Liege Rally 2008 Two Wheels Only Magazine Article www.visordown.com
It’s not every day that an invitation comes from the Metropolitan Police to join them in Belgium for the 53rd Rallye International. To be held on public roads, with special stages raced against the clock against the very best police riders from Europe. No journalist has been invited on this private policemen’s race in nearly four decades. Would we like to attend? Absolutely. I had to be interviewed by very senior police PR people in London to make sure the wrong message wasn’t put across (“British coppers go mad in Europe”, that kind of thing) and watched a video of last year’s event. It looked fast and right up my street. Doing 100mph down small country roads strewn with gravel and lined with large oak trees racing against the clock is exactly the kind of riding I love.
The rally takes place just outside the industrial town of Liege and the British police force have a substantial presence. Most of the racers take it very seriously and the hardware on display is impressive. Group N rally-spec Subarus and Evos are the weapon of choice for the drivers, while the riders go for supermoto bikes on full wets, geared-up so they’ll hit around 120mph on the straights.
The rally is staged on a 42-mile loop on public roads, on which there are four 5-mile sections closed to traffic and these are the special stages where you ride as hard as you bloody can. On the rest of the loop you ride within the speed limit and have to clock in and out bang on time. You do the course four times, so that’s a total rally distance of 168 miles and 65 miles’ worth of flat-out special stages.
Kent copper Richard Watson has raced Liege for 16 consecutive years. At 18 stone he’s a vast bull of a man; if he told you to shut up you’d just ask for how long. “You can’t make a mistake in this rally,” he says. “There’s no gravel traps and no run-off, so you have to know your margins. It’s all about time, if you don’t know where you’re going you’ve got no chance. You can make up a few seconds on a special stage, but if you lose 30 seconds in the liaison stages you’re finished. If you have a spill, it’ll cost you 20 seconds and you’ll never get that back.” The secret to doing well here is to ride as fast as you possibly can in the special stages, but keep enough in reserve for when it goes wrong. Sounds simple enough.
Our initial contact had been with Russ Stevens, a Met police motorcyclist who rides a DR400 around parks and commons in the capital looking for trouble. Russ raced the rally two years ago on a knackered Honda Dominator, but to increase our odds this year we took two of the latest Husqvarna supermotos, the grunty 610SM and screaming 510SMR. Fresh out of the factory, the Husqvarnas are the perfect balance of light weight, speed and power for an event like this. The 610 is heavier and more road-orientated, while the 510 uses the new DOHC engine and is a closed-course supermoto specialist. A full 12 hour’s racing around 170 miles of Belgian road would be a brutal test of the two new motos.
The Met have themselves nicely squared away in a huge gite near the course, and I arrive the day after practice has begun. Racing of this kind is all about knowledge, and riding and re-riding the course is critical. Russ had been out there all day on the Husqvarna 610 and reported that the special stages were “very fast and chewing through my tyres. I’m maxed out in several places and we could do with some higher gearing,” obviously we don’t have any, “but there’s no way my rear tyre is going to last.” This sounded odd as a supermoto doesn’t eat tyres like a heavy superbike, but just one hour into the following morning’s practice it became obvious that Russ was right. The rough concrete tracks we were riding over were ripping chunks out of the rear Dunlop. We’d need new tyres.
Richard takes me under his (sizeable) wing and shows me around the course on his snarling Aprilia SXV550.
For practice days the roads aren’t closed and you have to watch for tractors/horses/nuns coming the other way, and the route twists and turns its way through tiny Belgian villages, apparently devoid of life apart from the odd grumpy farmer. I wave a cheery hello and am studiously ignored. The fastest British rider here is Nigel Stevens, who turns up with his entire family in tow and some bizarre contraption that used to be a Suzuki SV650. He’s built the bike specially for the event with a GSX-R750 front end and the widest cowhorn handlebars I’ve ever seen. But I can see his logic. The SV is light enough that it can be hustled like a supermoto whilst being substantially faster in a straight line, and the wide bars will give loads of control when it slides. Some people, it would seem, are taking this event far more seriously than others.
We’re up early for race-day on Saturday morning. The weather is overcast and showers are likely. We’re marshalled into town, all 40 cars and 40 bikes together, and I talk to Hervé Joseph, a former winner of the rally who now runs the French national team. “The most important thing here is feeling for your bike,” he shouts over the noise of race engines. “You can have the fastest bike or you might have the best tyres, but none of this matters if you can’t feel and adjust to what the bike is telling you. You will hit mud, dust, gravel and oil out there, you will constantly be sliding and moving around, so you must have a feeling for the bike.” The Belgian police ride ahead, halting the traffic as we ride through red lights without stopping. Yep, we own this town today. The rally starts at the imposing judicial law-courts in the centre of town. The cars go off at one-minute intervals, and then it’s us. My race number is 126 and even though we’ve got a sedate 30 minute ride until the next checkpoint, you can’t help but get the flutters as the seconds tick down. “Dix secondes!” shouts the timekeeper, 10 seconds to go. “Trois, deux, un… allez!” I accelerate to at least 20mph, turn right and pull over on the side of the road 100 yards up. I’ve got no idea where the first checkpoint is so I’m just going to wait for the next person who does.
First special stage, hit it firm but cautiously. It’s only 3 miles long, very twisty and perfect for the Husqvarna. The gravel and grot that I was expecting from the preceding rally cars isn’t there and I finish my first stage in 2m 32s, knowing I can go faster. Ride the 20 minutes to the gas station, fill up the tank, then another 10 minutes to the next special stage. You have to pull over and watch your clock (which you’ve already synchronised to rally time) and when your allotted time comes up, you check in. The second special stage is torture for the Husqvarna, it’s flat and wide-open with a mile-long straight that has the poor 510 bouncing off its rev-limiter at 106mph for the duration. The supermoto riders are getting slaughtered here by the guys on bigger bikes. In the paddock this morning I saw a brace of KTM950SMs and even a Ducati 848. The big bikes will be a handful in the tight stuff but go like bats out of hell on the faster sections.
It’s weird, this. You know there’s over 120 people out here racing, but you only ever see four or five of them at a time. Ride as fast as you can for three minutes, stop, get your time, have a joke with the timekeepers and ride on to the next stage as calmly as you like. This is gentlemen’s racing. There’s plenty of banter and bullshit between riders, and everyone wants to know how fast everyone else went. I can’t remember or forget to look at my times and it’s driving Richard nuts. “What was your time through Special Three?” he asks. “Erm, I really don’t know. Do I need to?” “Yes!” He shrieks. “For it is the law, and I am a police officer!” Shortly afterwards he breaks cardinal rule Number One by tossing away his Aprilia and losing 15 seconds in the process. 15 seconds that he would never get back for the entire rally.
By God, some of these Frenchies are quick. I’m pushing as quick as I can and they’re still biting 10-12 seconds out of my times. It’s obvious that a young lad called Gregory Fastre is a bit special on the Ducati Hypermotard after he high-sides it after the end of a special stage, re-mounts and is still faster than anyone else. And Frederic Lejeune (son of the great trials rider Eddy) is doing near-impossible speeds on a BMW Megamoto. But you can only ride as hard as you can ride. It’s not like a movie this, it’s not like you see you’re falling behind on the times, dig deep and find another 10 seconds per stage. “Cantlie’s moving up through the ranks – nothing can stop him!” It doesn’t work like that. Nigel Stevens is the fastest Brit on his SV650, Richard is behind me since his tumble, and Russell is locked in a headlong tussle with a 690 KTM on his 610 Husky. He’s getting all trigger-happy on the throttle and on the next special stage I see a pair of boots and a slowly spinning rear wheel poking out of a bush. I’m sure it’s him but I’m in the middle of a timed section and can’t stop.
A quick chat at the timing station confirms that the “autre Anglais” hasn’t come through. Seems like Russell’s temper got the better of him after all. Onwards we go, just another four special stages left and it’s time to give it your all. By this stage the order of running is well established but there’s no harm in turning up the wick. The Met service area is in the village of Anthisnes and they’ve got it brilliantly decked out with a barbeque, drinks and tons of food. Grab a chicken roll, load up on carbs and back out for the final lap. Absolutely flat ON IT for the first special stage, knock two seconds off my previous best time, share a joke with John Amos at the next staging point (perhaps the funniest man in the British police force), stretch the Husqvarna on the mile-long straights, tuck right down, get the power on earlier, loads more grip than I thought, punch through the last timing marker and…bugger! Even right at the very end you know you could have gone quicker.
The race was won by young Mr Fastre on his Hypermotard. How he recovered after his high-side (both sides of the bike properly smashed) to win by eight seconds from a Belgian supermoto champion was an incredible feat. Last year was the first time the police have allowed civilian riders into the race and I fear they may be regretting this decision: civilians came first, second and third. The Belgians hit the event with a sledge-hammer, bringing in such a ridiculous pool of talent that the rest of us were just picking up whatever scraps were left. Nigel Stevens picked up 8th, I finished 12th and Richard Watson followed me in at 13th, still 15 seconds behind. Russell’s wrist was broken in five places and he came limping in afterwards to a rousing cheer. And the Husqvarnas had performed impeccably, perfectly reliable despite the gruelling circumstances and even Russ’s crash had only broken a clutch lever. If only the same could have been said of himself.
Secret Policeman's Ball
Every year in May, 120 policemen from all round Europe gather in Belgium for a race that no journalist has attended in 35 years. It’s thrilling and it’s fast, and this year were invited along for the ride...
Words: John Cantlie
Photos: Oli Tennant
