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Flights booked, Hotel sorted, now have to find out if theres any events on in Marseilles. First round of the World Indoor Trials Championship, the weekend just got a whole lot better!!
Marseilles, in the south of France, held its 16 edition of a world indoor trials championship round over the weekend of 26th and 27th January.
After trying to find my way through the French ticketing web sites and guessing at what I was booking, I decided on the Saturday night, thinking qualify Friday night, main event Saturday night, though it didn't go like that.
As we tried to read through the French program, and came to the riders list, there were four top riders missing off the Saturday program, and the scoring round was on the Friday night! Never mind, Adam Raga, Toni Bou, and Frajado are on the card for tonight, so current world indoor and outdoor world number 1, and two arguably top 10 riders as well.
The dancing girls are out first dong their thing just before the announcer introduces the riders one by one with huge fireworks for each rider. The first five come out and then there's only Adam Raga to introduce. The lights are off, crowd go silent and then the spotlight is on a Raga who's pulling a wheelie on the mezzanine floor all the way around the arena to the end where he stops, turns around and waves to the crowd.
The Trial is made up of 7 sections. The first being the tyres, which are those huge tractor tyres. Next are 4 fishing boats place all on odd angles. After the boats it is the logs, vertical and horizontal. Section 4 is concrete building blocks, all stacked on top of each other. Sections 5 and 6 are both rock sections, different sorts of sizes and shapes. Last section is the waterfall. It goes from the arena floor all the way up to the cheap seats.
First rider is a Frenchmen, who fives every section. The announcer tries to get the vocal crowd in behind him but he can't pull it off. Next French rider out does slightly better, not fiving every section and doing alright. Another local rider is out and he dabs his way through the most of the sections, though takes a fall on the boat section, knocking over his minder! The crowd erupts with laughing at the rider who's yelling at the minder. He rides well through the remaining sections and then gets to the waterfall.
The waterfall starts off a lot like a W. They jump onto a rock, and then turn right and jump off, landing and turning left to a standing halt. From there the rider lines up the waterfall all the way to the top from a standing start. This Frenchman is the first of the night to make it to the top, with the announcer getting the crowd right in behind him.
Next up is Frajado, straight away you can see the difference of the skills from the riders before him. Cleaning a couple of sections and dabbing a few more. Frajado ends the round with 12 or so points, the 1664 beer (has to be French doesn't!) beers are taking effect.
The dancing girls are still going strong.
Toni Bou is up on the 4-stroke, not that you can hear any of the bikes over the music being pumping out. Bou cleans everything before him. The riding skills yet again have stepped up a notch or two. At the second of the rock sections he comes unstuck and has to dab twice. Bou finishes the round with an amazing score of 2. He made the waterfall look stupidly easy, taking on and conquering the waterfall from the bottom to the top in one go.
Last but not least it's Adam Raga. Amazingly he falls in the first section scoring 5! The crowd are in a bit of shock. Where Bou had cleaned Raga has scored 5, with Bou already winning the first round, in the very first section.
He runs through the rest of the sections making them look like he's on a Sunday ride, doing everything he wants, and cleaning the remaining sections. Not happy with this he go's back to the first section and of course cleans it in front of everyone.
The announcer speaking some more in French, and me not really understanding, then the sound of a booming twin fired up everyone. The sound is deafening, and from nowhere a bike appears and its the winning rider and bike from the recent Dakar rally. He decides to tear up the arena!! The crowd is going crazy, lapping it up, he looks like he's back in Africa barging his way through the trees and sections laid out for the trials riders.
After this it was time to call it a night. I would go to see another round any time I get a chance to again, it was well worth the 25 euro's twice over! It's a must see event, from the sections, to the dancing girls, to the French announcer in the middle who doesn't stop the whole time (knowing some French might help but hey it adds to the whole experience).
Next event.....speedway GP in Poland!!
