Spanish Enduro Open in La Adrada - Race Report

The second stop of the Spanish Enduro Series in La Adrad, not far from Madrid was another race with mud, rain and cold. Since start of 2018 racing season in Spain has been like if we were in UK or Ireland, muddy, rainy and cold. All eyes were fixed since a week before on the weather forecast for the weekend. And it was not good. All main national enduro riders, with the exception of Toni Ferreiro, Iago Garay and Javier San Roman, were present at the race. The organizers, BikeMadrid club, together with local bike shops and clubs, managed to build 4 brand new trails for the race so the expectations were high for the training day.

And training day came and with rain, cold and lot of mud. At least the terrain on the area is not the sticky kind, so riders were able to ride and pedal. But on several steep sections, it was a non-stop festival of sliding, walking and crashing. With almost 40km and 2200m of both cumulative climb and 2200m of descent, the race route was expected to be a gruelling challenge for everyone. According to race rules, training was not mandatory and as on Saturday it rained non stop, many riders chose not to train. Some made 1 or 2 stages, but just a few went to ride the complete route. Some riders chose to change tyres at the last hour of the day and get some mud tires. Others didn't bother changing tires as they believed it was no difference, once you are sliding, no tire can stop you, just let it flow.


Sunday welcomed the riders with cold but few clouds and rain was not expected until after midday, great news for everyone. First riders began their first climb of the day at 08:30. First stage a short one, just 1.4km, with the highest grade of 22%, and -281m. As it didn't have step sections, it was a good one for warming up and let the riders test their last minute changes on their bikes for the race. Market Uriarte won with 03:35.80 and second Gabriel Torralba from Orbea Enduro Team with 03:39.56. After a long climb to SS2, this second stage had the most distance and bit more of descent, -312m. On this stage, there were already some technical sections to tackle and step switchbacks to deal with. On this one, Gabriel Torralba took the win with 03:37.08 and second came Markel Uriarte with 03:40.28. Climb to the third stage would be longest of the day, riders had 1h45m to get to the top, with feed station around mid-climb.

The third and fourth stages were the two that would really make the riders to use all their skills to get to the finish on one piece. Stage 3 with 2.17km and -448m had some really steep and slippery sections, especially one right couple hundred meters from the finish where a lot of riders couldn't stay on their bikes and sliding now was the usual way. Stage 4 offered 1.5km of pure joy for the participants, with -323m of descent, and 22% average grade, had one rock garden that caused numerous crashes. Good that no rider suffered any big injury.

For full results check on this page.