My mate who rides EWS for Poloygon started out riding XC then DH for NZ national team before taking a break (he didn’t enjoy wearing a suit and tie after racing) as a top climber and working for mountain rescue and ski patrol. Then traveled the world and nearly died in a horrific accident. Time to ride again; came 8th overall in the first EWS year despite being a privateer with one bike and a bivibag. He says its speed all the time, every turn has a second in it to gain or loose. This is over a fair distance on some stages and the times are always tight in the top 20.
He came to visit last year on a stop over from Whistler and was grumbling as he was sent to race trans savoie with a few days notice. Which he won, and came 3rd in Trans Provence.
His training days were just massive rides in NZ, huge climbs and descents.

Mtbing has always been about the look – matching fluoro colours are older than many enduroers , they don’t realise they are just paying homage to those 90s fat chance, Klein or marin riders with crazy colored bikes and kit

Even goggles an xc lid was a 99s invention

Jmc…

Well I am sure you are a happy on your 1990 rigid steel bike with cantilever brakes, anyone else can see improvements in technology has opened up far more technical and steeper trails to enjoy.

erm I ride a bike that’s a couple of years old, like I said bikes have been improving all the time (and I appreciate that fact and make use of it) but enduro didn’t suddenly become possible with the latest tech. Enduro has been possible probably since the advent of biking and more likely since freeride bikes first appeared gnarly bikes with gears to get back up. There must be other factors that have brought it about now.

I’m not dissing enduro or modern bikes, it’s my kind of racing, just like lots of other events I’m interested in I generally CBA getting my shit together to actually enter one. But I still say enduro was doable donkeys ago so why has it exploded now?

oh and AFAIK it went
mountain biking
freeride
all mountain
trail riding (with forays into slopestyle for the mentalists/showoffs)
enduro

and it’s still propelling you and your bike to the top of a hill/hills and hooning down. Using a stopwatch for some/all of it just makes you sweat and pay more for it 😉

[b]#Enduro, as experienced by mountain bikers who don’t race in deadly earnest, is above all [/b]fashion.

Sure, the bikes are incredibly exciting etc. But it’s the first time I can remember where most riders are paying really serious attention to looking awesome.

It’s blanketed in thick irony, of course, but the aesthetic is very strong and huge numbers of people at the races are going for it very hard: flatteringly cut clothes in really bright colours and bold patterns, extreme colour-coordination, goggles worn rakishly on the helmet, and legions of photographers on hand to catch everyone throwing great #pro-elbows shapes.

We are dressing the part, and enjoying doing it. More important even than the fact that this is a race format for hobbyists who struggle with traditional formats, it’s an aesthetic for people who weren’t into DH, were repulsed by XC lycra and who understood deep down that the previous “trail riding” look of black baggies, black shirt (possibly with a word written on the front) and grey helmet just wasn’t very fabulous. Those guys have discovered the joy of wearing matching cyan shorts and shirt with bold cerise panels, topped off with a fluo-yellow lid and mirror-goggles, and they are loving it.[b] Quite Gay[/b]

It’s good to see.

Openly Embracing your “Gay” really has been the missing aspect in Cycling for far too long and I for one applaud the Enduroists for bringing it to the forefront of their sport.

+1 Big Dummy (is this the correct response to say I agree with all you said?)

Openly Embracing your “Gay” really has been the missing aspect in Cycling for far too long and I for one applaud the Enduroists for bringing it to the forefront of their sport.

🙄

Mtbellend is gay still an insult?

No Kimberly the word “gay” isn’t an insult. Never has been. It’s a genre of sexuality. I haven’t disclosed mine. 😉

Now would be a good time to apologise for your insult though.

No Kimberly the word “gay” isn’t an insult. Never has been.

you might want to check up on that

No Kimberly the word “gay” isn’t an insult. Never has been. It’s a genre of sexuality. I haven’t disclosed mine.

And neither have the vast majority of Enduro racers, which implies that your use of ‘gay’ is associated more with a particular value than a sexuality. If you’re equating gay with the strikethrough then that isn’t sexuality either.

C’mon.. who here doesn’t recognise this flag in the internationally recognised colours of “Enduro”?

nice troll mtbel, bet you are racing ‘duro on a road bike still

actually its spelt kimberley!

Despite the negative comments (and some of the funny ones) ‘Enduro’ does seem to be the most complete form of MTB racing.

DH is very skills orientated and could be seen as one dimensional because of that.

XC is fitness orientated and could also be seen as one dimensional in that respect.

Enduro encompasses the skillset from DH (if the courses are technical enough) and the fitness of XC (if the transitions are tight enough)….whats not to like?

The annoying thing from a personal perspective is the industry jumping all over it and coming out with nonsense like ‘Enduro shorts’ or ‘Enduro shoes’ or ‘Enduro bikes’….despite the fact that the same model was on sale a year ago but labelled Trail or All-Mountain.

For me Enduro describes a racing format only…my bike is a Trail/AM bike that i use to race Enduros.

You don’t need a 160mm gnarcore lifestyle accessory to race Enduro. Just a bike.

It’s what downhillers do when they grow up.

We had a new bloke on site, standard “introducing…” email comes through and it says in hobbies and intersts that he enjoys “Enduro Mountain Biking”.

So I thought I’d welcome him to the area and invited him out on a ride one evening. He was slow and crap (we when I’m saying that it’s saying something as I am the very definition of mediocre) and I asked him about Enduro Events, he had never entered one.

Apparently riding a 150mm carbon Scott around Swinley (his local trails) is Enduro…

All the gear…

Hmmm…

I came last in my first enduro race.
I came 7th from last in my second enduro race.
I came 26th from last in my third enduro race.

But I would still class enduro racing as a hobby and interest. Am I crap? Am I allowed to class it as a hobby?!

As an aside, if only based on the races I did last year, I would say that the people who enter are in the top 20% of quality riders in the UK (or wherever the spread is that they are willing to come from to enter the race). I’d happily stand by this statement given that the same names appear time and time again on Strava as the fastest riders. Its no coincidence that these names are those you see on the entry lists for enduro races.

As an aside to the aside 😉 I can quite happily make it into the top 5% on most DH strava segments I ride, but, as above, my enduro race results don’t reflect this.

So, even though I’d happily say enduro is a hobby of mine, I’m not technically any good at it. Go figure.

If you enjoy something, great, that’s surely all that matters!

We had a new bloke on site, standard “introducing…” email comes through and it says in hobbies and intersts that he enjoys “Enduro Mountain Biking”.

So I thought I’d welcome him to the area and invited him out on a ride one evening. He was slow and crap and I asked him about Enduro Events, he had never entered one.

Apparently riding a 150mm carbon Scott around Swinley (his local trails) is Enduro…

But surely you don’t need to be good at something and compete in it to call it a hobby.

He might be setting himself some strict times limits for riding from one descent to another at Swinley, then riding down them as fast as he can trying to shave seconds off his PB on Strava.

Probably not though…