FEATURE: Trials riding for novices

I’ve always had a fascination with trials riding. I can remember as a kid watching videos of Scottish legend Mick Andrews riding in some far off land, hoping from rock to rock, and marvelling at the God-like bike control he seemed to posses. He had this fluidity in his riding that made obstacles almost non-existent, like he was riding a hoverbike painted yellow with Yamaha written down the side.

Trials riding has evolved to the point of making the impossible, possible. Get on line and type in the name Toni Bou and watch the Spanish ace who can literally ride up a five metre tall waterfall and bunny-hop – on the rear wheel – over the waiting truck tyre at the top. Bonkers.

So with similar visions of grandeur, a mate and I decided to take up the offer of a day’s riding from owner of The Hell Team, Paul Arnott at Sydney’s Pacific Park. The Hell Team used to be a film company on Sydney’s North Shore, specialising in blowing stuff up and generally making a mess of things for the viewing pleasure of millions.

Nowadays Paul has shifted his entire focus onto his love of trials and is the official importer for Gas Gas, these jewel-like Spanish motorcycles that are part pushbike, part motorcycle. And we would have some pretty good help to guide us towards our inner Bou, with multiple Aussie champions Kyle Middleton and Kristy McKinnon, Toby Coleman and Australian Under 19s Champion Jonathan Chellas making sure us muppets didn’t crash in a blaze of glory and had a good time.

The first thing you have to do with trials is forget about the idea of going fast. It goes against almost every competitive motorcycling instinct in my body – to win, you have to cross the finish line first, right? In a word, no. Trials is all about slow speed finesse and control. It’s about using your body and the machine to weave in, around and over stuff that bikes really have no business being near.

And riding slow is far harder than it seems. We started off by doing some slow weaving in and out of witches hats, like you do when you first go for your Ls, then graduated to plank riding and trying to ride over some logs mounted on top of each other. I thought riding the plank would be easy. Wrong. It highlighted all the little things I was doing badly, like body and head position. After four goes I couldn’t ride the plank, and frustration was setting in.

 Eventually I got to the point where I was looking straight ahead, but 200 metres ahead, not just 20. In my peripheral vision I knew the front wheel was on the plank, and as long as I looked to where I was going, not where I was, I could get through it no problems. Juggling the brake and clutch and keeping the bike balanced was the key to me mastering slow speed riding.

The controls on these bikes are so delicate, so light. The clutches on these Gas Gas machines are diaphragm units – like a car – so they can take a tremendous hammering and still be good as gold. You’re on the clutch constantly, it acts as a fourth brake (front and rear brake, engine brake and clutch), and allows you to moderate your speed so precisely.

After we got the hang of the witches hats and wooden planks, we headed out to another little area that housed a few larger rocks and logs. Getting the front wheel to essentially kiss the top of a log is the key to getting over it smoothly, as riders who’ve done a bit of harder-core adventure riding will understand. With the front just kissing the log, it’ll in turn load up the front and rear suspension and allow the rebound action to make light work for the rear tyre, which (unless you’ve given it a massive handful of throttle or got your body position all messed up), should follow the front diligently and softly over the log. Ever wheelied over a log at speed on a dirt or adventure bike, only for the rear wheel to smash into it and pitch you over the ’bars? This technique tries to eliminate this issue, and while it is very much speed related, when you do it correctly, it’s almost like that 60cm log was never there. It’s a bit of a revelation when it happens.

Watching riders like Jono, Kyle and Kristy ride this stuff makes you realise just how skilful they actually are, and this was drummed into us, more slammed into us, when we watched Kyle riding up a three metre wall with little more than 30cm of run up. Getting up big obstacles is all about using the massive torque from the two-stroke engine (yes, I did just say torque and two-stroke in the same sentence). Hit the throttle hard and it’s an explosion of torque, and watching Kyle perfectly demonstrated this. He’d steady the bike, get his body position right, pull the clutch in and take the revs to readline.

Then, boom! Kyle dumps the clutch and he and his bike just smash up this two-storey rock in a flash. Then the smartarse does a 180 on the back wheel and hops back down! Simon and I attempted a rock that was about two-thirds the size, but even that I was afraid to try. However, what I hadn’t fully appreciated was just how capable these little bikes are.

They are so, so strong, light as a feather and deceptively easy to ride – up to a point – at which time they require far greater skill and technique than I’ve got the balls to explore. Ask me 15 years ago and I’d probably try and ride up anything – self preservation wasn’t exactly in my vocabulary – but riding up the stuff Kyle does is a real eye opener. That’s the extreme side of the sport, but the other is the social side, the one that lets you go riding with your buddies, chatting to and taking the piss out of each other in the same way that cyclists do in a peloton.

After Kyle’s heroics, we really got stuck into the fun stuff, which was riding far into the hills and having a good time together. To me, this is what trials riding is all about – rolling over logs and rocks, climbing steep hills and slowly creeping back down the other side. It’s here I realised just how grippy that front tyre was. With almost all the front brake pressure being rammed through the caliper down a stone-covered hill with a near 80-degree incline, the front tyre would just flex and bend to the ground in the same way as a 4x4 tyre makes child’s play of rocks. The grip was incredible and neither Simon nor I had any front-end washouts all day.

We didn’t realise it until we got back, but we’d been riding for nearly six hours and could easily have done it all over again. These skinny, funny looking bikes are an absolute blast to ride and took us to areas you’d only ever get to by trials bike – forget taking an enduro or motocross bike up some of these sections – and the slow speed nature of the riding meant the chance of injury was almost nil.

Paul runs these workshops not as a money making exercise but as a fund raising effort for the coaches like Middleton and McKinnon, who regularly compete overseas and need ever dollar they can to get there. I had such a blast on my little Gas Gas and could feel my riding improving almost by the minute and would thoroughly recommend anyone – whether a beginner or a MotoGP rider – to have a go on a trials bike. I’m also totally dark because now I have to find the money to add another bike to my garage!