Motorbike enduro meets eMTB in Chris Akrigg’s latest must-watch edit

Inspired by the sport of motorbike hard enduro racing, Chris Akrigg combines power with precision on our award-winning E-160 RSX Bosch-powered eMTB in Hard Enduro RAW! Watch the full edit below:

About Hard Enduro RAW

“The feel of a motorbike enduro is what I was after,” Chris explains of his inspiration for the edit, “they just go out and ride anything on their bikes – like really hard, trials lines, through to motocross. They’re having so much fun - just getting on bikes and riding. But hard enduro just covers so much riding from mega-hard trials, to fast-paced riding – but it’s just going out and having fun. Covering ground, doing technical stuff, all that gnadgery stuff over the logs. Just like when I was younger when I used to emulate moto trials riders, for this I wanted to emulate hard enduro riders – but with a twist. On my eBike.”

The arena for much of the edit was a motorbike enduro facility – Parkwood Outdoors off-road centre near Bradford, UK – which is ordinarily out of bounds to mountain bikes and e-mountain bikes, but Chris was granted special permission for filming.

“I went to watch an enduro event at Parkwood at this brilliant venue,” he says of his location choice, “the stuff they were doing… I really wanted to ride on the terrain and see what I could do. I’d ridden my motorbike trials bike but I’ve never raced enduro or taken part of an event there; there’s definitely a section in the video that’s a bit of a waterfall and it’s one of the main attractions of the venue. I’m really happy that I could do that on my eBike – I went there straight away; it was the bit I really wanted to ride, so knowing I could ride that from the start was great. It was such good fun.”

Although the E-160 RSX is a full-fat machine, Chris doesn’t just stick it into the most powerful Boost mode and leave it there. “I pretty much always run the Trail power mode,” explains Chris, “just because I feel it’s the one I can anticipate the most. But obviously every now and again there is call for full power: but I’m not a ‘full power all the time’ type of guy. There’s a time and a place.”

Hard Enduro RAW was filmed and edited by Will Evans; audio design by Keith White Audio.

E-160 RSX

The ultimate all-rounder

Just like Chris, our E-160 RSX is powerful, agile and balanced – not just a jack of all trades, but a master. Whether you’re thrashing the hills, racing e-enduro between the tapes or having a blast on back-country singletrack, E-160 RSX is engineered to give you the confidence to push the envelope, everywhere.

It’s also BikePerfect’s ‘Best eMTB with a full-power motor’ of 2024, with the pedigree to help you ride more confidently, to go further, faster and have more fun, however you ride.

We sat down with Chris to get the inside line on capturing Hard Enduro RAW: the fun, the hard, and the downright near impossible…

Why Hard Enduro?

“I’ve been watching so much motorbike hard enduro recently. The riders are having so much fun – just getting on bikes and riding. For me, hard enduro bridges the gaps between motocross, between trials and everything in between, it’s pretty free-reign. I like that. It led to the locations for the edit – including a motorbike enduro location – and it also meant I wanted to keep the riding a lot more flowing, as you would on an enduro bike. That’s not to say it’s completely based on motorbike hard enduro – it just felt like a good way of making myself steer clear of lots of technical slow stuff.”

What was the most fun section for you?

“The opening section over the logs as I’d never really ridden that before. Riding switch-footed and getting the timing right, it just felt cool. That was good fun. And it’s quite hard to make that look good and smooth.”

And the hardest?

“Several. The funniest, hardest one… The story is: the last shot going up all them big rock gardens That was a really, really hard line – it doesn’t really come across in the camera as hard as it was. But everything I do is a legitimate one-liner; I’ve done it legit. Not edited bits together. So I’d done that line a lot, trying to get it bottom to top and I thought I hadn’t got it. And at one point I had to give up after a long time. The end bit just bit my arse, every time. Then videographer Will said to get a drone shot to mask it, and I was like, ‘I’m not having that!’. So the erst of the day I was really down on myself but then we got back and looked at the footage and Will said I’d done it on the second go. And I was like, ‘What?!’ He was like, ‘Yeah, you did it but you didn’t like how it looked’!”

“The other one is the struggle up the chute – it’s really, really, really hard to get a bike up there, especially one without a motor. That was my best, best attempt in the video to get that. It’s crazy hard. It was a struggle to get up there. Which is hard enduro. If you stood at the bottom of that, you’d say, ‘You’re not getting an eBike up there. No way!’ And that’s the challenge.”

Did you plan it to be a raw edit, without music?

“It wasn’t something we set out to do originally; we’d never done a raw edit before. It always felt like a sting in the tail getting the music at the end. It was just to try and mix it up a bit. It’s quite difficult when you’ve made a lot of videos to make something new. You feel like you drop into the same template, with the same vibes even if you don’t set out to. We really tried to stick to the theme and the raw thing really seemed to lend itself to it. Just the riding sounds: the motor, the tyre and brake noises. That’s the soundtrack.”

How did you choose the locations?

“I’d been to spectate at a hard enduro – which probably started of it really. It was a catalyst for the hard enduro theme. I went to watch an enduro event at Parkwood, Outdoors at this brilliant location, the stuff they were doing… I really wanted to ride on the terrain and see what I could do. I’d ridden my motorbike trials bike but I’ve never raced enduro or taken part of an event there; there’s definitely a section in the video that’s a bit of a waterfall and it’s one of the main attractions of the venue. I’m really happy that I could do that on my ebike – I went there straight away; it was the bit I really wanted to ride, so knowing I could ride that from the start was great. It was such good fun.”

Did you have to do any building or prepping of lines?

“I just ride stuff as it lies. I’ve never been one for building stuff, but the tombstone steps were probably the only things I put work into. Only because the water level in front of it was like a foot deep and it killed your speed riding through it – and I needed speed for this. So I found a load of flat rocks in abundance and laid a crazy paving path in the water for the run up to it.”

Are you pleased with how its all turned out?

“I actually had quite a lot of fun, keeping momentum – there’s obviously technical stuff in there – but I wanted to keep the riding flowing as much as possible. You’re never completely pleased; the riding in there – there’s a lot of hard riding in there, but also a lot of run riding, too. As difficult as it is to get across how difficult my stuff is, there’s a good balance of hard technical and good fun lines in there. I’m really pleased with it.”

Full power or lightweight?

“I pretty much always run the trail power mode – just because I feel it’s the one I can anticipate the most. But obviously every now and again there is call for full power: but I’m not a ‘full power all the time’ type of guy. There’s a time and a place.”

Did you change your bike set-up in any way for this?

“Not really. I like to find a good set up and ride with that. You’d be surprised how little I change things. If I need to, I may change the tyre pressures a little. A lot of people think I run a hard suspension set up on my bike but it’s quite the opposite. Especially on the eBike, I like to find a good set up and ride that. Nice and soft, like a trials motorbike set-up. It feels well planted and grippy.”

There’s very little that Chris can’t make his bike do. Hailing from Yorkshire, UK with a background in motorcycle and bike trials, he’s forged a career of riding the seemingly impossible. And making it all look smoothly effortless, too. And that’s true whatever bike he’s on: from trail bikes, to fixies, to gravel bikes to hardtails, and beyond, he can turn them all up to 11.

To learn more about what makes Chris tick, watch Chris Akrigg: Going Beyond (below) and read his story in how own words at whytebikes.com/chris-akrigg.

Watch Going Beyond

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