Enduro Racing Popular with Columbus School Student

Leading the pack, Daniel Palacio is the youngest person in the race. Coming out of a corner, his back wheel slides and throws him to the ground. He gets up with the face full of mud, his ribs stab him with pain: four of them are broken.  He jumps back on the bike and throttles, with his wrist screaming with pain, and he passes a rider in the next straightaway. As he fights the remaining three racers -corner to corner, wheel to wheel-, they reach the most challenging part of the race. They reach the finish line, and as they fly along, one racer falls off the edge of the hill. Palacio finally jumps above a rock, and with the throttle completely pushed, he beats the last racer.

Enduro is performed by people that are extremely proficient at riding motorcycles; such individuals are very talented and able to withstand high amounts of pain. You have to be suited  to be very strong in certain situations and conditions. The training in this sport is very hard because you need to train on and off the bike to train your body to withstand extreme conditions and pain.

“The training starts from the outside of the motorcycle. The body needs to be fitted to this sport, you need to have a good diet and normally if you want to be a champion you need to have a discipline. You are not going to get to the top by luck,” Daniel Palacio, Enduro racer, states.

Racing

Enduro has thousands of racers and lots of people participate in different categories. Approximately 300 to 350 racers participate in each category. Red Bull Romaniacs is one of the hardest races, and it is cataloged as the most extreme race were Enduro Extreme was born.

“It was my first race internationally the extremest and the hardest. I felt very prepared given I had trained all my life for this. I started up in 4th place getting closer to the first three racer’s, but I had an accident and I was knocked down for 10 minutes and finished in 20th place,” Palacio said.

Training

Consistency in this sport is a key factor because each day you have to be better and have better abilities as well constantly learning new things. The more you train the better for you, because each day you can put goals to yourself and start performing things that you have never done before.

“I usually train 2-3 times a day, depending on the weather. Daniel Palacio claims “that the better you practice with rain, mud, and hard terrain the better you are going to be in the racing”. I always follow this quote because it has shown me that in the races people don’t train when the track is wet so I get an advantage and have won several races,” Enduro rider Federico Jaramillo, said.

People may think that this sport is very easy because there’s not a lot of physical effort, that you just twist the gas and the motorcycles goes. It is actually not that simple, because racers train their brain for the effort and extreme conditions that your body has to go through.  Enduro is a very expensive sport because equipment is not cheap, and especially when you do not have a financial backing.

“My family didn’t help me with money, they just bought the motorcycles andI needed to buy all the gear that is also very expensive. They really have never help that much, and it’s also very difficult living alone. I am from Armenia and I came to Medellin to study at the University of EAFIT,” Palacio states.

Every professional in this sport starts from 3-5 years old with the passion of the motorcycles. Kids are always riding and loving it more each day. Some people describe their bikes like love at first sight.

“I started when I was around 4 years old because my parents gave a motorcycle to my sister and she never liked. I started using it and going to classes. However, my parents didn’t like the way I was heading because at my time this sport was only for drug dealers and was considered very dangerous for “normal” kids. But I continued pushing and pushing and now I am one of the best Colombian riders worldwide,” Enduro expert Santiago Isaza said.

History of Enduro

According to FIM the history of enduro started in 1913 wanting to test the ability of people in their motorcycles, the FIM World Trophy was displayed to the FICM by the British Cycle and Motorcycle Manufacturers’ and Traders’ Union Ltd., in 1913. In 1949.