Over the years, I've watched my share of insane rally action. I've attended WRC events in person, so I could get the full sensory overload experience that you just can't get watching it on any screen.
But there's sand, and then there's beach.
I'll put it this way: If what Ken meant when he said his job was "just...beach" in the Barbie movie was the Enduropale, he'd have absolutely zero reason to think anyone could look down on him. (And then you wouldn't have a movie, but I digress.)
In the following footage, what we see is an on-board recording taken from the helmetcam of French rider Francis Ortega. He's competing in the scrum at the lineup of the 2024 Enduropale beach enduro race, which took place at Le Touquet-Pas-de-Calais in France.
The weather is gray and nondescript, but the racing is heart-in-your-throat when seen from this point of view instead of the sidelines. The unique texture of the damp sand on the beach, combined with the deep ruts, hills, and dips sets up the beginning of a challenging experience. The massive pack of riders all having to look out for both themselves and at what's happening to the riders directly ahead and around them sets up the rest.
The video may only be just under 16 minutes long, but it's INTENSE. The pack all starts racing together, which of course means that if anyone in front or next to you goes down, it's all the more difficult to avoid a collision that takes you out, too.
Even as the racers start to pull apart over time, the turns in the course mean you don't always see that someone's down on the course ahead of you until you're nearly on top of them. Then you need to evade, but preferably without hitting someone else who may be racing next to you. All of this is stuff you'd have to do in any race, of course, but it's made much more tricky by the fact that you're racing in damp sand.
It's also practically an advertisement for visor tear-off strips, because the sheer speed with which the visibility goes from kind of OK to absolutely terrible has to be seen to be believed. We get a good sense of it through the camera lens, but it's surely another thing to actually live it.
In any case, take a few minutes and give this a watch when you have time. Chances are good that it's the most exciting gray day at the beach you may ever see (unless you go spectate or compete at something like this yourself in the future).
