Sheffield's the place to be
By TMX Archives on 27th Nov 08
BRITAIN'S only International Indoor Arena Trial, Sheffield 2009, will kick-off to wild applause on Saturday, January 3, at the Sheffield Arena. We recently met-up with Neil Crosswaite who along with Martin Lampkin makes up promoters Avondale Management in an eerily empty Sheffield Arena, to talk about the upcoming World Indoor Trials Championship opening round when the venue will come alive... When the 2009 Sheffield Indoor trial kicks-off on Saturday, January 3, in just a few short weeks' time, as the opening round of the FIM Indoor Championship, this annual event will have run for an amazing 14 consecutive years.
Said Neil Crosswaite, sitting in the empty Sheffield stands, It all came out of a conversation in a pub at Christmas 1994. Me and Martin saw that no-one seemed interested in running an Indoor trial in Britain so we decided to go for it. The first event (January 96) was not a World Championship round and to be honest the whole show was built around Jordi Tarres the man who single-handedly made Indoor trials the spectacle it should be.
The early years were amazing, especially the first one when everything was brand-new to us, and we brought Spanish cycling wizard Ot Pi over many times. We attracted major sponsorship from Embassy for five or six years and invested their money in the show with better lighting rigs, big screens, free programmes and lots of other stuff. Unfortunately things are a lot tighter these days and a main event sponsor would be nice! We are not out to make a fortune but it is a plain fact of life that if the public want to keep this event they have to support it.
Martin does a brilliant job with the sections. They are always fresh, not just the same old stuff like you get in Spain. And we have a superb staff of around 20 workers who know just what they are doing. It's a tight event schedule and we have to be in and out of the arena in a set time.
FOR FULL STORY SEE T+MX NEWS, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2008