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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127768
OBSERVED TRIALS· S heffield '96IndoorTrial • 10 SIDes rl • • By Joh n Dickinson SHEFFIELD, GREAT BRITAL'.J. JAN. 13. oug Lampkin, the Italian Beta factory's official number-one r ider this year, got the 1996 season off to a dream s ta rt with a sensational win in the Sheffield '96 Indoor Trial, This was the first-ever Internation al Indoor to be held in Great Britain, and it was a success with a full house of 7500 fans yelling and cheering for home-country riders Lampkin and Steve Colley as they fought it out in the finaL The two Brit s had brilliantly come th rough the qualifying heats first and second, seeing off the best-of-the-restin the world over a very hard, technically demanding nine-section course. Indoor World Cup Series Champion Marc Colomer qualified third for the fourm a n final , with Japanese rising son Kenichi Kuroyama making up the quartet. Seven-time World Champion [ordi Tarres suffered a disastrous qualifier and was desperately disappointed not to make the fina l, Tarres did not ride his own specia l Gas Gas works bike, and alt hough he d id n't off icially cite any p roblem s w ith the bike, he was visibly struggling with th e unfamil iar mount. The clutch, in particu lar, see med to be giving him problems. As now h a s become the norm at indoor events, riders were paired off in the qualifiers and Sheffield incorporated two race sections for the riders to go head to head on . The qualifying forma t was that each rider completed a solo lap D 40 (Above left) Doug lampkin scored a popular win at the Inaugural Sheffield Indoor. His fat her was a coopromoter. (Above) Reigning British National Trials Champion Steve Colley faced off against his arc hrival Lampkin in the final, but came up sh ort In the en d. (Left) Defending World Cup Indoor Trials Champ ion Marc Colomer could do no better than third In Sheffield. of six individual sections before pairing off in the arena to contest the high jump and the final race sections. It wa s not a sudden-death format, as ea ch rider' s individual score counted, a n d bo th could qu alify for the final , The draw for starting ord er was automatic and was simply in reverse order of World Championship positions. So Britain's third rider, Graham Jarvis, was plunged straight into the deep end for his lap of the six sections. Poor Jarvis, on the new Scorpa Eas y, was clearly overwhel med by th e occasion, and p rior to the start he was looking in disbelief at the sight of the packed stadi um just wai ting for h im to start. The inevitable h ap pened and Jarvis crashed off the firs t of fou r hazards almost before he started the section. To his credit, he then fired the Scorpa over the massi ve cable dru ms, a section which later took maximums from La m pkin, Colorner, Tarres, Tommi