Round one of the 2026 Hard Enduro World Championship recently took place at Alestrem in France. To get a better idea of how this race went and a more in-depth understanding of what happened behind the scenes, we sat down with Mike Skinner who was on the ground and deep in the action. 

We touch on a variety of topics such as Stark in hard enduro, media coverage of the race, the unpredictable weather and how that created confusion for the final lap. We also discuss how competitive the top 20 are and how exciting that is for the future of the sport and the rest of the season. 

We hope you enjoy this episode! 

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:02 HEWC Round 1 at 24MX Alestrem
01:35 Race overview: Friday and Saturday
03:18 Season opener atmosphere
05:00 The rainstorm
07:04 Stark Varg & the Jarv-E
07:53 Toby Martyn
10:06 Graham Jarvis
13:52 Standout riders
15:28 Billy & Mani's big gap
16:35 Race result confusion
19:10 Media 
23:32 Live Broadcast
29:33 Final results recap
32:13 Looking ahead to HEWC Round 2: Extreme XL Lagares

Enjoyed this one? Subscribe so you don't miss our Round 2 breakdown from Extreme XL Lagares. If you watched the live overage, drop your thoughts on how you think it could be improved in the comments ↓↓↓

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