1965 Hurst Cup

[rusty ken]

When surfing the web and reading some of the posts in this forum, there seems to be a tendency for contributers to return to the thorny issue of machine eligibility for "classic" and/or "pre 65" trials.  Being just a little too young to qualify as "pre 65" myself, I was  interested to find the programme and the results for the 1965 Hurst Cup trial on the Knock Motorcycle Club web site,  and thought I'd share it here (http://www.knockmotorcycleclub.co.uk/ClubHistory/Hurst1965Program.pdf and  http://www.knockmotorcycleclub.co.uk/ClubHistory/Hurst1965Results.pdf).

 

"The Hurst" is one of the longest standing trials in Northern Ireland.  Having first been held in 1930 it became a British National round in 1947, it was an FIM European championship round from 1970 to 1974,  and was a FIM world round from 1975 to 1981.  Given its standing there is an illustrious list of winners including; Stanley Woods, Fred Rist,  Billy Nicholson, Johnny Brittain, Sammy Miller (13 times, 8 on GOV 132), Mick Andrews, Martin Lampkin, Yrjo Vesterinen, Bernie Schriber, and Eddie Lejeune.

 

According to the 1965 programme there were 59 entries.  Given the loss of its British National standing these were mostly local riders, but there are some names that would be recognised more widely including Mr S H Miller, and an entry from BSA Birmingham.  The surprising thing for me was that more than two thirds of the field were riding two strokes or lightweights, with less than 10 entries on what I would have naively thought of as the usual "pre 65" bike, i.e. a 350 or 500cc pre-unit 4 stroke heavyweight. 

 

With that in mind, it would suggest that many of todays largest "pre 65" events, and perhaps the classic scene, are actually favouring the heavyweight 4 strokes more than they deserve, and perhaps there should be more recognition of the number of lightweights that were actually competing at the time.  I do however note that while there were plenty of entries riding Greeves, Dot, and smaller BSAs and Triumphs, but there were no "James" entries... 

 

At the risk of becoming all "thought for today"...  Perhaps my point is that if we want to promote "classic" trials then we need to move the discussion away from eligibility dates, and to accept that those wishing to be competitive will enter a lightweight.  This will of course mean that that courses will be set to challenge the lightweight machines, making it more difficult for mortals that still choose to enter a heavyweight.  But if we want to continue to see traditional heavyweight bikes used in anger then we need to encourage and support clubs and championships that include a "pre unit" class and set more traditional sections.

[metisse]

Todays Pre 65 / Classic trials is just history repeating itself.. won t be to long before you won t be able to give a decent Fantic away and everybody will be after Mono Yam's.. you wait...

[laird387]

Hi rusty ken,

 

Interesting comments on the 1965 Hurst Cup - which indicate for me just where some of the misunderstandings lie.  You see you couldn't actually buy a pre-unit trials model in 1965!

The reason that 'Pre-65' was chosen as the description for the newly introduced classic trials was to indicate that it was a trial WITH SECTIONS THAT WERE SIMILAR TO THE ONES THAT WERE IN USE BEFORE 1965.  And I should know, since I'm the twit that coined the description in the first place, in my column in TMX.

 

You see when the Spanish trials machine invasion was in full swing, just into the 1970s, organisers had started to tighten sections up and include sharp climbs and twists to try to sort out a winner on these technically far superior machines - and those of us who couldn't afford a new Spanish machine found we couldn't even wheel, say an AJS 350, round the sections.

 

With two friends I organised the first ever British Bike trial in August 1972, which was renamed the Shawforth Shake in 1973 and that's when I described it in my column in TMX as an event for machines that would have been in use before 1965, as you so rightly say, the majority of which were Villiers powered lightweights and fourstroke Tiger Cubs, BSA C15Ts and Royal Enfield Crusaders.  The only reason that I chose 1965 as the cut-off point in the description was because that was the first year that NO manufacturers included a pre-unit trials model in their catalogue.

 

The reason that there were no James in the 1965 Hurst entry was that they were part of the huge Associated Motor Cycles group of companies, that was already in dire straits, they had for years entered two teams on machines that were virtually identical except for frame colour and tank transfer, one as the maroon James team, the other as the black and green Francis-Barnett team.  Then their financial status worsened and they halved the competition effort by dropping the nominal 'James' team to concentrate on the Francis-Barnett effort.  What had been the James factory found itself busily occupied helping breathing life on a contract basis for an infant Suzuki (Great Britain) effort..............

 

That is why I find it so ridiculous that many of the clubs organising so-called classic trials are making the sections so tight that people with what they describe as pre-65 machines are having to chop them about at great expense in order that they can cope in what are truly NOT PRE-65 SECTIONS............

 

I'm told that is progress...........

Edited January 5, 2016 by laird387