The short and intense season of the Indoor Trial World Championship has come to an end, leaving us with an absolutely surprising balance from which we can draw many sporting and technical conclusions. First of all, of course, we must applaud the unprecedented feat of Toni Bou, who has been unbeaten throughout the six races and has made it clear that he is at a pace absolutely unattainable for his rivals.
If we read the results well and analyze the races we can see that Toni has also managed to win with authority, maintaining a constant pattern: defining in the key areas, those where due to their extreme technical difficulty his rivals did not pass. Certainly, Bou’s advantage has been there, in the small details. The great added value is that he has been able to maintain concentration in an exemplary way, without failing in the simple areas or in the conflictive qualifying areas, where a mistake can take its toll in the fight for the title. We can say, with a big mouth, that Bou is a very complete champion of faculties, so we predict a few years full of success for him.
Perhaps the only obstacle that Toni encounters in his most immediate sporting career is the fact that he rides a bike with great potential, but outdated and with no prospects for evolution.
Bou is used to his bike and knows how to get the most out of it, but he probably lacks the motivation that, for example, Jeroni Fajardo has with his Ossa
. The fact that behind a competition team there is a factory waiting for guidelines to evolve a series model, as Ossa has, is always a plus point.
Jeroni was able to defend his debut with the bike well in a year where all eyes were on him, as he was the only rider with a chance of being at the top who changed bikes. Ossa’s professionalism and Jeroni’s spirit of sacrifice have led him to take second and third place throughout these six races, which is a great feat for a very young project. In the end, Fajardo achieved a meritorious fourth place in the final, but he was very much in the fight for the podium.
has put in a great performance which has earned him a very important Runner-up, despite the fact that the rider himself has not been satisfied with himself in more than one race, such as in this last one, where he failed to get past the semi-finals. All in all, the results are there, ahead of his main rival, Raga, who had it in his hand to snatch second place from the Sherco rider, but could not beat Fajardo in Milan and that ruined all his chances.
One of the riders who has surprised us the most is Jack Challoner, who in his debut has achieved a magnificent sixth place in the final, ahead of his reference, James Dabill, number one rider of Beta and perhaps the great disappointment of this 2011 Indoor. A lot was expected of the Briton, but the truth is that he got stuck in the qualifying rounds with an imprecise and uncommon driving in his last campaign. Challoner has taken advantage of his mistakes very well and has managed to overtake Fujinami himself in events such as Barcelona. The Japanese rider has not been up to his level in any race either; He lacks the grit and motivation to bring out the great rider in him. The fact of having Toni in the team should be a revulsive to try to stay on his wheel, but the reality is that the battle of the rider from Montesa has been more in the qualifying rounds than in the finals.
year The reading of what has happened in these first months of the year is clear: Bou has all the cards to continue dominating in Outdoor and get his tenth consecutive world title, he just has to continue as he has done so far. After him, the fight is going to be very nice, since Fajardo performs better outdoors than indoors, as does Fujinami, and a nice fight is expected between these riders together with Raga and Cabestany.
Perhaps we may be facing one of the most exciting outdoor seasons
.
For now, we’ll have to wait until May to see what happens. In the meantime, we will continue to whet our appetites with the most controversial national championship in recent years. After what happened in Castellolí, we will see how the spirits are this coming weekend in Ibiza, where in previous editions there were always problems with the weather, forcing the riders to go fast through the streets of Ibiza to get in time. It would be nicer to see the drivers fighting in the race and not so much against the administration, but the Federation is not making things easy and the championships are too short to afford the license to lose valuable points on one thing. That’s not Trial.
We will keep an eye on the outcome to give you the best information from Trialworld. Don’t forget that you can read all the reports of the 2011 World Indoor Championships and the first round of the National Outdoor in the news section.
You can click here to see all the photos of the 2011 Indoor Trial World Championship.
Don’t forget to vote from the main page (at the bottom of the home page on the left) in our poll of the week: Who is the best driver ever?. Bou, Tarrés or Lampkin? Tarrés is winning! We look forward to your vote!
Greetings and happy week.
David Quer (david@trialworld.es)
