Trials Torque: Trio big in Japan
By John Dickinson on 14th Sep 16
HATS off to the veteran Japanese trio for taking second place in last Sundays Trial des Nations competition at Isola 2000 in France.Takahi
Takahisa Fujinami, Kenichi Kuroyama and Tomoyuki Ogawa have a combined age of 113 or to put it another way, an average age of almost 38.
Repsol Honda star Fujigas is the baby of the bunch at a mere 36 years old.
He has of course been resident in Barcelona for many years and one of the most popular riders ever on the World Championship circuit on which he has now competed for 21 consecutive years, always supported by Honda.
The TdN is all in a day's work for Fuji, who was World Champion back in 2004 on a two-stroke Montesa 315R.
Kenichi Kuroyama, now a young-looking 38, first appeared in Europe as a 16-year-old back in 1995.
He was third in the World Championship in both 1997 and 1998 in the Dougie Lampkin-dominated era and always seen as a future world champ.
Unfortunately a freak accident in the 1999 Sheffield Indoor saw Kenichi break both wrists, after which he never really regained his early career form, although he remained a talented and exciting rider to watch.
Kenichi retired from full-time World Championship trials back in 2005 but has competed in the Japanese round every year since, making 21 years in total, and has always finished in the World top 20 each year.
The 11-times Japanese Champion has been riding a one-off ‘prototype' four-stroke Yamaha since 2006 which is the baby of Japanese engineer and trials fanatic Kimura San.
Nigel Birkett studied the pics of the machine Kenichi brought to France and declared that the latest incarnation was a modified and braced Scorpa S20 two-stroke chassis into which has been shoe-horned the modded twin-cam YZ250F motocross/ enduro motor.
A hand-made exhaust front pipe feeds into an S20 Scorpa two-stroke exhaust. Tech forks are fitted up front.
Pretty it ain't but it obviously performs well for the Japanese team to finish runner-up to the all-conquering Spanish last Sunday.
Tomoyuki Ogawa will be 40 next birthday and the long-time Honda rider has spent the vast bulk of his career in Japan, where he has been Champion five times and like Kuroyama, always puts in a strong points scoring ride in his home World Round.
