What is the essence of trial technique? Those of us who are amateurs know that it consists of overcoming obstacles of varying difficulty with skill, without incurring penalties, such as supports, falls… And this can be done in different modalities. In this case, we analyze how techniques are approached in the case of two wheels: trial bike and trial bike.
It has always been said that the trial bike is a great complement to the bike to understand the technique. And it’s true. Successful motorcycle riders such as Toni Bou, Albert Cabestany, Jeroni Fajardo or Jordi Tarrés, began their journey on trial bikes.
The common denominator is that the jump to the bike was easier for them to assimilate, helping them, to a large extent, to evolve their technique. In fact, we could say that, if there are two important evolutionary leaps in the last thirty years, the fathers would be Jordi Tarrés, who began piloting stops and lateral movements; and Toni Bou, who evolved the previous technique towards riding on the rear wheel.
TRIAL BIKE VS TRIAL BIKE
The techniques are completely different. A bike like World Champion Borja Conejos’ Clean Trials K1 is built of carbon fibre and weighs just over seven kilos. A current two-stroke trial bike weighs ten times as much, about seventy kilos.
The bike has no suspensions. The whole technique is done with body and pedal stroke. We talked about this with Abel Mustieles, four-time World Champion in trial bikes, as well as motorcycle enthusiast and founder of Clean Trials.
Abel Mustiele's opinion"Indoors, the audience was blown away by the bike. It's a very different trial, an area like the first one that has been proposed, for Borja it's just a warm-up, while on the bike it would be for a fairly high level of amateurs. On the bike it's all head-on, with acceleration and momentum, while on the bike it's more static."
"Motorbike and bike can share training space, but they have nothing to do with each other. They are compatible and one helps the other, especially in balance and synchronization, but little else. The coordination with the bike is much more direct, so everything the rider does is transmitted very quickly to the bike. It's true that on the bike you have an engine, but that helps you go forward, not sideways. On the bike, it's easier and less physical to sideways correct trajectories."
To make this report, we spent a full-day afternoon with Borja Conejos, recently proclaimed 2021 UCI Trials World Champion. For our part, Chema won a Scorpa SC Factory 2022.
When it came to marking the zones, we saw how for Borja the areas that had the highest level for the bike, he passed them without problems. Only in some areas with a good slope before the obstacle was it more difficult, since it was not easy for him to gain momentum. The way of facing the area is also curious, as it practically does not support the front end at any time. It’s like combing the rocks. Amazing.
The bottom line is that if you have a very basic level, you’re going to have more fun with the bike in the first moments, since the engine and suspensions make up for the technical shortcomings and you can feel like you’re doing trial. On a bike, this initial learning is more tortuous. It seems that the time to start tackling obstacles never comes, but when it comes, the capacity for evolution is very great.
In any case, for us, the balance lies in making both disciplines compatible. If you come from the bike, the bike will help you with movements, balance… and it will allow you to get the workout in no time. All you need is a few obstacles, natural or artificial, to work on your technique with the bike.
