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KTM 790 ADVENTURE & R It’s a surreal feeling for this occasional off-road rider to be following KTM’s Dakar Rally team manager and former rider Jordi Viladoms along a bumpy Moroccan desert track at speed, kicking up clouds of dust from a spinning rear wheel, having recently ridden over a series of gleaming golden dunes. Launches of new adventure bikes don’t normally involve such spectacular views or challenging terrain. Then again, most adventure bikes don’t arrive with the sense of purpose that surrounds the 790 Adventure and the even more dirt-friendly Adventure R that I’m aiming through this vast desert playground. A year after KTM debuted its new parallel-twin platform with the 790 Duke, that naked roadster’s long-awaited dualpurpose siblings are here. The anticipation has been building. Large-capacity adventure bikes have been popular for so long, getting increas- ingly powerful and expensive, that a gap has opened up for a new breed of more manageable middleweights. KTM seems an obvious contender to fill it, given the Austrian firm’s rapid growth and long experience of dual-purpose bikes, not to mention a competition heritage that includes a remarkable 18 consecutive Dakar wins. Expectation increased last year, when the Duke was launched combining a rev-happy 799cc engine, sweet-handling tubularsteel framed chassis and superbike-style electronics. This was big-bike technology and thrills in a cut-down package. The 790 Adventure promises more of the same with versatility thrown in. For Adventure use the Duke’s dohc, eightvalve engine is softened with new cams and injection, boosting midrange and trimming 10bhp off the top-end to leave a max of 94bhp at 8000rpm.