Chris Birch posted a video of him training with a bunch of Dakar Rally racers while they were out training in the desert. The ‘Say No To Slow’ enduro and adventure rider found himself out with fellow KTM factory riders on the dunes of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in one of his recent video posts on his YouTube channel.
Birch was out and about doing some riding clinics in the UAE. He then got a chance to join Mohammed Balooshi, Simon Marcic, and Marciej Giezma on a training ride through the desert. Birch described the experience as “bloody awesome,” and stated that he had to really push to keep up with these seasoned rally riders.
A white KTM dirt bike was lent to Birch for this ride, from the stable of Mohammed Balooshi, quite fitting seeing that Birch is a brand ambassador for team orange aboard KTM adventure bikes. Birch saddled up on the KTM 450 in a bid to keep up with his group. Safe to say that he was a little pressured to keep up with his buddies on this little training trip through the desert, which is somewhat unlike him in most of his other videos.
This isn’t Birch’s first outing ever with Dakar racers. The Australian has actually competed back in 2012 also aboard a 450-class bike.
Birch ended up following the group’s lines through the sand, and he also stated that he was impressed at “the way they read the desert at speed,” which is an absolutely necessary skill unless you like crashing and eating dust.
Well, throughout the video, Birch didn’t really crash, but he ate quite a bit of sand as his fellow training buddies literally left him in the dust. The pace looked intense from the lens of Birch’s action camera, and there were definitely a few hair-raising happenings caught on film. There was even one point where he couldn’t catch up to the guy in front of him, which is a testament to just how good these Dakar Rally racers are in their element.
