Observe the trials future
By TMX Archives on 22nd Oct 09
JD looks at the big debate in the trials world the No Stop rule and it seems that the argument is is going to continue unabated...
THE ‘Great Trials Observing Debate' has rumbled on for some 20-years now, with the Stop/ No-stop arguments burbling ever onwards, like a restless volcano. The jets of steam and lava flows from both camps keep occasionally erupting in centre and club meetings, in letters to the printed press and online forums with the outcome usually being that the two camps become ever more entrenched.
Whole centres have been split with some clubs wanting Stop trials and others equally adamant that they will hang on to No-stop.
But as the FIM Trials Commission is now embroiled in the self-same argument over World Championship trials, the time does seem to have finally arrived for a once-and-for-all settlement. That's the theory anyway, I'm not holding my breath for a definitive answer – because there probably isn't one!
Quick history lesson for those who either haven't been around long enough to know what happened or just as likely were asleep at the back of the class in the early 1980s. For once I was actually awake and in the middle of the ‘revolution' as it unfolded in front of my eyes and so at least know what happened – although I'm the first to admit that I don't really know if there is a genuine cure-all answer, almost three-decades later.
The bottom line is that trials managed very nicely for the first 70 years of its life running to a simple format. Observed sections were to be ridden with forward motion to be maintained at all times. When the bike's front wheel ceased to travel in a forward direction, i.e. it ceased revolving, a failure was deemed to have occured and the rider was docked five-marks. It may not have been a perfect system but in theory at least it was simple to understand and observe. Whether both rider and observer always agreed on what constituted a five was always open to debate and some ‘lively' discussions ensued, particularly amongst those riders at the sharp end of the field. And some observers soon acquired a reputation for being ‘hard' while others – who were amazingly much more popular – were classified as observing ‘soft'.
Then, in the late 1970s American teenager Bernie Schreiber started using advanced riding techniques such as the ‘pivot' or ‘floating' turn with the front wheel in the air. This was followed in the early 1980s by World Championship riders such as Eddy Lejeune and Gilles Burgat moving the front wheel from side to side with the rear wheel stationary. This state of affairs rapidly ballooned into riders tackling sections using a stop-start technique, even reversing, which observers rapidly adapted to – and suddenly it was taking riders several minutes to tackle a section which would previously have taken 30-seconds max. Nothing short of a total crashing dismount was marked as a five and even then sometimes they got away with it. This became known as a ‘Spanish Three'.
It was all exciting stuff at the time and crowds loved it but the trials began ending in farce as riders took so long to complete sections that many trials saw competitors virtually fighting to have fives punched in the latter sections as they had simple exhausted the time limit, messing around in sections.
The short ending of the story is that the ‘stop allowed' system filtered down the line to the humblest of club trials and the arguments over the rules began.
Fast forward to 2009. World Championship (and National Championship) trials have become so specialised that only half a dozen riders are capable of riding the sections. Entries for these elite trials have nose-dived and so have the spectators. Has all the innovation and ‘Stop Permitted' rules actually turned out to be a blind alley and will a return to ‘No-stop' bring about a new trials boom?
This is of course the $64,000 question and until it happens we won't actually know. I understand that while the FIM Trials Commission made recent noises about a return to No-stop, they were about to quietly drop the subject. However, since the recent hullaballoo in the press, not least in T+MX with recent articles by the likes of Adam Raga, Malcolm Rathmell and Sammy Miller, the item is very firmly back on the agenda. With a bit of luck you will be able to read the views of seven times World Outdoor Trials Champ Dougie Lampkin on the opposite page (this page is off to press before Doug's eagerly awaited words arrive) which will of course be more grist to the mill, more fuel for the fire and more weight to one end of the argument.
Last weekend, the Lakes Two-Day Trial took place after its committee took the controversial decision to run under ‘no-stop'. Quite a high profile event to give it a go. You can find out a little of how it all went in the Trials Torque column this week. As stated, the Stop versus No-stop volcano has lain virtually dormant for several decades – is the time now ready for a full-scale eruption?