I once showed my friend the highlights of a Red Bull Romaniacs race to help explain what hard enduro is. A few minutes in, he said, "Can we please stop watching this? It's making me feel bad. I don't know why anyone would do this. It just looks awful." The thing is, Red Bull's Romaniacs isn't even the toughest hard enduro race there is. No, that accolade goes to the Red Bull Erzbergrodeo.
This year, the Erzbergrodeo attracted around 1,300 of the best hard enduro riders in the world. And by the time the main race came around on day five of the event, the number of riders had been whittled down to just 500. Out of the 500 starters, just nine finished the race—less than 2%.
