Image: John Pearson.

KTM Enduro Racing Team’s Daniel Sanders endured a challenging week at the 2016 Yamaha Australian Four-Day Enduro (A4DE) after he had difficulties with bike settings and suffered an untimely injury on the second day.

Following a successful couple of months capturing the Australian Off-Road Championship (AORC) and claiming runner-up in the individual results at the International Six-Day Enduro (ISDE) in Spain, Sanders was tipped as a favourite to be in the mix for this year’s A4DE title.

The Victorian revealed he was out of contention for the outright title in the early days of the event, and opted to focus on placing well in his class, in which he was able to win after being credited fifth outright.

“I mixed up on a couple of things with the settings that I run, and we missed out for the first two days and I wasn’t really right in the head about it,” Sanders explained. “I started to get some confidence back in my riding on day three when we figured out what the problems were, but I tore a ligament in my ankle on day two, and just had to bite the bullet on day three.

“I was 20 seconds down by that stage, so I just focused on getting the class win, and we got there in the end after a really good final moto. A bit of my fault that I didn’t pick up on some things early enough, and it probably wasn’t the best preparation knocking myself around at Wildwood the week before.”

Sanders admitted it wasn’t the way he wanted to end his 2016 season, however he was content to cap-off the year with a class win.

“I didn’t finish the season off the way I would have liked to, but to have a really bad four-day and still win a class, you can’t really complain,” he added.