One of the magazines (Dirt i think) was adamant that Enduro races are the European model with timed downhill sections and non competitive transition stages.
The article last year suggested it’s the British confusion with the word ‘enduro’ that leads us to automatically think of endurance and start setting up UK races which really require more of an XC skill set than your original continental interpretation of the events….resulting in an obsession with putting in pedally and uphill sections so the ‘best all round’ rider wins….which is surely what XC aims to do?!
Steve Parr had to include the word ‘gravity’ in his series because he knew full well that to just call it an Enduro would result in loads of hacked off lycra wearers turning up for his events expecting some kind of endurance race.
The original gravity enduros in this country captured the idea perfectly….140-160mm travel bikes on several timed downhill sections over the course of the day….with around 20k of cycling at a leisurely pace in between.
I’ve looked at a few other series since then and been put off each type with this bizarrely British obsession with fairness and mutating the event into some kind of ‘super-XC’….
Basically the ideal bike for Enduro racing would be a DH rig, the reason this isnt practical though is because you’d never make the transitions on a bike like that, hence the preference for long travel FS instead.