Dougie Lampkin and Graham Jarvis rule the roost at the 2010 Hells Gate finishing 1^st and 2^nd respectively!

It was Dougie Lampkin, twelve times Trial World Champion, who won the opening race of the Xtreme Enduro Championship, Graham Jarvis right after him and then... nothing! That’s right: for the first time only two heroes climbed up the deadly Hell’s Peak!
In such an extreme race, everyone bet on the “specialist”, killer of extreme races, Taddy Blazusiak, but the devil in flesh probably looked up and mixed the cards of this fantastic rollercoaster full of emotions.
During a race that was told to be epical, even the stronger had to fall: Blazusiak, the unbeatable who came from a series of positive winnings in other international races and owner of the past two editions of Hell’s Gate, gave up during the first lap of the hardest afternoon phase, when an hard fall caused damages to his bike that could not be fixed.
Before him, starting from the first laps of the selective phase in the morning, two columns of the Italian range such as Alessandro Botturi and Mario Rinaldi had to give up: the first also due to a fall and the other because “not in the mood”. The next was Paul Bolton, but also a few others gave up during the first four laps in the morning, so many that at the start in the afternoon we could count only forty-six riders on hundred and three that were in the morning.
Actually, the first phase of the race wasn’t supposed to be that hard; or at least that was what Capitan Fasola said! But the rainy weather on Friday probably gave that little spicy to the already tricky net of paths of Ciocco.
In fact, the faces of the riders starting in the afternoon already had on the marks of tiredness. A little less tired the well known: Blazusiak, Lettenbichler, Jarvis, Lampkin, Graffunder & C.; we must also say that they didn’t spare forces not even during the three specials in morning.
Three over all, Blazusiak, Lettenbuchler and Jarvis gave us the first taste of the show: the Polish, winner of the first fraction, started on full gas and won the first two specials. But Lettenbichler and Jarvis never let him go and, on the last lap, they passed the KTM Polish rider: Jarvis won the fraction, followed by Lettenbichler.
The start of the second phase, at 15:00, was at the starting grid as for the Supermoto; the group of the thirty best riders was in competition for the next four laps, even harder than in the morning. Right after the first turn, they all understood that the competition would have been very hard: step by step on the well known passages of the famous Hell’s Gate, the Salamadra Creek, the Cascata and Laghetto, one after the other, a lot of riders lost their hope. After the second lap Master Fasola thought that it would be better to review the time schedule so that the participants could arrive within 40 minutes after the first one: normally the standard rules of Hell’s Gate say that the participants must arrive latest 30 minutes after the first one, but with this short time the race would have finished shortly since the first one was gaining ground faster and faster.
Jarvis was leading over the others with 28 minutes of gap; but Doug Lampkin, as he already showed us during the past edition in 2009, started his race to the podium as soon as the light of the day went down, running faster as he reached Jarvis.
At the foot of the Hell’s Peak Jarvis was still leading the race, but he made a few mistakes when entering on the Peak: helped by the public, the two trial riders gave us the best fight show during the final meters.
Over there, on the top of the Extreme Reign, Fabio Fasola was waiting for them; Lampkin was faster to use the help of the public and got first up on the hill. And so the fairy tail was over with one twelve times trial world champion on the first step of the podium and with another real trial rider on the second, after them no one made it! A magical race, then and really epical! Too hard maybe? We don’t think so, otherwise you won’t call it HELL’S GATE!