Offroad
Coolest Races You've Never Heard Of: Enduropale
This beach race pulls about 2,000 competitors and 500,000 spectators each year to northern France.
Part of this story
Competitors at the Enduropale
© Flavien Duhamel/Red Bull Content Pool
There is no sand race in the world like Enduropale du Touquet, a three-hour “extreme enduro” held each January that sees approximately 2,000 competitors line up to race a one-off track built into the beaches of northern France. A race founded in 1975 by Dakar Rally forefather Thierry Sabine, the Enduropale, despite receiving virtually no coverage in America, is one of the largest offroad motorcycle events in the world.
While it’s billed as an enduro, at Enduropale there are no rocks, no logs, no trees; it’s nothing but sand, which is what makes it a race unique to just about any other in the world. It is not dominated by riders from one specific discipline – motocross, enduro and rally riders all compete together at Enduropale.
The track at Enduropale
© Flavien Duhamel/Red Bull Content Pool
The venue
Le Touquet-Paris-Plage is a small beach town in northern France, actually geographically closer to London than Paris. The permanent residency is just over 5,000, though the population inflates to around 250,000 through the summer. Le Touquet is considered one of the most luxurious vacation destinations in France, where some of Europe’s richest and most powerful take some time to enjoy the sand between their toes. The town is littered with lavish hotels and 30s-style villas. Le Touquet's normal major sporting events include international competition in tennis and horseback riding, as well as stages of the Tour De France, last reaching the town in 2014. In short, this is not the standard locale for a moto/extreme enduro race.
But the race is a massive affair, the biggest event of the year in Le Touquet. The Enduropale can attract up to 500,000 fans to watch the competitors abuse themselves in the sands of the usually serene beach. Many fans take the chance to camp on the beach, improvising their own little moto-beach vacation around Enduropale.
High speed action at the Enduropale
© Flavien Duhamel/Red Bull Content Pool
The stats
Track length: ~9.3 miles
Track surface: Sand, sand, more sand
Race duration: 3 hours
Number of competitors: 2,000+
Number of spectators: ~500,000
Competition level: Open entry (pros, amateurs, everyone)
Winningest rider: Arnaud Demeester (FRA) - 7 wins
The race
Riding on the beach is perfect when it’s smooth, but the sand's time as a perfectly manicured surface is short-lived. The more tires that ride over it, the more the sand is transformed; it is an ever-changing organism that eats dirtbikes for breakfast. The track at Enduropale makes the Lommel MXGP look like a playground sandbox.
Enduropale Du Touquet is the biggest beach race in the world, meaning that the track has the most tires hitting it. 2,000+ bikes equate to 4,000+ tires (and even more factoring in the quad classes), making the track is unbelievably rough in just a few minutes’ time. Though there are different classes, the unique, and insane factor of Touquet is that everyone starts at once – more than 2,000 racers sprint down the beach to the first turn, hundreds of yards away. Many riders do not make it to turn one before hitting the ground.
The beach
A combination of motocross and enduro in what might as well be quicksand in several spots, the nearly 10-mile Enduropale track is almost impossibly difficult for many racers. Traffic jams are the norm for anyone who does not start in the top 20, with bikes littering the track within the first lap. For three hours, racers do their best to win the all out brawl with the punishing track, and avoiding being swallowed by the relentless sand of Le Touquet. Each rider must also refuel three times according to race rules, so pit stops are a foreign factor to the motocross specialists.
Thomas Pages navigates the Enduropale track
© Flavien Duhamel/Red Bull Content Pool
The competition
The race is free of charge to compete, and completely open, which is why so, so many riders show up to do battle at Enduropale. For most, it will be their only opportunity ever to line up along the likes of Dakar Rally phenom Cyril Despres, or Red Bull X-Fighters ace Tom Pagès. The Enduropale attracts legends from all venues of offroad moto – world motocross legend Eric Geboers is one of the Enduropale’s winningest riders, taking top honors three straight times from 1988-1990.
It's an icon of motorcycle events. Of course we are professionals, but with this kind of race we like to have fun as well.
-Eric Geboers
Geboers has led world championship riders Steve Ramon and Julien Lieber to try their hand at the event. Ramon won in 2011, while Lieber won the Juniors class in 2012. World MXGP riders Dylan Ferrandis and Ben Watson have also each taken the top step in the young gun division.
Antoine Méo at the Enduropale
© Flavien Duhamel/Red Bull Content Pool
The race in 2015 was dominated again by French rider Adrien Van Beveren, a self-declared MX sand specialist who took his first win at the race in 2014, competing for the first time in 2009. The 24-year old Van Beveren will be looking for his third straight win in January of 2016, to tie Geboers’ win streak, and chase down the five-year run of Dutch legend Kees Van Der Ven, who won from 1982-1986.
For more information on the Enduropale Du Touquet, get out your French dictionary and head over to enduropaledutouquet.fr.
Part of this story