A new edition
of the X-Trial World Championship
begins this weekend, in which
Toni Bou
will defend his championship crown for the tenth consecutive season. Barcelona will host the first of four rounds of a competition that will also visit Austria and France (twice). The Palau Sant Jordi will be decorated to pay tribute to a sporting event that began in 1978 and celebrates its 40th anniversary. Four decades in which the speciality has changed radically and in which one name stands out from the rest: Toni Bou and his 10 triumphs.
The Repsol Honda Team rider has revolutionised the sport of trial as Jordi Tarrés did in his day, achieving an unrivalled 20 titles along the way, 10 indoors and 10 outdoors. In four decades, competitors have gone from navigating large logs, piles of tires and rocks with hardly any stopping of their bikes, to facing large vertical structures that require a lot of technique and preparation.
According to Bou, “technique is what helps you to make a difference with respect to other riders and to compete better while getting less tired”. “Riders who, like me, start with the bike, are more technical and that allows us to have more control of the machine,” adds the rider from Piera (Barcelona). Unlike outdoor trials, in which there are races that last up to six hours and in which physical fitness and factors such as patience are essential, “indoors you have to avoid mistakes, because if you are not one hundred percent focused, a mistake can leave you out of the final or a podium, which are fundamental in such a short World Championship.”
The position of the body
The obstacles in the X-Trial require a unique preparation and “The key to overcoming them is again technique, the position of the body both to go up and down. You have to help the bike ‘climb’ the obstacle, putting yourself in a position that allows you to lighten the front and load the weight on the rear. For a descent, we throw our body backwards, opening our legs to lower our center of gravity as much as possible.”. Even the bike needs a different preparation than racing in the mountains and “after analysing the route, the mechanics prepare the damping, the clutch, the engine and the brakes”, explains the dominator of the discipline in the last decade.
40 years ago, no rider really knew what they would find in the Palacio Municipal de Deportes on Carrer Lleida, where for the first time a speciality that, until then, could only be enjoyed climbing the mountain, was made available to the general public. This Sunday, fans will go to another pavilion, in this case the Sant Jordi, knowing the great show that awaits them by Toni Bou, Takahisa Fujinami, Jaime Busto and the rest of the participants in the X-Trial World Championship, heirs of the pioneers: Jaume Subirà, Antoni Gorgot, Andreu Codina, Bernie Schreiber…
Barcelona Indoor Trial Facts
The Barcelona Indoor Trial is the oldest race in the world in this specialty. The event has been held for 40 years uninterruptedly, but for the first time it opens the World Championship.
The first Indoor Trial of Barcelona was held on a Thursday at the old Palacio de Deportes de Barcelona, and had free admission if you accessed with the magazine SoloMoto, organizer of the event.
Jaume Subirà, with a Montesa Cota 348, was the first winner of the race, which had up to 11 different winners.
The first 4-stroke bike to win in Barcelona was the Honda RTL of Belgian Eddy Lejeune, who would become the first rider to write his name three times in the race’s list of winners.
Toni Bou is the rider who has won the most at the Palau Sant Jordi event: 10, in the last eight years, consecutively.
Takahisa Fujinami has finished on the podium in Barcelona 4 times. Jaime Busto has participated the last two years as a guest rider for the organization.
Video of Toni Bou and the rest of the Repsol Honda Team
Pilot Statements
Toni Bou:
We have prepared the season thoroughly: preparing the physique and the bike thoroughly. You have to stay motivated and be at 100% to win the title.
The challenge is very complicated, especially when you come from a great year, like last year, but we want to get the win again.
It’s a 4-race championship and we will have to make no mistakes. It will be difficult, but we have worked in pre-season and we are 100% ready to achieve it. The race in Barcelona will be a good one to start the championship. It will also be the 40th anniversary and we will have more areas. We’ll see what we find, because there are always surprises, but it’s a worthy race to start the World Championship. Then we go to Vienna, the most difficult and the one I like the most; It will be very important to get it right. The Marseille Trial is an easy point, but lately they include some technical steps. The pavilion in Nice is smaller and it will be difficult if the title has to be played there.
Jaime Busto:
This will be my third year as a guest rider at the X-Trial in Barcelona. With the experience of the previous two years, I hope that he can say that “the third time is the charm” and he can, at last, have a good race. It will be difficult to get into the final, but we are going to fight for it even though indoor is not a speciality that goes with my riding.
Takahisa Fujinami:
I’m the oldest in the paddock, but I still have motivation and the results are good. How far can I go? Everything will depend on the results… I don’t set the limit. The X-Trial is important, but I have to admit that my indoor pre-season has not been very intense and perhaps I have focused more on the outdoors. This way I will reach the championship without pressure. After finishing third outdoors and finishing fourth in a race last year, the goal this year has to be to get a podium in one of the championship events.
