Cyril Despres has nothing left to prove on a motorcycle. He?s got five Dakar Rally victories under his belt, plus wins at hell-on-earth events like the Red Bull Romaniacs and the Erzberg Rodeo.
These days, Despres leaves his highly-strung race bikes in the garage. When he heads out on two wheels, he?s more likely to take his Yamaha XSR700 daily runner, his Ural sidecar, or his classic DT125.

The French rally great lives in motorcycling nirvana: Andorra. The tiny microstate is high up in the Pyrénées Mountains, sandwiched between France and Spain, and it’s loaded with endless, well-groomed mountain passes.
It’s also where, in less than two weeks, Despres will host the second edition of the Andorra 500: a regularity rally with a classic spin.
?My career on two wheels stopped when I decided to jump in the car category with the Peugeot team, for the Dakar,? Despres tells us. ?But I wanted to keep going a little bit in the motorcycle world, so this was the idea…?
?My mechanic loved classic bikes and was working on them, so it was easy to say ‘we have some nice roads, we are in Andorra, in the mountains, and we have the chance to close the road to have some special stages without traffic’.?

?As I became a bit too old to race motocross or enduro, riding a bike on the road?a classic one?was the best solution.?
To keep the retro feel of the Andorra 500, you’re given a choice of three classes to enter. The ‘classic’ class is o...