Toni Bou has started the 2023 season with a victory in the opening round of the X-Trial World Championship, held at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona. He was joined on the podium by Gabriel Marcelli, his teammate, and Jaime Busto, who was making his debut as an official GASGAS rider this season.
A total of 8 zones have been arranged on the Sant Jordi track (6 zones for the X-Trial competition and 2 zones -which were split to add 5 different zones- for the Women’s Trophy). The men’s competition (with 9 drivers) consisted of two qualifying rounds of 5 zones each. The top three drivers after the sum of points from both rounds would reach the final.
The first section (BMW Motorrad) of the first lap of the X-Trial Barcelona already forced some to row against the current. Only Adam Raga (TRRS), Jaime Busto and Gabriel Marcelli avoided the “fiasco”, in an entry into the zone that would end up being definitive in the final result of the Barcelona night.
DIFFICULT START TO CAREER FOR BOU
Toni Bou, therefore, started his route in the worst possible way: with a “five”, an associated crash and a technical problem on his bike that forced him to use the spare, the bike that riders discard to use at the start.
Regardless, those would be the 16-time X-Trial World Champion’s only points on the entire lap, although they would not be enough for him to be the best in that first round. An imperial Jaime Busto (1 point) and a very fine Adam Raga (3 points) acquired a slight advantage and topped the classification of the first round.
SECOND ROUND: THE KEY
On the second lap, and with a minute less time to cover five sections again, the starting order was the reverse of the first lap classification. And in it came the recital of Toni Bou. An almost perfect course (a single penalty point) of the rider from Montesa catapulted him to the first position after the calculation of both rounds, although tied with Jaime Busto.
Bou’s best result in the second round compared to Busto (1-5) earned him a place first, although both riders got their passports to the grand final. The third finalist was also decided after a tiebreak: Marcelli and Raga were equal at 9 points in total, but Marcelli’s sensational run in the second round (2 points) gave him the pass. Raga scored 6 points and was therefore out of the final.
GRAND FINAL: BOU VS BUSTO VS MARCELLI
The decisive round was scheduled for six zones, but a structural problem in one of them forced it to be discarded. The triumph in “La Catedral” of the indoor trial and the first leadership of the World Championship were going to be decided, consequently, in five zones. To the surprise of all the fans, the first leader of the final was Gabriel Marcelli, after Toni Bou scored 5 starting points again in the tricky BMW Motorrad area.
However, Gabriel Marcelli’s hopes of victory in Barcelona – in 2021 he was second at the Palau, his best result to date – were dashed in the next two zones, in which he scored two “fiascos” (5+5 points). Jaime Busto had also conceded two fives, so Toni Bou went into the last two sections of the final with a comfortable lead. And the 32-time trial world champion did not miss the opportunity to add his 16th victory in Barcelona.
Despite Marcelli’s final push (with two zeros in the last two zones), Toni Bou – who added 3 – had enough to secure the win. In fact, Toni Bou was already mathematically the winner at the end of the penultimate zone. An incomprehensible mistake by Jaime Busto in the last zone (5 points) made him lose second place, which would have meant his best result in Barcelona in 9 participations. Therefore, Marcelli -second- could celebrate his very recent birthday (23 years) by repeating his second place in Barcelona in 2021.
X-TRIAL BARCELONA CLASSIFICATION
BARCELONA - x-trial 2023
- TONI BOU (MONTESA)
- GABRIEL MARCELLI (MONTESA)
- JAIME BUSTO (GASGAS)
- ADAM RAGA (TRRS)
- JERONI FAJARDO (SHERCO)
- TOBY MARTYN (TRRS)
- BENOIT BINCAZ (GASGAS)
- SONDRE HAGA (BETA)
- MATTEO GRATTAROLA (BETA)
CAREER STATEMENTS
toni bou (P1)"It was a very tense trial for me after the mistake in the first section. Starting like this never helps and I thought that victory this time would be very difficult. Already in the morning inspection of the areas I saw that it would be a very complicated race. Luckily, all the work of this pre-season has appeared in a good second half of the season and in a final in which I felt much more comfortable. A win in Barcelona is always very important, and even more so if it's the start of the World Cup. Needless to say, it's going to be a very, very hard-fought season."
GABRIEL MARCELLI (P2)"Today my goal was to get on the podium... And I've done it. My crash two weeks ago in Toulouse prevented me from training as much as I would have liked, but I felt comfortable on the bike. I suffered a slight muscle tear on the first lap, but I managed to recover and have a very good ride on the second lap. Competing at the Palau Sant Jordi always means extra motivation and desire, which is why I didn't stop fighting and I was able to get second place in the end."
JAIME BUSTO (P3)"I felt much better than I expected and having been the best rider on the first lap makes me feel very satisfied and very motivated for everything to come. I'm still thinking about the absurd mistake I made in the last part of the final that deprived me of second. It's time to keep working because this is just the beginning. I hope to be a regular on the podiums of the X-Trial World Championship."
Video x-trial BARCELONA 2023
2023 X-Trial World Championship Calendar
- X-TRIAL BARCELONA - SPAIN - 5 February
- x-trial WIENER NEUSTADT - austria - 11 MARCH
- X-Trial Pamplona - Spain - 25 March
- X-trial Bordeaux - FRANCE - 7 April
- x-trial ANDORRA LA VELLA - 7 October
- x-trial MADRID - SPAIN - 4 November
- x-trial tba FRANCE - 11 November
- X-Trial Nations - Reunion Island - FRANCE - 17 November
