Enduro is Dead, how would you revive it?

Honestly, I think you're right and it should go back to weekend recap/limited livestream of key sections/stage. It should emulate grassroots enduro racing and focus on riding destinations where fans can easily get to watching parts of the stages or have a grand fanzone. I think there's also a lot of potential to use WC enduro as a feeding series for WC DH, as it would be at the top level (above the new continental series) but more accessible to new riders.

Ultimately though, UCI isn't going to lift a finger to fix the format and neither will WB so it'll go the way of 4x and disappear, which is a tragic loss for a type of racing that is probably one of the most accessible for everyday riders to take part in.

I would ban the big rigs from the pits, and put everyone on a more privateer-like level.  You'd get far more brand support, but as it is, no one can justify paying big salaries, plus mechanics, team managers, etc.  If you pay an athlete $100k a year, you're going to pay another $100k to get that athlete to the start line at each race that season.  It's too expensive for what brands get in return.

Enduro is not dead. World Cup enduro is dead, enduro was and always will be for the common folk like us. 

Seeing as my comment got deleted from the other thread i guess ill expand on it

Enduro currently isnt even Enduro, Enduro comes from endurance racing and currently we do not race it correctly.

It needs updated to what Enduro even is, endurance racing currently is several DH stages over a few days on almost DH rig bikes.

WB are making the right move to aim to bring travel numbers back down but the trails and timing need to reflect 'endurance' which will allow for Coverage
Time the ups and downs but make the courses more 'ridge liney' so it can be coverd, this means 2 or 3 stages. with possible final stage being mega avalanche style. Quadcopters(or drones for americans) are perfect for this as they can provide live video or possibly delayed footage like redbull do.

I was not a fan of EWS, any shuttling or lift access ruins the whole point of trying to sell a modern enduro bike - and the whole point of sponsored racing is to... what? sell bikes or not?


 

Nah, It’s dead.

It was obvious from the beginning Enduro was going to be a fad, and now it’s dead like 4x or DS, just like everyone who loved 4x and DS predicted.

A few tiny scenes where a couple people care, zero new investment from governing bodies or the industry, zero media coverage, etc.  

There just aren’t enough places in the world with the right combination of trails, land management and bike culture to make enduro a global movement.

Endurance racing and Enduro as it is i see as separate, with current enduro format evolving from a mix of big mountain endurance races and Super D in the early 2010's. Its just different then endurance. While I'm happy to be wrong, I doubt you will see the general public that do enjoy following enduro care about timed up's or the bikes that come with it. They wanted untamed DH tracks on heavy hitting bikes where anyone could come out on top if they had it in them and for a while, that's what they got. 2016-2021 were fantastic. Wyn's win in Tazzy? Anti Grip in Chile? Sam Hill crushing? The high watermark hit so fast.....

In 1999, just as 14 year old me was slopping a crown race with a flat head screw driver onto my first triple crown fork I found on pink bike onto a very unfortunate steel Raleigh tarantula frame to do loading dock drops to flat with sparking visions of being in a Kranked movie, I bought a mountain bike mag (made of paper no less...) that went into detail of the death of downhill racing. Specialized and Giant were dumping their teams, riders with million dollar contracts were now facing not having rides. Big name sponsors were dumping the sport en mass. I was trying to figure out what was happening to the new sport I thought was suddenly excited about. The Norba series was in every mag i was reading and I was pumped so how could all this excitement be fading? That's right about when I started following DH racing. It had built its was up from a site spectacle at XC races to the coolest of the cool over 7-8 years and collapsed because everyone fed into the new cool kid of the sport. It took until Freecaster picked up streaming it in 2008 to really even start to bring the sport back and it only recovered once Redbull hit its stride around 2014 and its only going through massive organizational change now because of that success.

I'd very much relate what's happening in enduro now. It was the hot new kid on the block in 2013-2014 and things happened so fast, with money and R&D just getting thrown onto the pile with no one knowing what direction to push it in. It clearly veered off in the wrong direction both with courses, organization and presentation, but like DH in the early 2000's, it has a strong foundation at the grassroots level that will hopefully let it re-start like it seems to be right now and grow into a sport with a real foundation and direction. Hopefully it won't take 20 years this time, but I don't think the current enduro format is going anywhere given its "any level rider" friendly and adventurous atmosphere and the ability to bring in large numbers of riders at regional and pro levels. I don't see big line ups at the top of every stage with people giving each other high fives and sharing stage stories on a big mountain endurance race with timed ups and that's part of what makes Enduro popular, they just need to figure out how it works at the top level.

Enduro is still alive at the amateur level here, but only barely.  A couple of the more serious events in the last year were clearly having trouble selling enough tickets to remain viable.

Do you think that the frame and component manufacturers have now got what they wanted – i.e. enduro bikes now seem to sell themselves – and now they don't see the need to spend quite as much as they once did on promotion and advertising (i.e. racing)?

Edit: A significant factor affecting both bike sales (and therefore, indirectly, advertising budgets) and event turnouts is the state of the economy.  The "death" of enduro is not happening in a vacuum.

Enduro doesn’t need investment from governing bodies. Nor governing bodies at all, just people with bikes who want to ride a bunch of sick trails with timers. Enduro is a mindset, professional enduro is dead but it was doomed from the start. 

The downvotes on my post kinda show we are willing to talk about change but dont really want it.

metadave, "I doubt you will see the general public that do enjoy following enduro care about timed up's or the bikes that come with it."
See you missed the point completely. The bikes are already here, Enduro/super enduro that can have very good pedaling manners, look at the Gen 6 slash, The damn thing has better efficiency than their new top fuel, just doesn't have weight on its side & arguably a minimal amount of drivetrain drag.
"They wanted untamed DH tracks on heavy hitting bikes where anyone could come out on top if they had it in them and for a while"
Yes Dave, thats called DH racing - current EDR is basically multiple DH tracks timed on what DH racers call 'trail bikes' - Many DH racers(pros) say EDR is way more risky due to how its raced and the bikes for it.

Enduro Is called enduro because of the endurance stance of it, Do you have the fitness and energy over 6(?) or so stages and keep speed up?

the damn english meaning for the word enduro is..... you guessed it. 'endurance' 

Enduro, Noun, 

I have so many ideas and thoughts about this. 
But I believe enduro is a great format, just not for World Cup broadcasting: 

But isn’t that how moto enduro started too. 
Before they had redbull helicopters, these dudes were just out riding until their arms fell off. 
I like the format. It’s inclusive, it’s adaptable and it’s simply hard as hell to make tv out of it. 
You know what ews did well tho? 
It generated so much content for the brands and riders. 
I don’t see any reason a few enduro series geo located by terrain and seasons couldn’t be generating content and competitive racing at grassroots all the way up to pro levels again. 

Just not for tv, maybe a Red Bull show.

Oregon enduro series was completely rogue (that's punny)  at first and it thrived because the media used it to mass produce viable and impressive marketing materials. I think a lot of that is still relevant …Nw cup pays its bad ass bills by working hard and bringing racers together consistently with a well executed product that has literally raised families….The greater rocky mountains  has like 4 regional  series now, and each region has really fast pro level locals that absolutely rip, even when the cameras all disappeared. They still live in those towns and rip…..
There are so many content producers in California where the riding season is never ending and the regional races there look like a 4 day party… France  loves enduro and it’s all anyone there talks about …So I think pieces will fall together when we all go racing and organize some races and keep building the really really good trails. 

Enduro isn’t going away at all, I kinda think it’s about to blow up anywhere there isn’t a good dh series. Or a bike park because:::
Racing mountain bikes in the woods all day is really really really fun. 

Its an awesome racing format. It'll never die but it certainly may become more grass roots that it has been for the last 5 years or so. I freakin love the format when the stages are long as hell and the days are massive and its several days in a row. 

This write-up is a long one that starts with some snark. Sorry.

Here's the thing about words: They mean whatever they mean in the context of their use. To quote Run DMC: "Not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good."

Just because a word looks a lot like much of "endurance" and a given definition of the word outlined it as "a ... race ... to test endurance" doesn't mean that the mtb race discipline named "Enduro" has to directly reflect the English word enduro to the nth degree. If we're being strict about words does it have to test only endurance and not technical skills? If we're getting strict about words are we campaigning for motorcycle "Hard Enduro" to change it's name to "Difficult Enduro" because the differentiating characteristic is not rigidity in the race equipment or competition surface but is actually derived from the difficulty of the competition?

Naming seems hard...er...difficult.

Also, Red Bull isn't red and Monster isn't made of real monsters. Whatever will we do? How will anyone understand the difference between a word with a definition and word used in a name/label given to something?

Getting beyond a semantics fight (wait, were actual punches thrown or are we again bending the meaning of words during use in such a way that even if the exact definition is not adhered to the reader still understands the meaning?), Enduro could definitely include a competitive uphill component. Fuck, call it a power stage if you want; everyone will understand what you mean and we can reuse the signs from last year.

Two timed uphills and eight timed downhills spread across two days with neutral liasons between the other downhills. It'll require endurance (to satisfy those three people who are interested in that) but the endurance racing component doesn't overshadow or completely negate competence in downhill ability.

Schedule? Pros get a practice day on ebikes. Those ebikes have timers to make sure riders only get a limited amount of time on the hill for practice. Then a forced day off those trails. Day 1 of competition has the pros riding two downhill stages, an uphill stage, a stop at the pits for whatever they might need, then two more downhill stages. Same pattern for Day 2 but on different trails. Timed but neutral liasons up to the downhill stages. Amateurs race the pro's Day 2 trails on their one and only competition day during the pro's Day 1 race setting up a "pro riders need to read the trails and ride-well-sorta-blind" skills component after the amateur competition cuts up the course a bit. The Pro's Day 2 finishes with a downhill race-style setup into a bowl for a gathered crowd. Fastest aggregate times win.

Coverage? Individual riders are encouraged to put together their own vlogs but the event organization gets access to all on-bike footage from all riders to cut together into their own official race broadcasts as well. Every rider MUST ride with a camera on practice day and both race days. They'll turn their memory card in when they get to the end of their riding day. Their card is handed back as soon as data is copied. Even better if the cameras can support writing the same content to two memory cards simultaneously. 

Want to step up the coverage and follow special-interest stories? The broadcaster can send a filmer out to get some footage with those especially interesting riders captured similarly to what MoiMoiTV and Greg Callahan have been doing. Broadcaster would also have cameras on the ground to cover the finishes of stages, grab some interviews, and catch any other critical stuff (end of each day results, podiums, etc.).

Riders can't reveal their stage times or their final position in their vlogs (but can talk about their per-stage-position) and broadcasters can't use any not-on-bike footage aside from the stuff they gather with their own cameras. Most people will watch the vlogs for the stories that the riders tell better than the broadcasters but they'll watch the broadcaster's videos for the times, the results, and the podium ceremonies. Sponsors get coverage from the riders' vlogs AND get coverage from the broadcaster's productions. Riders can drop their videos as early as 12 hours after the race concludes. Broadcaster has to wait until 60 hours (2.5 days) after the race concludes to publish their race broadcast videos. Video from the practice day has no release timing restriction.

That whole Enduro Manifesto (Endurofesto?) above is probably littered with grammar and sentence structure errors...and probably some real braindead omissions that I just can't spot at this second. I kind of just unorganizedly spat that out of my hands because I thought about this a bit the other day on a 27-mile mostly flat ride. What would make me want to watch an Enduro broadcast? What do I love about the riders' vlogs? How can they live in the same universe and get eyes on both? What sort of coverage would get sponsors the most exposure? Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?

Damn, I love riding bikes.

I understand what enduro is, I've been racing in its very enjoyable format for 10 years all across Canada. And the downvotes on your posts are likely because of the attitude you've so far been presenting your suggestions in.

With that said, looking at it from a production stand point only and leaving the specifics of the racing format out of it, your suggestion above doesn't help the race starting to space out and become a long slog of racers spread over a course, even with the up's timed, other than just one single time for the event which makes it easier to see who the actual top dog is, its nearly impossible to film because of the same issues they currently have. They could film the way you've suggested in the format you've suggested and you'll still have people not wanting to sit there for 5+ hours to watch it pared down version for each category of racer. There's no way to film it and package it for the masses in a two hour or less format with the drama and feel that DH and XCO have without mostly gutting it. It would take a huge amount of editing, equipment and humans to make happen and you'd get less than half the race in with twice the budget. Short track and XCO were pretty much made for TV and the changes they've made to DH will also make it a 2h or less event for each category. I just don't see that happening with either the current or your suggested changes to the format. Again, happy to be proven wrong, but I think you'd just end up with a soleless, rushed event that would fall flat. It would have to be photo epics and the 30-40 minute follow ups that they used to use that seemingly didn't work.

I do 100% agree with you on the course bits, the wonder years of enduro as I mentioned, were all pedaling, all the time, and had the rawest courses. 

Enduro isn’t dead, the televised stuff only is and that’s ok. It’s not as spectator friendly as DH is. On local levels around here enduro is what people commonly race and ride. 

I’ve never been interested in racing it myself but I think enduro is a great grassroot format especially people who aren’t living somewhere with an active local DH series. 

Let it stay small series. We got some wildly good long travel trail bikes as a result of it atleast.  

Speak for yourself....I am posh AF.

My first thoughts before reading all the other responses are.

1. Coverage is always going to be difficult to do in real time. The weekend wrap up style works pretty well. Look at what the DH SE guys are doing and use that as a guide. 

2. Encourage (not just allow) riders to record their runs and publish them wherever they want, probably youtube. This to me is the biggest thing WB/ Disco. has screwed up. By tightening the restrictions on coverage to favor the official coverage it has killed a lot of the visibility of the sport. 

3. Make coverage free to watch. Enduro needs visibility to be valuable to sponsors. It is less visible under WB than it was as a stand alone EWS. This has killed the sponsorship $. The sport is too small to survive the loss of viewership from being behind a paywall. 

4. Make Enduro UCI points count towards UCI DH racing. This could provide a potential pathway for up and coming racers that is cheaper than starting a standalone DH series to score UCI points. I don't love this but its an option. 

Here in NC there is quite a few enduro races within a couple hours but I just cant justify the $120 price to race a total of about 10-15 minutes. I think they could charge about half that and get a ton more entries and end up better off but they have to take that chance first. 

Comparing to the moto enduros and hare scrambles I do the fees are about $50 for 2+ hours of racing or more and its literally the same amount of work or more to put on these events vs a mountain bike race.  

A “mindset” doesn’t make for a sustainable sport.

Riding off-map loamers in the national forest with your friends and timing without permits isn’t enduro… That’s just riding bikes. 

Just needs to get back to what made the ews a popular series to begin with.

Focus on race quality.  More stages.  More riding.  Far flung venues.  Enduro is an adventure sport.  It’s all about traveling to a new location and racing the best trails it has to offer.  It is perfect vlog material.  At the same time pay redbull to produce on track (really focusing on the riders of the sport at events and at home) while eso focuses on track preview and day of event highlights.  It is fine to be the red headed step child at a shared xc/dh event occasionally but it should not be the norm.  And the track quality needs to be equally high quality (less of an issue this year compared to the previous)

If they want to bring back e bike racing as a category for the non pros I couldn’t care less.  But the e-bike racing was certainly a distraction from the quality of the pedal courses and limited them logistically.  Have both bikes share the same course and limit the pro category to non motorized.

Professional enduros simply be the pinnacle of the sport.  The best riders at events anyone would wish they were there.  And events that really maximize the experience for the guys racing it.  When you travel all the way to Madeira and barely scratch the surface of what’s available in the bike park then you are simply doing it wrong.
 

The Levo killed the enduro star. How many e-bikes where being sold in 2015 and how many enduro bikes are being sold compared to e-bikes today? It’s a lot less about how to broadcast a race than it is about sales trends 

One day blind racing with no uplift for less than $100.

This is more for local/regional races but that what it should be.

I always go back to the comparison of rally racing vs F1 when it comes to comparing enduro and dh/xc.

Rally is cool to see but hard to film and has more of a grassroots feel even though they have big names involved. It’s popular but you can’t just sit and watch the entire event. Lots of privateer racing doing it on a low budget to. 

F1 closed course easy to film and explain/understand for the average person big money going towards no privateers etc (don’t agree completely with the direction but I’m not in control just along for the ride)

Local enduro racing in BC is still massive with events selling out 200+ rider events in less than a day sometimes just hours. Is it going to cool off a bit sure but it’s not going anywhere. Most of the courses have some climbing in them and some great challenging technical features as well. 

I don’t think they need to change too much but feel like I do with DH racing that it would be better to see more locations than we see now but that’s unlikely to happen with the UCI business model.

I like the idea of blind racing but for the most part it is very hard to keep an even playing field unless you are creating new trails every race as it would give locals a massive advantage or even those with a large budget to spend time learning each location.

I think it’s interesting that the best coverage I ever saw for the EWS was the specialized On Track series. I’d be happy to see the UCI create something similar to follow the race series. 

I friggin love you guys (and gals) !! Isn’t vital just bomb? Kinda miss littermag, but I like it here. I like you. You’re cool. And smart. 
I think we got two things coming out of this:

ESO/WB/UCI (or whomever ends up holding the stick shifter for World Cup enduro) should go back to what the EWS had : epic stages all over the world 

&

Grassroots will never die becasue weekend warriors want to race their enduro bikes. 
This thread reminded me of my favorite racey complainer response: 

Organize some races. I should too. 
I have breck. And some other high country garbage around. 
Maybe a little two day enduro is called for…..

(Top tier/World Cup level) Enduro racing just needs after race productions instead of live feeds. We can watch live timer feeds-day of-  and gobble up vlogs (sometimes for days) after an ews. Then three weeks later redbull can drop a couple episodes about the “South American stretch” of races or Warner bros. Could film an entire season and put it out on streaming. There is a product there but BALLS should have known it’s not live timing and garbage drone footage. 

I loved following the early years of enduro when it kind of felt like a travel show with bikes. When the races felt like an adventure and riders needed mechanical sympathy and a decent tool kit to make it to the end, as well as that camaraderie to help each other out. I personally love racing the two day races with day 1 practice, day 2 race. While it feels more at home as grass roots rather than hyper-televised, having the pro racers push the kit past breaking point gave us amazing "enduro-specific" kit (remember when that term got abuse on the forums?), so if the pros stop racing will we stop getting the new gear? 

To me enduro trails are as natural as possible, wheels mainly on the ground, single-track, techy, slower than DH, and no or one uplift per day (unless the trail system needs a way to get riders to a different hillside). I'd live with being able to swing by the pits perhaps once if the trails passed that way, but for pro level the transitions need a slightly tight time limit. As for how to revive it, I'd pull it out of the top level coverage, support teams and riders uploading their own content. I'd probably allow riders to take their best points from maybe 4 of 6 rounds, so those on a limited budget could compete. I do wonder whether the economic climate means multiple continental series with the top riders getting invited to a decider would actually be more viable?

Rob Warner commentary

„Qui mortui sunt, diutius vivere“ or those who are declared dead live longer. Cheers