MXGP - back in the room!
By TMX Archives on 22nd Apr 11
Put the laptop away, MXGP stages miraculous TV recovery. Then nip out and tax your trials bike - or sidecar outfit!
You have to laugh.
Barely was the ink dry on last week's T+MX, in which we carried the story that Youthstream and Motors TV could not come to an agreement regarding live TV coverage of the 2011 MXGP season, backed-up with the fact that the first round came and duly went with zero TV coverage, than guess what?
You guessed it. Another round of press releases duly arrived with a flourish shortly after to say that they now HAD reached an agreement and that the remainder of the MXGP season WILL be shown live on Motors TV. See, black really can be white and no really can mean yes.
So what happened to turn the story on its head so rapidly? Your guess is as good as mine. Either Motors were playing hardball and refusing to pay Youthstream whatever they thought they were worth. Or Youthstream were hanging on to their ball and refusing to let Motors play with it. As ever I guess that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. One or the other was playing brinksmanship and one or the other has backed down. Maybe both parties made concessions.
Frankly, for once I really don't care. I just wish they had played their hands of poker out before the MXGP season had actually started then we wouldn't have had to print a story that has been rubbished a week later. Whatever, all you peeps who contacted us complaining, with feeling, that you couldn't watch MXGP live, can now get the beer in and plump up those cushions. It's back...
ELSWHERE there has been a bit of lively correspondence regarding the Luscombe Suzuki Leeds British Sidecar Trials Championship. Now, you may well think that if ever there was a storm in a teacup it would be blowing around sidecar trials, it being a basically supremely friendly sport in what you would definitely call a niche market. Sidecars, of any kind, may only have a small following but that following is incredibly keen and loyal.
So, what have the barrow-boys been up to? Well, at a recent road-based Championship round (in the Midlands, but it could have been anywhere) word arrived that the police had set themselves up along the road with the explicit intention of stopping the sidecarists to check them against the rule book. The chair boys, while in the main being perfectly ‘legal' decided that it wouldn't be a particularly clever idea to go steaming straight into the arms of the boys in blue as, if the coppers really were keen to invoke the letter of the law, rather than the spirit, who knows how full their pocket books would become.
Our charioteers, being a resourceful bunch, got word out to their camp followers and a convoy of vans arrived which were then used to transport the outfits between groups of sections. Which is quite a palaver. The trial was completed but it rather defeated the object.
One answer is to give-up the road legal bit and run the events all on private land. Robin Luscombe, multi British champ and current series sponsor, said in these pages he understood the problems but didn't wish to travel several hundred miles just to ride round a field containing eight sections five times. Or words to that effect.
Now, as we all know this problem is not actually restricted just to the sidecars. Without getting too involved, we all know that if the police choose to, they can make things very awkward indeed regarding the roadworthy legalities for solo trials bikes. And occasionally they do. I don't mean things like riders not having a licence to actually ride a bike on the road, or insurance or whatever. If you are caught-out on those scores you deserve what's coming to you I'm afraid. No, it is the actually nuts and bolts of a trials machine being road legal to the letter of the law.
Several road based solo National trials have been targeted already this year for special attention, as I mentioned last week. Most policemen and forces are actually pretty understanding and as long as everyone is behaving themselves they leave well alone. There are always exceptions to every rule though.
I have said several times that Roy Carey, when he was Fantic importer at the height of the Italian company's success in the early 1980s, warned us that road-based trials would cease to be and that all trials would take place on private land. Lots of us laughed. It would be a travesty, as many of the best, most traditional trials in the country are based on roadwork. Roy may well be proved right one day - but I sincerely hope not.
The problem is the single-minded way in which trials bikes have been developed. They have just one aim - to clean sections.
Maybe ultimately the way forward will be for the old established, traditional road based events to be run along what are now called Long Distance trials - with trials bikes being substituted for trail bikes. At which point, trials bike manufacturers would morph their trials models into bona fide trail bikes - and the wheel will have travelled full circle...
