Toni BouJuly looks to be a particularly important one for Repsol Honda Team objectives in the World Trial Championship, as the first of the month's three races gets underway this weekend in Belgium. Toni Bou goes into the event as the overall leader.
The aim for both Toni Bou and the Repsol Honda Team will be another victory in Belgium on Sunday, after the win in the last Italian Grand Prix, which saw Bou re-establish himself at the top of the leader board. Team-mate Takahisa Fujinami will also be hoping for a positive result that should help him overcome some recent setbacks.
It will be the intimate Belgian Comblain-au-Pont that will play host to the season’s fifth outing this Sunday July 13. Both Toni Bou and Takahisa Fujinami have been training hard ahead of the first of three consecutive races that are scheduled to take place in the month of July. It looks set to be a demanding period of the year for the riders who after the Belgian, British and French GPs, will be left with only the final Spanish Grand Prix to dispute, as the world title draws to a close in the first week of September.
Toni Bou, with 108 points, on the Montesa Cota 4RT is back on top in the World Championship overall standings, one point ahead of his nearest rival, Adam Raga. Bou’s Repsol Honda Team side-kick, Takahisa Fujinami, lies in fourth, just three points off third position.
Belgium has always been one of the countries, that even before the creation of the World Trial Championship, had pioneered the sport of trail. The country would eventually produce one of sport’s greatest legends: Eddy Lejeune (Honda), whose achievements include three world championships and seven consecutive victories in the championship races disputed in his own country.
Takahisa FujinamiDougie Lampkin and Takahisa Fujinami from the Montesa team, were the winners of the two day event that took place in Cuesmes, Belgium in 2001. Fujinami took the overall honours after a win on Saturday and a third place finish on Sunday. Montesa team-mate Dougie Lampkin was the best on Sunday in Cuesmes, a place which had for three years taken over from another legendary World Trial venue: Bilstain.
Comblain-au-Pont, south of Lieja, with little more than 5,000 inhabitants, plays host to the Belgian Trial GP for the first time in its history. It will therefore be unchartered territory for the riders who will have to complete three laps of the 10 kilometre course, which will include several areas with very little grip. It is a Grand Prix that will once again be fought out in the forests that held the event for four decades, and will once again do so eight years on.