Not j ust your average traffic jam , but the staging area ,f o r the Enduro du Touquet in the town of Le Touquet.
Over 1.100 ri ders blast off down " Paris Beach" at the start of France 's
biggest sporting event.
American John Finkeldey pulls o ut of the pits after a gas stop. Finkeldey
finis hed third .
9th Annual Enduro du Touquef
Racing's theatre of the absurd
By Hanny Ray Abrams
LE TOUQUET, FRANCE, FEB. 20
Cheered on by an i ti nerant crowd of o ver
200,000 spectators, defending champ ion Kees
Van der Ven led a KTM sweep of the top four
places of the Enduro du Touquet. Finishing
behind the 495 KTM of the 25year-old Dutch man in the threehour race among the du nes
and beach of L e Touquet on
22
the Cote d 'Opale (the upper French
coast) w.a~ _ gq.y~~r:old Frenchman
Gilles Lalay on a 240 KTM, American
john Finkeld~y on a 495 KTM and
Frenchman Gilles Francru, also on a
big- bore KTM . The first japanese
bikewastheSonauto.GauloisesIT495
Yamaha of Sweden's Hakan Carlqvist,
who finished a lap down in fifth.
Finkeldey felt his result.would have
been better except for a misfortune on
the first lap. " I got away in about
15th place, then after we came off the
beach I got splashed by a guy in the
only puddle on the course and I
fouled a pI ug. I had to stop, get the
plug wrench out, and clean it before I
cou ld get going again. It cost me
about ten mi n u tes," th e Connecticut
resident said. " I think I could have
won it."
Arguably, the Le Touq uet enduro
is the biggest sporting event of the
year in France. Certainly, in a Wor ld
Cup of Soccer year such as this past
one, the entire spectrum of sports suffered under the attention given to the
French squad's efforts in Spain. B~t
as far as attendance of both compeutors and crowd goes , this is it . Take
these numbers: 1,110 riders preentered, 800 gendarmes at a cost of
$107,000, 250 French soldiers, 150
civil commissioners, over 200,000 spec'
tators, and another several thousand
to clean up after th e party's over. All
this in an exclusive resort town whose
residents number on ly 6,000. To ge t a
rough Idea of the size of this happening, take all of the people at Daytona,
triple them, then send them to Long
Island for the day. Voila, Le Touquet!
just before n oo n. the 1,IOa plus
bikes and riders lined up along the
beach three deep. Race organizer
