Race Report: French Enduro Series 2019 - Round 2, Allos by kabelleira

Allos is a small village located in the Mercantour National Park, and for those familiar with the Verdon river and its famous gorges, Allos sits next to the Verdon in the upper part of its course. On top of that Allos is surrounded by a system of big mountains, with several peaks touching the sky at more than 2300m above sea level.

The tracks for this race were designed over the slopes of the Allos skiing mountain, as it has already been done over the last years. It's worth mentioning that this place witnessed the birth of the French Enduro racing scene back in 2003 and 2004, with the legendary Tribe 10000 race.

This weekend the menu included two stages for Saturday and another two stages for Sunday, with some of them counting two timed runs. More than 7000 descended meters in total during the weekend on fast and long alpine singletracks. Being loyal to one of the French Enduro unwritten rules, two of the stages were blind raced without previous practice or track walk.

In the men's field, Louis Jandel took the lead on Saturday with just 4.8 seconds over Alex Rudeau after almost 25 minutes of racing. Albin Cambos, Mathieu Ruffray, and Yannick Pontal were sitting between 20 and 30 seconds behind Jandel. On Sunday, Jandel kept the winning pace by setting the fastest time on the two first stages, being almost 11 minutes long, and just easing his tempo in the last stage, avoiding mistakes and securing the victory with a total time of more than 51 mins. Alex Rudeau finished second and Albin Cambos also saved his third step of the podium with just half second over Yannick Pontal.

Laura Charles was the fastest woman of the weekend, already opening a gap slightly bigger than half a minute over both Axelle Murigneux and Estelle Charles on Saturday. Laura kept extending the gap on Sunday to secure the win with almost 50 seconds over Estelle, who moved up to the second spot of the podium. Axelle Murigneux couldn't keep her pace from Saturday and ended up third. Watch out for Laura Charles in EWS Canazei next weekend.

The next round of the French Enduro Series is in Reallon on the 27-28th July weekend.

Allos is in the Mercantour National Park, what guarantees you awesome mountains and nature.

The mountain where the race is held and the Verdon river.

Bernard is a multitask asset, although on a race day you will see him setting the chrono station at the start of every stage.

Baptiste Gaillot, a rider doing the EWS calendar, is not racing here. He had a crash two weeks ago and hit his head. Being the second time in a year period, he's joined a concussion recovery plan.