Hell’s Gate, the awesome Italian Hard Enduro has been postponed because of “incomplete paperwork”.
The organisers of Hell’s Gate, based in Tuscany, put out a statement on social media saying the event is to be “put on hold”.
This year’s edition – scheduled for February 15-16 – was set to attract the British duo of Jonny Walker and Graham Jarvis, with South African Wade Young and last year’s winner Mario Roman.
It seems the permission to run the planned route the organisers want is the problem and causing enough issues for the event to be put on hold.
Here’s the press release from the organisers of Hell’s Gate:
Hells Gate 2019. Hold it!
Wait! We have to stop. The Hell’s Gate 2019 programme must undergo a shift in time to give all the people involved a chance to complete their tasks. As you know Hell’s Gate was due to return to its original configuration and track.
It had been decided, and this idea remains, that it should be the nature of the mountain and Il Ciocco, beautiful and terrible, to clearly characterise this competitive event.
Exactly as it had been in the first editions, and as it was in the years of its successful growth as a reference test for the Extreme Enduro World. All this while continually evolving to create a more spectacular event and to keep Hell’s Gate the off-road Festival that it is in the eyes of the fans. Access Hell’s Gate had become a mixed race, with a reduced “natural” part and a larger “artificial” area.
The Organisers do not intend to give up the benefits, in terms of ease of access and audience admittance, of the “Super Enduro” evolution, but they have been working for some time to return to its origins.
This means extending the race over a larger geographical area and increasing the number and quality of institutional and private partners. Much of this work has already been done, but not all of it, and the Il Ciocco reference body requires OSE, Organisation Sport Event, that operates in the Motor Sports sectors and deals with every aspect of the sports competitions that take place in the area, get all the paperwork done before starting on the purely logistical aspects of Hell’s Gate 2019.
Not all parties have or have had their operational timing synchronised with the needs of Hell’s Gate, and not all have placed the most important event in the sector for the Valle del Serchio among their priorities.
All this, of course, lengthens the time required to receive the bureaucratic and environmental “approvals”, which cannot be bypassed. For these reasons, returning to the natural origins of the track and reaching a perfect harmony with the relevant public and private forces of the geographical area, Hell’s Gate has been put on standby. Every cloud has a silver lining.
The Organisers are coming up with other ideas and a strong feeling of solidarity comes from the Mountain in response to the request from other Italian areas to “import” the reference Event of the Extreme Enduro World.
Hell’s Gate 2019. The Mighty Enduro for the Power of the Fans!
That’s the end of the organiser’s statement – we’ll update here when we get further news.
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