Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126436
It's hard to explain. What trials to go fast, what trials to go slow. What do do when. Like studying each particular trial and having a plan of attack? Yeah. That's the thing. Like Hannah is supposed to have said that it's wanting to win on every day of the week, not just Sunday. That's kind of how Vesterinen was. He gets organized before the season starts so he can relax, but he's always thinking about the next trial. Have any new riding stunts? How far can you ride down a railroad track now? It depends on how lucky you are that day. It's all in how your stan. Thiny, 40, maybe 50 feet. Do you still work on the wheelie turns? I always practice that. It's really useful. Rathmell, Lampkin and Shepherd have been asking me to teach them how to do wheelie turns all season. And somehow you never got around to it. They tell me they'll teach me how to ride on mud if I teach them how to do wheelies. What is the secret of riding on mud? There isn't any. It's just throttle control. Just whep to tum on and when to tum off. Obviously you've been uncomfortable in thc.e early rounds with the snow and ice of Ireland and Wales. It doesn't seem to bother the English riders. The problem is every year I've been so cold that I'd dress up tight and then I couldn't move and stretch my legs. I need something· I'm almost sweating in. I hope to have some special gear for winter riding next year. What about your riding style? It changed a lot after you fint went over and stayed with Vesterinen, It's changed more now. The legs are really out now, my shoulders are straight wtten I tum. Teaching at the . Donner trials school for a week helped me more than anything this year. Ever since then I've been really confident in my riding. Norm Sayler would tell me something, and I'd try it again and really see the difference. It turns out I went up to do a trials school for him and ended up being the student. In the turns, you shouldn't fall in and that's what I've done in the past. And in a. tum I use my clutch really a lot now. When I tum, I think about everything I do. I think about my shoulders, keeping them straight and vertical at all times. I'm really slowing down more when I ride. I'm almost getting to a sandbag stage. I'm right on the brink. I spent more time at the sections. I always ride on the arches now, but my feet aren't flat on the pegs. I'm on the outside edge of my boot soles out on the edge of the pegs. You don't use the wide open charge as much anymore? Not unless I get in trouble, then I pull a Lampkin. How do you lee the bikes and the sections of the future? The sections are definitely changing. There's a big thing about changing the sections in the British Championships next year. They're definitely going tighter. The Engl~h riders are saying they have to be tighter or they won't do well in the World Championships. Like Pete Hudson of Comerfords went to his first foreign World' Championship, and he thought all the riders in England were. going backwards. They're riding a whole different sport. Who is the most promising young rider? Eddie Lejeune of Belgium. He's 18. Antonio Gorgot is in the Spanish army for a year now. Maybe when he gets out. What's going to happen to bike development? rhey could get a little bit bigger with the engines. They can't get lighter. There's not really that much more you can do. Of course that's what they said in '67. What'U you do these three months that you're home? Not much. Try to stay in shape. Next year I'm going to have a different program. I really haven't had one before. I'm going skiing for two weeks before Christmas. Running and sprinting all the time. The basic exercises like pushups and situps, maybe some light weights, like !SO pound curls. I use those extra saong hand squeezers ail the time. They seem to really help for trials. Sometimes I just hold them in for two or three minutes at a time. Trials is a little different than motocross. You want to be pretty loose. I playa lot of racquetball and swim, too. Any specific stretching or flexibility exercises? No, not really. The only other tliing I like to do for riding bowlegged is a squat type thing while holding onto somc;thing. I've tried the static squat against the wall. It's pretty hard, but good for trials. I've never really trained, and I want to see how much difference it makes next year. You shipped a sidecar home, didn't you? Yeah, it's different. It gets your mind off riding trials. BKS in England sells a complete weld and bolt on kit. It costs about $400. It's the best one you can buy. It has a swingarm and shock for the third wheel. This will be your off season hobby? Well, I think I'll get tired of it. But my parents can ride it. How radical can you get with it? Pretty radical. I've rolled it four times. Gullies have to be pretty wide, you can go over foot-and-a-half-high logs and do wheelies and floaters. The more you accelerate, the more it goes to one side because the wheels are offset. What's the moat important advice for a newcomer to trials? Go to a good trials school. It helps so much. The Donner school is really good. I'm going to try to teach there again next year. Maybe two weeks. You can really learn a lot. The thing is, once you pick up some bad habits right from the beginning, they're hard to break. If you go to a school it makes all the difference. They stan with such basic ideas. Norms helps out, but Mark Eggar knows everything about it too. I know quite a bit about teaching now, too. Like in England I was having the kids use the clutch. I put big stakes out in a big grassy field and had them do a slalom between the stakes on the rear wheel. They really liked the school. I used a lot of the things I did to learn to ride. I dem.onstrated how to stand on the bike and move the weight and I showed them my style. They could take what they wanted or leave it. The school I taught in England was free, put on by Comerfords. Some of the students drove six or seven hours for a seven-hour school. I'll be doing more of them next year. In fact, there are some fathers that want me to do individual tutor sessions with their sons. Who's your competition next year? The same guys as this year. Especially Vesty, if he's still on Bultaco. Will he be the type to come back with a vengeance now he's lost the title? Yeah, he's pretty strong. How long are you going to ride trials? Probably as long as I can, now that I passed that thing where I said if I didn't make it in so many years I never would. So I'll probably ride as long as I can stay in there. Not really for the money. but just tosta in,there. 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