Kye Anderson: Taking on Romaniacs

Well, arriving into Romania was a pretty big culture shock, with crazy amounts of livestock on the road and just the crazy drivers in general. The best way to describe the traffic is controlled chaos, with dilapidated cars whizzing in and around other old rust buckets with the occasional Mustang or Porsche in the mix.

The country side is really picturesque with huge mountains covered in forests and green paddocks running all the way to the base of them. Upon arriving in Sibiu, we headed down to the old town square. There is a bustling array of restaurants, shops and cafes tucked in amongst the traditional buildings, woven together by old cobble stone paths. It really was a picture perfect postcard of a European town.

Reunited with TPI

I was reunited with my 2018 KTM 300EXC TPI only a few days prior to the racing started. I headed for the mountains with my new South African mate (also on 2018 TPI machines) to test the capability of these new-age bikes and our bodies. I was excited to compare the changes that KTM’s Research and Development had put into place after my feedback after the ErzbergRodeo, earlier on in my Euro trip. A simple mapping change had the bike performing much closer to my liking and with some slight gearing tweaks, I gelled nicely to the new changes.

KTM had two staff members, Michael Huber and Dominik Bachmaier, attending Red Bull Romaniacs to assist riders on the new 2018 TPI bikes with any questions or queries throughout the event. They were extremely helpful, especially as I’m a curious person and always like to ask questions and know things inside and out.

Riding The Carpathians

My first experience in the Carpathian Mountains was a great one, riding some of the biggest and steepest uphills I have ever seen along with some of the longest and slipperiest creek beds to match. The amount of trails and riding is crazy! I have never seen such an abundance of riding opportunities like this anywhere in the world and not to mention the fact that everywhere you look had almost perfect riding conditions.

To add the great riding, the locals are so happy to see dirt bikes riding through the streets or on trails behind their houses, which was refreshing compared to back home in Australia where locals would be calling the police or chasing you down the street.

Registration & Logistics of the race

Registration day is insane with thousands of competitors piling into the foyer of the Ramada Hotel to get everything from licencing, medicals, GPS, along with the mandatory survival equipment that every rider has to carry. It was new to me, that’s for sure.

As I mentioned every rider must carry a basic survival kit, which includes items designed to gain attention of rescuers or keep you alive if you have to spend the night in the mountains where wolves and bears might eat you!

Following this, is the task of organising Lesley, my partner and support, in advance for each day to be at the start lines, service points and finish lines. We are given maps and coordinates for all locations and approximate times we will arrive. This is like Lesley’s very own little GPS navigation race within Romaniacs, racing me from point to point, on time and not getting lost on the crazy roads.

Prologue

The inner city prologue is a crazy spectacle of rider and bikes basically being thrown over the worst looking obstacles imaginable in front of thousands of screaming spectators hungry for carnage, and carnage they get by the bucket load.

This year’s prologue from what I have seen, was the gnarliest yet with everyone from pros to hobby riders getting hung up or making mistakes regularly. Not to mention the added thunderstorm moments before the flag dropped saturating every log, rock, tyre and timber made structure on the entire course effectively creating the roughest ice skating ring on the planet.

My race was derailed quickly with my entire rear wheel being sucked down inside a truck tyre stopping me dead and having to get multiple marshals to pull and stomp the tyre off my wheel so that I could get moving again. With that sorted, I was forced to try and battle through the traffic and avoid the mass carnage where possible.

Off-Road Days

The first half of my off-road days were testing. It wasn’t the course, but the elements out of my control; sickness and technical issues with my all-important GPS, all tried to derail my chance of a good result at my first run at Romaniacs.

But I am not one to give up, once I was sorted, I put my head down and bum up for the final two days. I made some great time clawing back big chunks of at time every checkpoint and service point. I would have to say, my background in cross country helped me out immensely for the long physical days and faster sections, as this is where the bulk of my time was made back. But on the flip side, my 100% lack of trials skills did hurt me in the super technical sections, purely a lack of fine-tuned balance and confidence at low speed.

Day three was a killer, it was super long and super tough and actually had to be cut short as it was so technical, not one person was going to make it to the finish line within the allowed time. Even still, with being cut short, almost 80% from every class was timed out at different checkpoints and sent back to the pits or service point to rest up while the last remaining few, like myself, were left to toil away for hours and hours in the mountains and made it to the finish within the new time frame.

The decision was made by the organisers to give back all the time lost from the day and reinstate all riders who were time barred on day 3. Personally, that rubbed me the wrong way and a lot of other riders as well. Those that were still out on the track had belted bikes and bodies for hours longer than our competitors, literally for nothing as every rider time barred on Day 3 could continue without penalty.

Coming around to that final last hill climb with thousands of people watching the carnage unfold, you can’t help but forget any dramas or pain you faced the last four days and just soak it all up with a big smile. My final hill climb wasn’t so elegant, as I didn’t get the drive I needed for the top and had to send my bike on its own the remainder of the way. I had unintentionally perfected this technique on day three and it worked a treat. I climbed the last bit of the hill by foot to retrieve my bike and cross the finish line.

After learning more and more about this extreme sport, you expect better and better results from yourself. My Romaniacs results were sub-par to my personal goals but I’ve had a blast being able to ride a pre-production bike through some of the most beautiful country side and by far the best trails the world has to offer. So all is not lost, it’s onwards and upwards for me and the new KTM 300EXC TPI.

Come and experience for yourself

Trying to explain Romaniacs to someone who has not experienced a legitimate hard enduro in Europe, is really quite hard to put it in perspective. You will normally get remarks like “it looks hard but you know, not that hard” or “didn’t look that bad on tv”. Let me just say this, racing hard enduro in Europe is almost impossible to replicate anywhere else in the world. So any gnarly creek bed or big hills out there on trail rides around the bush here in Australia, simply would not even register on these events. So grit your teeth, commit and work your butt off to make it possible for you to come and try this event for yourself, it might just surprise you the level this event is at.