"Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin!
I came to win, battle me, that's a sin
I won't ever slack up,
Punk, ya better back up
HE riders riding trials?
The season be a crack up!"
It is hardly news that Trials riders make exceptional Hard Enduro riders: The Goat, Graham Jarvis, being a perfect example.
For other examples you only need look nationally, or even locally.
Tim Coleman was runner up in the Nationals over three consecutive years, snatched victory in the Victorian X Trials in 2015 and annihilated his local scene for years before making his presence felt in the Hard Enduro paddock.
Even closer to home we have all seen, on more than one occasion, 17 times Trials State Champion Neil Price ride over the competition at one of the most technical circuits on the WHES calendar; the Toodyay Terror.
But what I want to know is what happens when it goes the other way? What happens when the hard-core Hard Enduro rider wants to go from 'loose as' to lycra?
I've just got this funny feeling it could get a little...eerrrrrr....."Happy".
I would define myself as neither a Trials rider nor a Hard Enduriac, because I am sub-optimal at both.
But what I do know for sure and certain is that the Grand Dad of Moto Trials in Perth, Moto Dynamics' Simon Price, has spent what feels like an interminable period of time trying to teach me how to ride trials properly.
Let me tell you that man has some patience!
And that, very appropriately, leads me to my point!
During the 2022 competition season, Simon literally walked me through dozens of competitive sections, with the patience of saint and the tolerance of a child-care worker, in an effort to convince me that, to successfully ride a section, the rider needs to have total comprehension of every directional arrow, obstacle and opportunity for traction.
To make it from one gate to the other with foots up, you need to walk the section not once, not twice but at least three times. And then once in reverse. And there are usually 12 sections in a competition, with each section being altered as riders complete lap after lap.
In a competition situation, that type of preparatory work requires a level of patience and tenacity many mortals simply don't possess. And I think it is very fair to say that many Hard Enduro riders that have never done trials before will struggle to dig deep enough to bury their "send it" mentality long enough to ride a section clean.
"Send it till you end it" from Cooper McCarthy was just about the sum total synopsis of the Hard Enduriacs approach to their sport.
That young lad has seen a lot of hard enduro in his time and he knows damn well that "Hard Enduro riders have to be able to get back up and keep going, push themselves more than riders usually would." And when you see the carnage on a super enduro circuit, you can hardly argue.
Therefore, it is WITHOUT QUESTION that switching from HE to Trials is going to require a complete reboot for the average Hard Enduriac.
In Trials that "send it" mentality simply does not work because if you or your bike hit the deck you are out for the count; from a points perspective anyway.
Coming from a very hard-core rider that has, in his riding history, done Finke, the Australian Safari and Dakar, Garry Connell suggests that the path to success in trials is best defined using the Peter Principle.
It is a journey that comprises a constant rise to your level of incompetence. A process of continual improvement where you train, improve, and then elevate (again) to the next level of incompetence. And it is that desire to evolve that keeps trials riders riding with the patience and persistence required to step up from one level to the next.
Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture it would seem to me that Trials is a symphony where Hard Enduro is a rock concert. I don't think that is an unfair conclusion.
What is staggering though, in all of this, is the synergies between these two sports that are so radically different.
Can a Hard Enduro rider become a Trials rider? Well, the WA Symphony Orchestra has played AC/DC so anything is possible!
All of that leaves only one thing left to seriously contemplate, and that is that very soon we will see some of our most manic WHES members wearing Lycra in the paddock.
To be honest, I just don't think I am ready for that.
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