An enduro race for the whole family
The recent Casterbridge Enduro drew some 260 entries across a number of different classes which cater for beginners, ladies and pro riders. One of the secrets of its success, in fact for all the enduro events in the Lowveld, is the Lowveld Enduro Club's family-orientated approach to all its events.
Says course designer Jamie Watt, “I have been the course designer for this event for the last 5 years and every year I add new and more challenging tracks.
The motivation for this is to develop the sport and the competitor’s skills. We want to improve the skills of the juniors and get them to an international level in terms of their riding skills.
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This year I added a new two-kilometre track which crosses a river and goes up a gully through totally unsploit escarpment.
Because of its beauty we called this track – Paradise.”This event offers Pink. Green and Red routes. Pink is for the younger riders. Green is for the more advanced and skilled riders and, of course, the Red is for professional and experienced riders.
“Feedback from all competitors was good. The weather conditions over this particular weekend added to the challenge, in that it made every route more challenging.” It took the pro riders nearly two hours to complete the 47km Red route – nearly an hour just for the first eight kilometres.
The rest was more open and faster and of course they want everyone to complete their routes. “This route – that first eight kilometers was very technical, so we allowed for a little bit of a breather through the last part. “Our rides are second to none and that’s why riders come back year after year.
We offer something unique with this Casterbridge event. The race starts and finish just outside after the hotel. This event caters for the whole family and it fills our local hotels, restaurants and is good for tourism.
In fact, all our events encourage family participation and have, over the years, acquired a good reputation.”So, how about this event becoming part of the national circuit?
“They run with different set of rules and, should we join, this event will not attract the numbers we do now and it will lose the country-family-all-can-participate vibe,” said Jamie.
With an average of 260 annual participants at this event alone, I have to agree with Jamie. National events have a completely different nature and spirit.
No, let’s just keep it in the family – the Lowveld Enduro Club family. Well, Autodealer Lowveld’s well known roaming lensman and man at the event Kevin Scott supplied me with some awesome pics. So sit back and enjoy…
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