After a postponement earlier this year, The Tough One Extreme Enduro took place last weekend, 20th February at Nantmawr Quarry in North Wales. The event is known as the toughest enduro the UK has to offer and from 2011, will become a round of the World Extreme Enduro Championship.
The event has been marred by bad weather, as with the rest of the UK, and Saturday was no exception with the surrounding area covered in 3 inches of snow in places.
Weeks of rumours had circulated that the event was to be the hardest ever, no-one would complete it, etc, etc. The reality was, yes a difficult event, but very rideable and more importantly, raceable for the riders and still favourable for spectators.
Stan Watt from Front Row GB was to compete on a Edmondson Racing prepared KTM250 exc, with a few modifications to cope with the terrain and trials orientated course.
After walking the lap in the morning, Stan felt fairly happy with things, and the designated qualifying laps (Kriega Hot Lap) for the Pro riders, only ensured the course was not to be taken for granted.
The Pro and Expert riders set off at similar times for the 2hr race as the group of riders reached he first set of rock obstacles, it was impossible to determine positions, as riders queued, pushed, crashed or eventually got through with the assistance from spectators.
The main section in the quarry was undoubted the hardest but the best for riding. Stan didn't get the best start and for some reason within the first 5 minutes started to suffer physically with fatigue. This lasted for around 45 minutes before having a second breath and started making his way from 23rd through some of the slower riders.
Again, fatigue set in with about 30 minutes to go and Stan lost a couple of places through multiple mistakes. Stan eventually finished 15th expert but at full fitness maybe might have been able to slip an additional and close in on the top 10.
Congratuations to David Knight who completely trashed the field lapping everyone apart from Tom Sagar.
An enjoyable race, well organised so a big thanks has to go out to Steve Ireland and his team for putting on such a great event with a strong international field of riders.
Many thanks has to go to;
- Edmondson Racing
- Steve Plain Suspension
- Talon Engineering
- Adventure Spec
- Nookie
A special thanks to Ivan for all the support and assisting over the weekend
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