Two Trial British Showcase

rapleyFour times now the British GP has been held at Nord Vue, Armathwaite midway between Penrith and Carlisle – though I prefer to call it the British round of the World Trials Championship – but then I’m of the old school. And we’ll be there again in 2015, for Dirt Bike Action, the excellent organisers of the event have applied for next year’s round and with no other apparent applicants, have been granted the event.

 

With the best will in the world it isn’t possible to say that the hilltop quarry venue on the otherwise flat plains of east Cumbria is the best venue for trials, it is in fact just about the best available place for a world round in the UK.

 

I say available because whilst there are undoubtedly other equally suitable venues, for various reasons they are either unavailable or impractical. Hawkstone Park comes to mind, where of course the world round has been held before and of course Aonach Mor just above Fort William, scene of two editions earlier this century. Both had their advantages and disadvantages as does Nord Vue but it’s very much a case of putting up with what can be used at the present time by the present organisers.

 

Organisers willing to take on such an event need to have very deep pockets and whilst there is obviously a profit motive involved, as chief organiser John Kerwin told me “There’s a wage out of it but no cream so far” as he looked at Saturday’s weather with a final remark “We need a decent turn out tomorrow to avoid losing on this”. That turnout probably wasn’t as large as hoped for so as I write this on Monday morning, John may well be counting the takings and hoping there’s enough surplus to make the hard work worthwhile.

 

More than one person said to me that the entry fee of £25 per adult per day was steep and £15 for children definitely took the gloss off attendance. But many riders are happy to pay £25 for a national trial ride and whilst I’m not a person who regularly visits other sporting or entertainment functions/venues, I guess twenty-five quid won’t get you into many major events.

 

I’m neither supporting nor criticising the trial or organisers, suffice to say that in my opinion they do a good job at a reasonable venue and provide a spectacle that at the present time nobody else is either able to or is prepared to. If you don’t like it, then the door is wide open for somebody else to take the risk.

 

As for the event itself, well, once again it was a Toni Bou spectacular. One dab on the last section of the first lap on Saturday – taken on a flat piece of grass which both you and I could have ridden feet up –was an astonishing feat of trials riding and his overall two day winning advantage of 44 marks in front of Adam Raga, the next best rider, proves beyond doubt that we are watching a true master of his craft and one that surely has many more years at the top.

 

Whilst the world trial bears little resemblance to the trials that we all ride, the courses for the Junior Cup and 125cc category were very sensible indeed where the respectable contingent of British riders were able to showcase their talent without being at a disadvantage to the generally better funded Continental riders. All told they rode well and were a credit to younger riders competing in the UK.

 

In total contrast to the world trial, I observed at the Allan Jefferies Trial a week earlier which was a traditional British national with a decent entry of 90 plus riding a single lap of 40 sections at varying locations with road work in between.

 

Rather surprisingly for a Yorkshire event, it ran under the stop allowed regulation, and equally surprisingly most riders preferred to keep moving in sections – or at least they did on the 10 sections that I managed to see throughout the day.

Not unexpectedly it was a great trial with two courses ideally matched to the class of rider entered.

 

So there we have it, in just eight days we had two trials in very different circumstances, both of which showed UK trialing in the best possible light, so congrats to both, very different sets of organisers.