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The Repsol Honda rider has 10 victories in this round, a pioneer in the World Championship calendar.
This weekend will be the start of a new edition of the X-Trial World Championship, in which Toni Bou will defend his Champion title for the tenth season in a row. Barcelona will hold the first of the four rounds of a series that will also visit Austria and France (twice). The Palau Sant Jordi will be decorated at its best to pay homage to a sporting event that started in 1978 and celebrates its 40th anniversary. Four decades in which the category has radically changed and one man stands out from the rest: Toni Bou and his 10 victories.
The Repsol Honda Team rider has transformed Trial as Jordi Tarres did in his time, by achieving the unbeatable figure of 20 titles, 10 indoor and 10 outdoor. In these four decades, competitors have gone from navigating among big logs, piles of tyres and rocks barely stopping their motorcycles, to face large vertical structures that require a huge amount of technique and preparation.
As Bou says, “technique is what helps setting the difference from other riders and compete better without getting as tired.” “Riders that, as I did, started with the bicycle, are more technical and that is why we have more control over the machine,” adds the rider from Piera (Barcelona). Contrary to the outdoor trial, in which there are races that can last up to six hours and physical shape and other factors such as patience are the key “in the indoor trial you must avoid mistake, because if you’re not completely focused, you can be easily out of a finale, or a podium, which are crucial in such a short Championship”.
The body position
The obstacles at the X-Trial require a special preparation and “the key to pass them is, once again, technique, the body position to go both up and down. You need to help the bike to ‘climb’ the obstacle, by placing yourself in a position that allows to put the weight in the back and leave the front lighter. To go down, we move the body back, spreading our legs to lower the gravity centre as much as possible.” Even the bike needs a different preparation than in the mountain races and “after analysing the route, the mechanics prepare the dampers, the clutch, the engine and the brakes,” explains the rider that has dominated the discipline in the last decade.
40 years ago, no rider knew very well what they would find at the Palacio Municipal de Deportes, where a speciality that up to that moment could only be enjoyed by going to the mountain, was for the first time made available to the general public. This next Sunday, the fans will go to another Sports Palace, this time the Sant Jordi, already knowing about the great show they will enjoy watching Toni Bou, Takahisa Fujinami, Jaime Busto and the rest of the participants of the X-Trial World Championship, heirs of the pioneers: Jaume Subira, Antoni Gorgot, Andreu Codina, Bernie Schreiber….
