Le Touquet!
Le Touquet!
Team CW crashes a freaky French sandfest and lives to tell the tale
JIMMY LEWIS
WHEN YOU THINK OF FRANCE, YOU SEE PARIS AND THE EIFFEL Tower, fine wine, gorgeous women, fast cars, right? Well, scratch that. Imagine this: 250,000 frenzied spectators invading a seaside resort town to watch 850 maniacal motorcycle racers ripping hell-bent across the sand, throttles to the stops. It's the Le Touquet Beach Race. Now we're talkin' French, monsieur! Yes, roosting up and down a pristine sand beach would be a big politically incorrect no-no in the U.S.-let alone doing it with 800 of your closest racing buddies. Not in France. Bell, they do it and throw a big party in the process. I was lucky to be a guest of the powerhouse Yamaha France team, recipient of a coveted support ride for the event. Talk about instant factory ride, I was issued a YZ250 almost as trick as that of the pre-race favorite, Arnaud Demeester, complete with a mechanic for the weekend. Setting-up a bike for beach racing involves fitting a big tank-my YZ's was a hand-formed 4-gallon aluminum special. Gearing was bumped up to get near the 100-mph mark, and the radiators were plumbed with a catch tank to recycle spit coolant. Suspension was set-up stiff to keep the bike stable and riding true through the whoops (more on those later). Pirelli Sandcross tires with foam inserts took care of traction and flat-protection. The bike was dressed up with a Yamaha France graphics kit and a set of handguards. Tres bien!
I was ready to go-until I noticed that 250,000 people don't fit too well inside a city used to hous ing 20,000. Just getting to the parc ferme (impound) was a mad dash, with my mechanic Jean Pierre, aboard a donut-tired TW200, showing me his best French riding techniques through the rashes of spectators flooding the streets. Premium front-row starting positions fill up fast, so you can't imagine the "parade" of racers through town on the way to the start area. It's more like the runfling of the bulls, the path to the beach lined wallto-wall with people, egging on the 864 bikes trying to get to the beach first. Trundling through the congested sections at 5 mph on a bike geared to the moon while being asphyxiated with exhaust fumes, I was hit from behind so many times that my boot buckles were toni loose. I confess to run ning over two fallen bikes in the two-mile proces sion; as payback, I was promptly taken out when we hit the sand in a 10-bike pile-up-and the race hadn't even started yet!
Anyway, I managed to get a prime spot smack dab in the middle of the 200-rider front row, lined up behind the world's largest starting gate. It took a four-wheel-drive truck to pull it down! Then, with a hefty cannon explosion and a huge roar of motorcycles, I was streaking down the beach with hundreds of riders on my ass. Tapped out in fifth with bikes all around, it was almost impossible to see due to the sand flying off the bikes in front-almost like a fog, except it hurt when it hit you in the face. Every so often, some guy on a 500 would pass with an extra 20 mph, and then I'd have to dodge someone who'd just seized, rear wheel locked and looking back with eyes of panic hoping not to get tagged from behind. This went on for five minutes that seemed like an eternity, with the poor YZ250 screaming wide open. It never let me down.
A line of spectators stretching across the sand and into the hills signaled the end of the beach rush and the beginning of the dune section that starts with Le Goulet, a bottleneck where the course goes from a quarter-mile wide to about four bike-widths. With 40 other riders arriving at the same time, things were a little hectic. Not a good place to crash, I thought. Of course, I promptly swapped out trying to avoid a fallen rider. So now I'm lying on the ground watching riders going 50 mph right over the top of my bike. I remember someone telling me the best thing to do in this situation was to bury yourself and wait for the storm to pass.
I got started again just as the bottleneck was get ting into full swing, but I wasn't about to sit and wait for things to clear up. I aimed for the side of the hill, directly into a crowd of spectators. You have to remember that this is France and the fans like to be an active part of the event. They aren't stupid and usually stand in places with pretty good traction, plus if you get stuck in a crowd, people will usually try to get you out of the way-after all, they want to watch the race, right?
Luckily my plan worked and I was on my way and passing iiders v~hcrever I could After the beach the coursc is generally the width of a singlelane road through wct rutted dunes Thc first lap was wide-open fast on the smooth course, not too had. Amazing was the amount of people watching the race-they lined the entire 10-mile course, several deep in sonic areas. At the end of the first lap, I came through in around 80th place and was still passing riders.
For my second pass at Le Goulet, I carefully chose a line through the spectators again, as did a few of the other fast riders, and then was immersed in a flowing sea of motorcy cle racers bouncing up and down on what used to be a smooth, sandy road. Chewed up by almost 1000 sets of knobbies, the dune course was now endlessly whooped, most three feet deep and growing-and there were almost three hours and another nine laps to go!
A few turns later and another bottleneck between the dunes. Again, spectator trails came to the rescue, though plowing through people trying to get a better look at all the mow-mayhem was getting tougher. The French like their race-watching up close and personal. I had more than a few interesting moments in getting by the snarls. There was the time a spectator fell off the bush he was standing on, knock ing me and my bike off a hill and onto the buried bikes and riders below. Have you ever seen crowd-surfing at a punk rock concert? Same thing here.
Another concern was the vast differences in speed. You have the fastest sand riders in the world and the slowest squids imaginable on the course at the same time. One guy is pinned WFO flying across the tops of the whoops while five other guys are dead tired and rolling over each hum mock, rarely staying in a straight line. Pachinko on motorcy cles, collision imminent. So, at least once a lap, usually more, I was picking myself up off the ground. Unbelievably, the evil whoops kept getting deeper and deeper. I was pit ting every three laps so my YZ could take on another 4 gal lons of pre-mix and my slowly deteriorating body could get a shot of Coca-Cola and water, my home-remedy sports drink. After three hours-and being lapped twice by the lead ers-I was feeling pretty whipped. But I did okay, 27th over all, which by Le Touquet standards is really good for a first-timer. My bottleneck-avoidance skills must have worked, but besides hauling some serious butt, I wonder what the leaders were doing? These guys are good.
This race stands out as the single craziest thing I have ever done on a motorcycle. It's not death-crazy like the Baja 1000 or adventure-crazy like the Dakar Rally. Let's just call it asylum-crazy-anyone who does this race more than once needs to be committed. My straitjacket is on order.
