scanned wrong and did arrived at the airport. A few hours later, he was riding around the Daytona International Speedway with a big smile. Still he expects a tough race. “There are sixty guys starting here and all of them are strong. Top ten would be great for me.”
Heemeryck will have to deal with the aftermath of a crash he made a couple of weeks ago. “It doesn’t bother me when I swim, but I have some pain when I’m lying in my aero bars.”
