VODCAST: ‘JDV on Air’ – from near paralysis to Dakar finish

JDV On Air is a vodcast on leadership, risk and the people who take it on. Host Johan de Villiers talks to entrepreneurs and adventurers about what they’ve learnt the hard way. He then breaks it down for Currency readers into lessons for business leaders.

In this interview, we hear from Joey Evans, who finished the Dakar Rally on a bike he assembled in the desert from someone else’s wreckage. A decade earlier, he had been told he had little chance of walking again.

The donor bike in the desert – what Joey Evans taught me in an hour

Stage 11. Argentina. Joey Evans was lying in a rut watching a Peugeot drive over his KTM. The bike had a flattened exhaust through the back wheel, a snapped frame tower, both petrol tanks ripped off, and fuel pooling in the sand. The driver stopped, asked if Joey was alright, took one look at the wreckage, waved, and got back into his car.

A decade earlier, Joey had been told he had a 10% chance of walking again.

Fast-forward to 2026, and he is sitting across from me in the JDV On Air studio, laughing about it.

I have been overlanding through Africa for 30 years. I have written a book about how the bush teaches you to lead. I went into the interview assuming I would be the one with the seasoned voice. By the time Joey left, I had three lessons I had not learnt in any boardroom or any river crossing.

Recovery is a flicker, not a vow

Joey did not will himself back from a crushed spinal cord. Six weeks into a stay in a hospital bed, with his brain whispering “stay in the chair, this is what you are now”, his left toe flickered. Then his ankle twitched. Then a weak signal arrived in his quad. He banked each one and went looking for the next. The wobble back to walking was the same shape as the wobble back to riding, then racing, then qualifying, then finishing.

Business is the same. We dramatise the turnaround as a single brave call. The truth is grubbier. You decide. Then you notice the first signal of return. Then the next. Most leaders quit before they get the flicker because they were waiting for the leap.

The donor bike is not luck

When Joey’s KTM was crushed on the second-last day of the race, he found another rider’s wrecked bike in the desert and cannibalised it for parts. The rookie version of that story calls it luck. It isn’t. For 10 years before the start line, Joey had been the bloke who helped other riders fix bikes in the pits, who carried spares for strangers, who took the call from someone he had never met asking for advice on a setup. The donor bike showed up because he had spent a decade earning it.

Goodwill compounds like a tax-free savings account – quietly, in the background, until the day you need to draw from it. My “A” clients are the same. They aren’t won in the quarter you need them. They are won across the decade you didn’t.

Finish, don’t win

Joey came 93^rd. Not on the podium. Not on any rookie-of-the-year list. He was the only South African biker who finished. That was the line. Finishing was the win. The 92 ahead of him won a different race. He won his.

The Stoics had a line for what Joey did. The obstacle was the way. The crash that should have ended the Dakar dream was the only reason the Dakar story was worth telling at all. Marcus Aurelius wrote that the impediment to action advances action. He never met Joey. He would have liked him.

Where the lesson breaks down

Joey’s story is dangerous in the wrong hands. It gets told as “just push through”. That’s the version told by someone who has never been in the rut. Joey didn’t push through. He calibrated. He rested when his body told him to. He took the medication. He called for help when he needed it. The romantic version of his story will get you killed in the Kgalagadi. The honest version will get you to the finish line.

If you are a leader staring down a hard year, listen to Joey. If you are looking for a slogan to put on the office wall, don’t. He earned every line of his story by lying in a rut watching his dream get driven over – and then getting up to rebuild it from someone else’s wreckage.

A man who should have been stranded, on a Frankenstein KTM he assembled in the desert, crossed the finish line in 93^rd place. Slowest of the survivors. Still, the only South African home.

Johan de Villiers is the author of ‘Overlanding Through the Boardroom: Using Adventure Principles for Success in Business’, which is published by Rockhopper Books.

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