Shooting Pro Hard Enduro: Red Bull Outliers - The Track Walk
2023 FIM HARD ENDURO World CHAMPIONSHIP | ROUND 5
Text & Images © Noel Flatters / Superfine Media - All Rights Reserved.
Welcome to Red Bull Outliers - Round 5 of the FIM Hard Enduro World Championship Series!
© Noel Flatters / Superfine Media
In mid-August I got back from shooting for a week in Ontario at the Canadian Grand National Championships and the final round of the Triple Crown Series. Next big challenge for me was to shoot Red Bull Outliers - Round 5 of the FIM World Hard Enduro Championship Series here in, and around, my hometown of Calgary AB. As the FIM explains it, Hard Enduro has become “one of the most challenging off-road motorcycle [disciplines] in existence.”
In a nutshell, FIM Hard Enduro World Championships consist of an Enduro Cross style prologue and one or more stages of racing in extreme off-road environments. For Red Bull Outliers, the prologue would take place at Olympic Plaza in downtown Calgary, with the single Hard Enduro stage being run in the Badlands just north of Brooks in Steveville, Alberta (about 2.5 hours east of Calgary). I’ll cover the prologue and the hard enduro stage in later posts, but for this one I’m going to share my experience going to shoot the pro riders’ reconnaissance track walk out in Steveville on the Thursday afternoon before the weekend of racing.
The Outliers course is held on private ranch land, just on the edge of Dinosaur Provincial Park. The Badlands are a beautiful combination of desert and prairie, characterised by relatively short but very steep hills made of clay and sandstone/shale. In the summer, this area can get atrociously hot and dry, with temperatures in 30c+ range most days. There’s basically no shade out there, except for what you can find in the coulees (valleys) below the hills. To top it all off, this is rattlesnake country, too, which just adds to the fun from a sports photographer’s perspective, lol!
I made the drive out from Calgary to Steveville, arriving at about 3:15, 45 minutes before the Track Walk period opened. When I got there the Rad 2.0 (the promoters of the event) crew was still working hard putting the final touches on the course. For perspective on how much work it is to put together a race course like this, some of the crew had been living and working at/on the race site for several weeks by this point. It’s a massive endeavour! Kudos to the whole Rad 2.0 team for their hard work in building such an extreme course in such hard conditions.
Once I had got my gear together I mosey’d over to the pits where I was lucky enough to meet up with some friendly faces from the KTM Canada Red Bull Racing factory team. It’s good to have started building those professional relationships/friendships, and I think that getting out to Walton ON for the Grand Nationals helped me to solidify some of those. After some chatting and asking a few questions I took a wander around the team rig and immediately came across some of the biggest names in the sport. Billy Bolt (Husqvarna Factory Racing/Red Bull), Manuel (Mani) Lettenbichler (FMF KTM Factory Racing/Red Bull), and Matthew Green (Rigo Racing) had just arrived on site and were taking a look at their bikes before heading out for the track walk.
Billy Bolt (Husqvarna Factory Racing / Red Bull), left, and his mechanic Lee Edmonson were chewing the fat between Billy shooting vlog content ahead of the first track walk at Red Bull Outliers.
© Noel Flatters / Superfine Media
These guys were so great to deal with as a media member. They were super open and welcoming, and after just a few minutes I felt comfortable enough to ask if I could join them for their track walk, to which they were very much “Ya! No worries!” One of the greatest things about shooting motocross and enduro is how awesome the community is. I often describe as what the mountain bike racing community felt like back in the early days, where you could approach just about anyone, have a great conversation, and start to build a friendship with even the highest levels of pro racers.
Shortly after 4:00 (once the boys had consumed some delicious candy and hydrated a bit) we hit the trails to see what Rad 2.0 and the FIM had lined up for Sunday’s big race. Beyond Billy, Mani, and Matty, we were joined by Jonny Walker (Beta Motorcycles / Red Bull) and James Flynn. Mani Lettenbichler, who had been to Outliers previously and had the most experience at the event, quickly took the lead as tour guide for the group. This was Billy Bolt’s first time to the event, and it was interesting to see how he quickly switched on into ‘pro mode’ as he assessed the course. Billy is a huge personality (check out his vlogs on YouTube if you haven’t already!), but he was super locked-in throughout the hike. Don’t get me wrong, a LOT of fun was still had by everyone, with rattlesnake jokes seeming to lead the way. Finding bones out on the course also provided ample opportunity for comedic stylings.
From my perspective, it was a real learning experience to see how they approached learning the course in terms of lines, traction, obstacles, etc, As a photographer shooting the race for the first time, it was invaluable to get all of this insight in terms of coming up with my game plan for covering the race. The pro course at Outliers is long, at approximately 14kms per lap, and with the front end of the pro race expected to complete 3-4 laps in the 2hr race time, it was essential to assess where the big stories of the race were likely to happen as the whole thing is pretty overwhelming.
After several kms of hiking through the madness of the course I was starting to struggle trying to keep up with these mountain goats. I eat waaaay too many doughnuts to keep up with pro athletes in those conditions, so I dropped back to start looking at angles and to work on a mental map of my shooting plan. This is where things briefly went a little (ok, a lot!) sideways for me. I had climbed up the back of the final hill of the race to check some shooting angles for other big features on the course when I heard a noise in the rocks behind me. I knew I was alone so my mind immediately went into “RATTLESNAKE!!” mode and I started running downhill to put some distance between me and the (imaginary?) snake. As soon as I started moving I knew I’d made a biiiiiig mistake… Traction out there is virtually non-existent due to the clay and silt that has lots of loose shale and sandstone rocks on top of it. Trust me, it’s like marbles. Especially at speed and when carrying a couple of cameras and extra lenses! I knew I was in trouble as I tried to stop, eventually taking a pretty heavy spill and sliding down the last bit of the hill. Everything seemed ok, apart from scrapes, and even the cameras seemed ok despite at least one of them hitting the ground as I fell. Unfortunately, my Fujinon 50-140mm F/2.8 ended up taking some damage, as I discovered the next day. It’s now back with Fuji Canada getting repaired. Thanks to Geoff from Fujifilm and the awesome folks at The Camera Store here in Calgary for facilitating that for me.
Having survived this momentary bout of stupidity, and having hit my max on hiking for the day, I made the trek back to the pit area to wait for the guys to get back so that I could ask some media-type questions. While I was there I ended up chatting with a super cool guy in a GasGas shirt. From his accent he was clearly European, so I asked him if he came over to race. No, he said, but his son was racing. After a bit more conversation, it turned out that his son is Michael Walkner (GasGas Factory Racing / Red Bull), and the #4 ranked rider in the Hard Enduro World Championship. From this initial conversation I ended up doing a bit of shooting for the Walkners, and started a really cool friendship with the family. They really went out of their way to look out for me over the entirety of the event, offering me all kinds of help with keep hydrated (no easy task at these things!) and appearing out of nowhere with fresh fruit and other healthy snacks. I was so grateful for that, and it was just another reminder as to how cool the moto community is, even at the highest levels of the sport! As it turns out, Michael’s brother works for the KTM Factory, and manages engine mapping/ECU for the KTM/Husqvarna/GasGas Factory Racing Team riders. Very interesting to chat with him about his role and what he was keeping an eye on for the team bikes at Outliers.
In the end, the main crew I had walked with weren’t back by the time I had to pull the pin and start my 2.5hr drive back to Calgary. I did, however, get a chance to chat with Canadian riders Trystan Hart (FMF KTM Factory Racing / Red Bull) and Branden Petrie (Sherco Canada). Trystan had just signed a new contract with FMF KTM Factory Racing, and as a top-3 ranked rider in the Hard Enduro World Championship, he was clearly going to be the focus of attention for the huge crowds that would be coming out. As he put it to me, “Everyone wants to see the Canadian boy win the Canadian race… so we’ll see if I can live up to it and get it done this weekend!”
Branden had just rolled back up from his track walk, and was looking to get some time in on his Sherco team bike on the test loop but, like the class act he is, took a few minutes to give me his thoughts on this year’s course. Like Trystan, he felt like the course, while similar to last year’s, was going to be harder as a result of the Rad 2.0 team taking out many of the ‘easier’ lines, and with the addition of some truly wicked vertical pitches. Traction was clearly (as it is every year at this event) going to be at a premium, and despite some cheerful attitudes you could tell it was weighing on both of their minds.
Spenser Wilton (HTR GasGas / Troy Lee Designs) (left) and Will Riordan (FMF KTM RPM Racing) shared some golden hour laughs after the track walk, and before Spenser headed out the test track at Red Bull Outliers 2023.
© Noel Flatters / Superfine Media
So, what did I learn that I could in my shoot planning for the weekend? First, that I needed to wear some pretty rugged boots with a vibiram sole to give me the support and traction I’d need for scrambling/hiking on Sunday! Next, that the course is so spread out that it would be impossible to cover the whole race as a single photographer. I’d have to make sure that I was dialled in for the stories and shots that I needed, and to not worry about getting everything. Third, I was going to have to cover a lot of ground in forecasted 30c+ temps over 8+ hours with little to no shade, so my pack was going to be heavy between lenses and food/drink.
In terms of shooting, I decided that I would stage myself out in the middle of the course, near the finish line at the end of the Extinction loop. I figured that this would give me the best chance of seeing riders on multiple climbs over multiple laps, and be able to shoot from long range with the Fujinon XF-150-600 telephoto, and then use the XF 10-24, XF 16-55, and XF 50-140 to capture the up close action. I also reminded myself of the key phrase in shooting major events like this: “Semper Gumby” (always flexible)! No plans survives intact, and I knew I was going to have make decisions on the fly out there in extreme conditions to get what I needed. Check out my upcoming posts about shooting the prologue and the main race to see how it went!
cheers | noel.
