The 2012 Enduropale du Touquet featured more than 1,000 riders, of varying degrees of experience, tackle the sand beaches of northern France. Redbull.com caught up with one rider with more miles on a bike than most, the 2012 Dakar Rally winner, Cyril Despres, and asked him a few important questions...
Cyril, what does the Enduro mean to you ?
It’s a monument to mechanised sport and I love these trials that involve the pros, the amateurs, the dreamers and the fans.
In your experience of trials, motocross and cross country rallying, are there different ways of riding?
It’s become a trial for the specialist, as the name says. It’s the French sand racing championship. The sport has been going for a number of years, with riders training specifically for the sport and the standard keeps getting higher. It’s a single race that’s a mix between cross with jumps and ruts and, technically, it’s based on cross. But then there’s the endurance aspect; this course takes three hours, compared to cross where one run takes 50 minutes. Another difference is that in cross, whether the ground is hard or soft, it doesn’t change but, at Touquet, the ground changes over the course of the races and deteriorates enormously. It bears no relation to the sand that I know in cross country; at Toquet the sand is dense and damp and absorbs a huge amount of energy which makes it a particularly challenging venue.
Is winning at Le Touquet one of the goals on your horizon?
No, as I said, nowadays there are real specialists in sand racing, just as in cross country. I’ve been here twice and made the top 20 once; it was a good result for me particularly because I’d just got back from the Dakar and so it was a difficult ‘follow on’ event. I won’t ever win here but I’d like to do it again with the proper preparation and in good conditions. I know I won’t be able to made the podium but my goal would be to make the top 15.
Did you meet the fans? Everyone who loves moto comes for the weekend...
When you’re alone on your bike for 8,000km you don’t think about the impact that it has in France and also in other countries, and that makes me very happy. When I was walking around here, I was stopped every five metres because someone wanted to shake my hand. People were congratulating me on my fourth victory... it really was the greatest thing to win once again at the Dakar; it was very satisfying personally but to share my win with the public was the icing on the cake.
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