Saskatchewan Enduro Series brings gravity racing to the Prairies

Saskatchewan’s vast prairies may not be the first place that pops to mind as a location for the gravity-fed discipline of enduro mountain biking, but the infamously flat province does have some sweet trails. Enough trails for the Saskatchewan Enduro Series to put together a few weekends of racing every year.

While SES weekends are races, co-director Matthew Froehlich is more focused on creating a good atmosphere than an intense racing environment.

“It’s a really chill kind of vibe,” Froehlich says. “It’s fun. It’s a funduro!”

The series, which takes place at Buffalo Pound Provincial Park, evolved out of an old downhill race at the same venue that ran 15 years ago.

“They’d shuttle everyone to top, which was kind of funny because there is only 300 feet of elevation to the whole valley. But that’s the root of the event.”

That event evolved into Froehlich organizing more low-key enduros (“funduros”) through a local club. Then his new co-organizer Russ Down, a high performance coach at SPS Athlete Development, got involved. “He approached me about the series, and we thought it’d be good to bring the two together as a way to fundraise for the athletes and for the trails. That’s how Sask Enduro Series was born: just a couple of like-minded guys that thought it would be a fun thing to do.”

Any funds raised at SES events are split between youth athlete development and to trail initiatives in southern Saskatchewan. With those fundraising goals being the main focus of the series, Froehlich and Down refer to the weekends as events instead of races.

“There’s a lot of racing ties, but we really try not promote it as a race,” Froehlich says. The series uses Strava segments for timing instead of any official system, which he admits isn’t perfectly accurate but fits the vibes just fine. “There’s always a little bit of error in Strava. So we try to structure it around fun and, you know, people don’t really care what the results are. Don’t get me wrong, we get feedback about our timing. But at the end of the day, I don’t see anyone at the top of our results sheet that didn’t deserve to be there.”

Strava helps keep the focus on fun, but it’s also free. That aligns well with SES’s goals as a series.

“Because the initiative…