Photo: P Jahan, HAS

The Roc d’Azur is one of the world’s longest-running and biggest MTB events. And despite the massive forest fires that ravaged the south of France this summer, laying waste to large parts of the course, the Roc will go ahead in 2003, it’s twentieth year. And the organisers say they’ll plant a new tree for every competitor, which on previous years’ performances should be an extra 10,000 trees on the Maures massif…

It’s a five-day festival, with trade stands (180 of them last year, making it France’s biggest bike show) and riding displays as well as the big race itself. The main attraction is the 55km single-loop enduro, past winners of which include such luminaries as Christoph Dupouey, Bart Brentjens and Tim Gould. There are shorter variants for the younger age categories and a whole bunch of non-competitive rides and events running alongside.

Generally about 100,000 people show up all told. Which is quite a lot. The dates are 8-13 October, the place is Fréjus and the all-important URL is www.rocazur.com.