Enduro2 2022 Meribel – Press Release (January 2022) – Enduro2 Meribel, France: 2-4 July 2022

Enduro2 Announces New Destination for 2022

Pairs-Format Enduro Stage Racing is moving to a new host-destination in the French Alps, this summer.

2-4 July 2022 will see 300 riders descend on Meribel at the centre of the 3-Valleys domain (the biggest connected ski-resort in the world), for a 3-Day weekend of Enduro action together with a heavy dose of ‘apres-bike’ parties and all-round good times.

Registration opens on Sunday 9 January 2022 at www.enduro2.fr

Enduro2 has grown a large and diverse international following which certainly adds to the inclusive and friendly vibe during the event. At any Enduro2 you can expect to join a start list with a broad range of age & nationalities.

Enduro2: The Only Time That Counts, is Having a Good Time

In its endless hunt for epic single-track trails mixed with good-time party vibes, Enduro2 has held several editions in destinations including Les Arcs, France; Davos, Switzerland; and even Nelson, New Zealand. But no matter the location, Enduro2 has remained consistent in its reliable formula of a heavy reliance on ski-lift-access for the liaisons, and using this height advantage to create long, single track-biased race stages that are predominantly away from machine-built bike-park-style tracks with their tabletops, and man-made berms.

Enduro2’s familiar ‘blind-racing’ format (no practise allowed) will be again employed at the Meribel & Val Thorens event, with 15 big stages and well over 10,000m of descent over the 3 days. Pairs-format racing is particularly suited to the no practice format, since the lead rider really does need to work as a team together with his or her partner, in order to read the trail and “telegraph” what they are seeing ahead of them, to their partner following immediately behind. Imaginative team-tactics can often be the key to an advantage – or more likely, to having a good laugh at the end of the stage about how it didn’t quite go to plan!

Read last year’s Enduro2 Race Report here

A forerunner of Pairs-Format Enduro Stage Racing, Enduro2’s home base has until now, remained firmly in Les Arcs since it’s first edition back in 2015. 2022 will be the first time that Enduro2 has not been held in Les Arcs as part of the series.

Can Enduro2 live up to its previous reputation of impeccable trail quality, when it moves to Meribel this summer?

Organiser Ali Jamieson (the same guy behind the Trans-Savoie) seems to think so:

“I’ll lay my cards out right now: This is the biggest news we’ve announced for Enduro2 ever since our first ever event 6 years ago.

Meribel & The 3 Valleys is one of my favourite places to ride an Enduro bike…but one that I’d guess many people haven’t heard much about as a summer destination, let alone ever visited with a bike. Well, that’s about to change!

“The teams in Meribel & Val Thorens have taken a pro-active, shared-use approach; which fortunately for us mean they encourage MTB-access to the 100’s of Km of incredible singletrack & shared-use trails in this vast lift-accessible area (which is actuallly the biggest lift-connected resort in the world). This is in addition to their massive purpose-built bike park that doesn’t see a lot of traffic certainly when compared to other better-known Alpine resorts. I am very excited to finally be able to share all this with Enduro2 participants. It’s been a tough job for me to keep all this to myself these past few years, whilst we got everything in place to launch the event.”

“A key enabler to allow us to put together a ‘ dream’ itinerary crammed into only three days, was to agree a special, one-off opening of the impressive Olympe Telecabine lift (which normally remains closed in the summer season). With this lift at our exclusive disposal, we’re able to access an extra vertical-km’s worth of singletrack below Meribel resort, all the way to the Spa town of Brides Les Bains at 572m altitude. We’ve also arranged for a special-opening of the Bruyeres II lift in neighbouring Val Thorens allowing us lift-accessed terrain to just shy of 2800m Altitude.

Combine these two lifts with the Dozen other high-speed lifts that connect these 3 huge valleys in summer and you’ll understand why I feel confident that everyone who signs-up is going to be blown-away with the scale and variety of the route we’ve worked out. We’ve certainly managed to equal the quality of terrain we’ve been used to at Enduro2’s other incredible locations.”