If you are unfamiliar with the Erzbergrodeo, also known as the red bull hare scramble. Its about time you familiarised yourself with one of the toughest, if not THE toughest Enduro motocross race on the planet. The race is held in an active Quarry in Austria called Eisenerz, the perfect location for a display of skill from the best enduro riders in the world.
Since 1994 when the race started, the word quickly spread about the challenge and participant numbers doubled in the first few years. You could say that Enduro riders welcome a challenge, at the least.
The main event begins with the Iron Road Prologue, in which we see both motorcycles and quads competing in race against time to the top of the mountain, the top 500 from the 1500 prologue competitors will advance to the final event, the Red Bull Hare scramble.
Only a handful of riders actually manage to finish the scramble inside the 4-hour time limit, and some unlucky riders are out of the race after the first hill climb, which is no small task, although some of them make it look easy. This is unfortunate for some as certain souls travel thousands of miles to compete.
The 2017 rodeo saw an outright winner who was not from the UK for the first time since 2012. Jonny Walker and Graham Jarvis both representing the UK had taken turns in winning the event for five consecutive years, Jonny and Graham took two wins each and came joint first in 2015 after an epic turn of events where four riders helped each other to the finish and shared the honour of 1st place. Alfredo Gomez was amongst these winners, and went on to win the 2017 scramble in the race of his life. He went on to say that it was the biggest win of his career.
The top three riders in the final scramble of 2017 were Alfredo Gomez of Spain, Graham Jarvis of the UK and Cody Webb from the USA, all of them finishing within five minutes of each other.
Upwards of 50,000 people were present at this year’s mega-event, including VIP guests, crew, riders and spectators… all of them adding to the atmosphere of the weekend of beer, mud and burnouts, not in that order. Definitely one for the bucket list.