Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

I 'F "I've been standing on my head since Big Bear." or Debbie Evans, 18, -it's another milestone on a trail _that she began riding nine years ago. October 31 (Halloween) she rode her last trial as an ATA Amateur; with the advancement points earned there, she is now America's first lady trials Expert, the first woman eligible to compete for the U .S . Trials Championship. " I rode terrible," she said over the phone, "but I got a third. " What her innate modesty wouldn't let her say was that the V.O.T.E. Halloween Trial near Gorman had been one of the year's toughest, with a 26 ·mile loop and many Expert scores -ru nning well over 100 . The Amateurs (Debbie's class) got it especially hard , because they rode most of the Expert traps. But Deb's no stranger to struggle. The diminutive brownette has been tackling California's giant-scale terrain on a variety of motorcycles since she was nine . From a Honda 55 step' through she quickly graduated to a home-brewed Tohatsu/Suzuki with trials bars, moved-back pegs and a huge rear sprocket. Then it was a pair of 175 Yamaha Enduros which she rode in ATA Kids class and SoCal enduros until age 13. She vaulted out of Kids class and turned Amateur on a 250 Ossa MAR that often brought her back to camp battered and bruised from the strain of coping with it: , Two and a -half years with that Ossa, she meanwhilegrev: from a plucky kid into a mature teenager, stronger , better, more experienced. ("I just wish my legs were longer.") But in the Amateur class, advancement points were slow in coming. Then , last year Yamaha sponsored her to one of the then-new TY175s . It was a ,perfect fit , the right size, the right power, the right weight. And now she's done it ; " Boy, it's been a long time geuing there." . In anticipation of the big step , she'd been by the Cycle News offices the week before; and we'd spent a couple hours thumbing through the thick scrapbooks the Evans family has kept 0'.' the exploits of Papa Dave, Deb , sister Diane, . and on friends in enduro/trials. It was from these that much of this "h istory" was pieced together, some of it straight out of old , old issues of Cycle News. Inevitably, the talk would tum to trials. Is trials really going down the wa y people have been saying at the California National rounds? "Yeah . . . I think family clu bs are getting tired of putting on so many trials . . . I think a lot of ATA reps are seeming to ignore the beginners. Look at ITA; they ' get big turnouts and it's all beginners. I don't know , maybe we need to have somebody organize trials." Though she 's not seen it firsthand, Deb favors the . British system of different "gra des" of trial open to different classes of riders. "Look at enduros," she says . "You already have District 37 and you have family enduros , . . you can take your-pick how hard you want to make it." Deb d oesn 't share the general view of Southern California as the leadership area in trials. "Other parts of the country are more advanced in trials now - not in numbers of good riders, but in numbers of people interested." To her. it's interest and enthusiasm that keep trials alive. " I loved to grow up with trials . I'd hate to see it just dissolve." As a new Expert, and in next year's Nationals, she will stick with her TYI75 and work with Yamaha . Of her sponsor, she speaks gratefully, but wonders aloud what they'll do since the TY-series trialers haven't been booming sellers. _' . < ' "I don't know why Yamaha just came over here and thought they'd make a killing (with the TYs) . . . I do what I can to help; I sell a lot of wife bikes and kid bikes." Of all the Yamah~-related publicity, none has so singled Debbie out as the matter of her standing on her head on the bike. It didn't start out to be a big deal. "I've been standing on my head since Big Bear (1975). I'd just seen Elliott Schultz do it. At first I thought, 'N o, that can't be." Then I thought , 'If he can do it, I can too.' I went out behind the house next week , worked on it and got it the fourth try or thereabouts." She's been entertaining audiences (she does trials demonstrations for school assemblies to boost the sport) and 'freaking her male competition regularly with the stunt ever since. To Deb, it's just that, a stunt fun to do, entertaining, but not directly translatable into trials wins . At age 18, graduated from high school , going to college part time and working pick -Up and delivery part time , Debbie Evans has come of age , both in the tight-knit world of trials and the wider world outside. • See you at the Nationals, ?eb.

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