Always ALL or nothing!
By TMX Archives on 23rd Jul 08
I'VE said this before I know and no doubt I'll say it again but it is either feast or famine in this business. One week there isn't a major event to be found even with sat-nav and then, like last weekend, there was a positive glut of big stuff. Events that we have just GOT to find the space for, like the eagerly-awaited WEC event in Wales, the MXGP in South Africa, the Inter Centre Team Trial up in Geordieland plus MMX, BSMA, Elite Youth Cup etc, etc. And that's only the tip of the off-road iceberg as there are, of course, dozens of trials, MX and enduro events of varying levels of seriousness taking place the length and breadth of the country. I'm genuinely sorry that I couldn't make it to the World Enduro Championships in Wales. I know how hard the guys and gals have been working on this event, determined to show the WEC regulars what a ‘real' Welsh enduro is all about and I am pleased that they have done exactly that.
Welsh forest tests were the life-blood of British enduros until the Special Test became the be-all and end-all of events. I once covered a Championship enduro in Scotland where competitors were treated to a fabulous 70-odd mile loop in the forest – only for the event to be decided on a two-minute motocross test marked out in a grassy field. I left thinking: "What was all that about?”
Not so in Wales last weekend though where the Jones boys and fellow members of the Hafren Dirt Bike Club brought all their experience to bear and staged an event that truly tested the World's best.
Meanwhile, on a slightly less epic scale but nevertheless every bit as important in its own way, the North East Centre faithful were busy staging the Inter Centre Team Trial. This two-day event has to cater for riders of World Championship level as well as stalwart centre-grade regulars. Quite a task but they all but managed it – and in true British style, the weather did its level best to ruin both events.
I'm glad to say that it failed on both counts!
And where did I get to with all this going on? Well, as it is only 20-minutes from home and run by my local Westmorland club it would have been rude not to visit the Barbon Speed Hillclimb on Saturday. Scary to work out that it is almost 40-years since I first attended Barbon (on my Suzuki Super Six chasing my mate's Velocette Thruxton) and I swear that I bumped into exactly the same people then as I did at the weekend! Barbon could be bottled and blasted into space as a time capsule. It contains everything that is good in motorcycle sport: competitive spirit, good humour and motorcycle knowledge in spades.
Supermoto bikes rule the roost on the hill these days but there are still old boys who give their Velos, Ajays and Nortons a gallop – and who have forgotten more about bikes than I'll ever know.
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FINALLY, we all know that all sports attract their fair selection of ‘mad-dads' who go over-the-top in their desperation to see young Jimmy or Jemima win every race, clean every section, score every goal or whatever. It is not unknown for Dads to be banned from attending events after blowing a metaphorical gasket, especially in motocross which is of course a pretty much testosterone-fuelled sport. It is supposed to be the competitors that get pumped-up though, not their parents. Even the gentle sport of trials isn't immune. I will never forget the heat-rending cry from the devastated Dad of a strapping Youth A contender who had just suffered an ignominious failure: "If I could only ride a bike, I'd show you how to clean that section!” he wailed.
And when only infants, my own kids used to force me to take them down the local park on junior football practice nights. It was nothing to do with the footie, they just used to double-up with laughter at the explosive bursts of effing and blinding emanating from the massed ranks of dads when their seven year-olds failed to perform like Ronaldo.
Well I read a beauty on Monday this week in one of the quality (if there is such a thing) daily papers in which a Dad was arrested and consequently spent four hours contemplating his actions in the police cells after having a go at the organisers and allegedly swearing at the police as his lad competed in... wait for it... a Charity pedal car race...