The Insanity of Enduropale du Touquet

The world is full of people doing mad stuff on motorcycles, and a fair amount of those people do those mad things in races. Enduropale du Touquet is at least among the most gruelling motorcycle races on the planet, and new footage takes you into the heart of its hysterical madness.

The Enduropale du Touquet will turn 50 years old next year, and the race’s lunacy has hardly been diluted in 49 editions (1991’s edition was cancelled for the Gulf War) that have been held so far.

The race takes around three hours to complete and is held on the beaches around Calais, meaning extremely soft sand all the way around. It’s no surprise, then, that the Dutchman Lars van Berkel featured on the 2024 podium. 

Last summer, van Berkel raced the famous Southwick National in the AMA Pro Motocross series, regarded as the toughest race on the calendar for its soft sand and high humidity, and then headed north to take part in the race at Gopher Dunes in the Canadian Motocross Championship the very next day. A couple of weeks later, van Berkel was lining up again, this time at the MXGP of Flanders at the infamous and torturous (and, of course, sandy) Lommel circuit in Belgium.

This year, almost 1,300 riders entered the Enduropale, which delivers a level of chaos that can be matched by few other races (perhaps the Gotland Grand National is among them).

New footage released by Red Bull Motorsports takes you right into the heart of the action. The footage comes from a camera mounted to the helmet of French rider Francis Ortega, whose race was unfortunately done after only three laps, meaning a classification of 1,130th.

Todd Kellett won the Enduropale du Touquet for a second year in succession in 2024, again winning for Yamaha. In just over three hours, Kellett completed 15 laps of the notorious French beach track.

Find all the latest motorcycle news on Visordown.

Image credit: Red Bull Motorsports/YouTube.