There’s no ordinary performance at the RedBull Romaniacs. Everone’s a hero.
Photography: RedBull and The WHO Project
However if you show up at (likely) the toughest enduro race in the world on a Yamaha Tenere 700 all of the sudden things begin to look very, very interesting.
See, this is an enduro race. Enduro motorcycles typically weigh more or less half of what a Tenere 700 weighs. Even though Pol and his crew shaved off a few kilograms by removing the ABS system, swapping out the OEM exhaust system to an Akrapovic full titanium one, but on the other hand added a few kilos by installing our crash bars and skid plate.
Ignore the above though. What the heck does a Tenere 700 – pure mid weight adventure motorcycle – do at an enduro race attended by some of the biggest names? Well, it takes an extraterrestrial rider like Pol Tarres to answer that.
https://youtu.be/h1WP_HNZ3GI
Pol meant business and he wouldn’t back down, nor would he we stop making jaws drop. So much so that he was featured in RedBull’s daily videos:
Pol raced in the Bronze category. And all but one motorcycle were 250cc and 300cc two stroke extremely light weight enduros. It’s not a 12 hour sort of race. It lasts for five days! Five days of rock crawling, single track riding, extreme up and downhill and you name it. Hence it’s one of the toughest enduro races in the world. His final position after five days of torturous racing is #18. However, it’s out of 187 racers altogether!!
It’s hard to write about anything else, but his incredible accomplishment. Pol has written history.
However, we’d like to take the opportunity to mention that we’re to the moon and back about the fact that Pol completed the race on a Yamaha Tenere 700 which featured our crash bars and the “Tarres Spec” skid plate (more on this later)!
Although Pol doesn’t crash too often, but having crash bars to keep the radiator intact played a big role. The biggest contributor to the performance is the skid plate. For this race we had prepared a skid plate that was built like a tank: 5mm thick aluminum, reshaped for less potential resistance while gliding, reinforced steel brackets and the biggest thing is that it featured an 8mm HDPE rear linkage protection!
Back to the race for one last moment. If there were still a few people who – by the strangest reason – weren’t impressed by Pol’s performance, then this hill climb definitely put the skeptical ones on the admirers’ list:
