If you were about on Bikemagic last week then you may have caught my preview of Europe’s biggest MTB event. And now it’s all over – read on…

The 23rd edition of the Roc D’Azur, one of the planet’s largest mountain bike races, went down this weekend in the sunny seaside resort of Fréjus, on France’s beautiful Côte d’Azur. This was my sixth visit to the event – I remember wondering three years ago how it could possibly get any bigger but here we are in 2007 and the Roc was more awesome than ever. A bigger trade show, a massive range of events including a BMX World Cup and just to keep it interesting they even bolted a couple of extra kms onto the enduro race.

Saturday

The shredordead.cc riders flew into Nice and, after a painless railway transfer to the event, checked into our hotel. A short walk out of town brought us to the event “village”, which is actually more like a small town – it’s got more places to visit, more people and more places to eat than any village I’ve ever been to. What became immediately obvious as we lined up to collect our race plates was that if there was ever a time for a bunch of racers from England to be in France, it was the day of England v France in the Rugby World Cup semi-finals. The girls at sign-in went wild when they saw one of the team sporting an England Rugby shirt and jokingly screwed our registation sheets up in front of our faces.

Rugby not Racing

Inevitably we weren’t going to get away with a quiet beer and some pre-race banter on Saturday evening. As we strolled into the Loch Ness (St Raphael’s lively Irish Bar) we were greeted by a string of good-humoured abuse from the entire French population of the pub. The somewhat uneven rugby sing-off saw the nine of us taking on about 150 locals. To be fair to the French they were the epitome of gracious losers, despite our best attempts to make sure they were fully aware of what was unfolding in the last 10 minutes of the game. Hands were shaken and backs patted come the end of the 80 minutes – I’m not sure that nine French riders would have received the same warm welcome in our local Plymouth pub…

Sunday

A race day that begins without a hangover is a good (if unusual) one. The bikes were ready to roll, with most of us choosing Cove Stiffees as our preferred Roc D’Azur mode of transport. With so many riders in this race (our plate numbers were all over 4,000), we were setting off nearly two hours after the first riders had lined up for the first wave at 9.30am. This system seems a bit bonkers but it does give you some chance of enjoying the race instead of just being in a massive M25-style traffic jam for 59km. The downside of starting at 11.15 would be the warm temperatures (25°) and the huge number of people in front.

Our race kicked off good. I did my best to get all the Shred crew to a good start by hammering it right off the line. With so many bottlenecks in the first few km your whole day can come unstuck unless you’re long gone. The green and black Shred train didn’t ease up until the first food station at 10km where we regrouped, assessed damage and topped up our bottles. By this point the only major problem had been a bad crash that had left one of the riders, Dan Maker, with a painful wrist. We thought he was going to bail but he strapped it up and rode the rest of the race like a trooper.

The next 10km is one huge climb – a real breaker and we were thankful of a gentle breeze to keep it cool on the mountainsides. The 20km point was a welcome sight as you start to turn back towards the coast and the terrain becomes more technical and more gnarly. Mini-wallrides, gullies, drops, nice floaty jumps, fast narrow singletrack descents and punishing short sharp climbs that are barely rideable make the course a total joy. The only down moments were a puncture and a traffic jam that in true motorway style was caused by nothing apparent.

So we slam, jump, drop and hurt our way through the first 50km and then we get to the final supply station. Already I can see that big Jonny is starting to get restless – I’m expecting him to throw it down in the last 9km as the team chivalry goes out of the window in favour of an “every man for himself / last man home sniffs the winner’s chamois” type scenario. Sure enough a couple of km down the trail and the hammer goes down. I do my best to chase him but his strength on the flats is unbeatable and my legs start to hurt more than they have hurt all day. Then a gift from the gods – he gets a slow puncture.

The rest unfolded as you can imagine and I get to the finish just a few minutes before the rest of them, the remainder of the Shred team rolling over the line happy, tired and feeling good that we’d bagged an official time of 4:45 (with an actual riding time of four hours).

I’ve said if before and I’ll say it again, if you haven’t ridden the Roc D’Azur then you haven’t really done a proper mountain bike enduro. It’s the biggest event in Europe for a reason – it’s the best.