Supersprox, Dakar and the River Danube
The 2026 Dakar rally closed with Luciano Benevides KTM, taking victory by the smallest of margins, from Ricky Brabec Honda. Racing is tough, no matter how small the margin, there can only be the one winner.
Those margins don't only live with riders and their teams. They affect sponsors too, especially the technical sponsors - they share the win or lose mentality.
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| Race preparation for Dakar in 2015 |
The Dakar Rally may have changed in recent years, but it remains one of the world's top challenges. Between 13-15 days of racing and navigation, with marathon stages, where the riders are not able to be assisted by the teams.
Covering about 5,000 km (3,000 miles) of racing stages and, after 49 hours of full speed racing, in January 2026, the first and second position riders were separated by only 2 seconds. Dakar is THE test for the riders and the machines who enter and Supersprox has supported the top teams every year since their first Dakar experience in 1986.
Was a successful undertaking for them? Judge for yourself. During that time, Supersprox hybrid sprockets were fitted on the winning bikes no less than 21 times. In a highly competitive sector, characterised by claim and counter claim [like most motorcycle industry segments] that is HUGE.
KTM and Supersprox have a total of 21 Dakar Rally victories from 2001 to this year. Starting in 2004, with Nani Roma, Supersprox has been on KTM, Honda, GasGas, Husqvarna, Yamaha, Hero and probably 95% of all privateer bikes at Dakar.
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| Dakar 2019 |
When it invented the Hybrid (dual material) sprocket in 1998, Supersprox subsequently spent several years refining and perfecting the concept, trying to work out the correct way to combine the two materials in production processes that guaranteed reliability and durability.
In early 2004, Supersprox CEO (DJ Maughfling) visited KTM to show the first 'ready to race' Supersprox-stealth sprockets. DJ says: "KTM production staff were cautious about the idea at first. They simply had not seen anything like that before. They told me that they wanted to make at least six months of tests on the concept before committing themselves. I left them 10-15 samples and thought nothing more about it.
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| Cyril Despres, five-time Dakar winner with Supersprox |
"You need to remember that KTM was much smaller back then and they had only started to have Dakar success quite recently at that stage - in 2001 when Fabrizio Meoni won the event. What happened was that when the KTM race team mechanics saw the sprocket they immediately thought it was a great idea. They decided to fit it on Nani Roma's 2004 Dakar bike and go race with it.
"The result was almost a disaster for the team, with several of the sample sprockets breaking. I remember driving back to KTM after the race to collect the remaining sprockets in my car. I was so disappointed with the first result that I threw the sprockets into the River Danube before driving from Austria back into Germany.
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| Luciano Benevedes, 2026 Dakar winner |
"We could have given up at that moment, and the hybrid sprocket would never have existed. I don't like to lose and being told that the product was not good enough, was a real motivation for me to prove that we were good enough. Being the underdog is sometimes an advantage and a big motivation.
"The team must have thought that the concept had something going for it, because over the next 20 years, we have been providing them with race parts and using the results to improve the sprockets that we sell to our distributors and dealers. Their customers really are buying a genuine factory race sprocket. A lot of brands make that claim but with Supersprox' Stealth sprockets it literally is true."
Every common product that we take for granted has an origin story. Supersprox Stealth sprockets are no exception, and their existence is closely connected to KTM, Dakar, Rally and extreme races. The Supersprox motto is "Extend your journey". It is not only a catchy phrase. In the case of Supersprox Stealth, it is engineered into the product DNA. "It is the Stealth's raison d'etre," says DJ.
Dakar - 2004 - 2026 Winning With Supersprox
2004: Nani Roma (ESP) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2005: Cyril Despres (FRA) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2006: Marc Coma (ESP) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2007: Cyril Despres (FRA) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2008: Cancelled
2009: Marc Coma (ESP) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2010: Cyril Despres (FRA) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2011: Marc Coma (ESP) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2012: Cyril Despres (FRA) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2013: Cyril Despres (FRA) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2014: Marc Coma (ESP) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2015: Marc Coma (ESP) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2016: Toby Price (AUS) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2017: Sam Sunderland (GBR) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2018: Matthias Walkner (AUT) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2019: Toby Price (AUS) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2020: Ricky Brabec (USA) - Honda Fitted with Supersprox
2021: Kevin Benavides (ARG) - Honda Fitted with Supersprox
2022: Sam Sunderland (GBR) - Gas Gas Fitted with Supersprox
2023: Kevin Benavides (ARG) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2024: Ricky Brabec (USA) - Honda
2025: Daniel Sanders (AUS) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
2026: Luciano Benevides (ARG) - KTM Fitted with Supersprox
