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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127782
OBSERVED TRIALS ." Round 2: Hawkstone Park, England .World Championship ObservedTrials Series Doug Lampkin (left) put on an Impress ive show In his native Britain after a weekendlong scrap with Marc Colomer (above). lampkin came out on top by three points. (Below) Seven-time world champ Jord i Tarres finis hed the weekend eighth, his first time out of the top s ix s ince 1987. By John Dickinson oo king relaxed and confiden t like never before, Dou g Lampki n gave his fellow Brits so me thi ng -to ge t exci ted a bou t w it h a su perb wi nni ng rid e in the British ro und of the World Trials Championship, the second of the I O-event 1996 se ries. Sta ged a t Hawkstone Par k, scen e of La mp kin's disastrous 14th-place rid e last year tha t effectively ru ined his Wo rld Cha mpio ns hip hopes almost before the season began, it was only Lampkin's second-ever World Rou n d win with th e firs t b e in g at Hoghton Tower in Britain two years ago . Lampkin foug ht a weekend-long battle wit h ch ampionshi p favorite Marc Colorner . The top two pull ed out a massive, 40,mark ad vantage ove r even tua l thi rd -pl a ce rid er, Gas Ga s-mounted Bruno Camozzi. Th e French. ace edged ou t European Ch ampion Marcel [ustribo, on a Beta, who had originally bee n cred ited with thir d, on a pro test. Graha m Jarvis fina lly transmitted his undou bted ability into a grea t resul t, as fift h p la ce w as fa r and away his best rid e in a Worl d Round . It was doubly sa tisfy ing for Jarvi s as he actu ally celebrated h is 21st b irthday o n Sunday . Jarvis has shown great confid ence in the Scorpa Easy he has helped d evelop , and n ow . to hav e fin ally mad e th e breakthrou gh necessary for consis tent top-10 perform ances. It was a trem endou s day fo r t he young guns. Firing straight int o a brilliant sixth place was 16-year-old Japa nese sensa tion Taka hisa Fu jinami on the Works Honda. Fu jinami, jus t like his .countryma n Kenichi Kuroyama did last season, rod e rig h t at the fron t of th e field on Saturday' s opening lap to post a se nsa tional ti e fo r fif th p la ce wit h Camoz zi. He then held his nerv e, w hen promoted to th e favored ranks at the back of the field on Sunday, to score his first eve r World Champio nship points . H awksto ne Park, one o f the m ost famo u s mo tocross GP circu it s of all tim e, is no doubt.a controversial World Trial venue. The infamo us d eep sand is h ar d ly th e recognized choiceof base L mat erial for trials, but the stee'p, wood .ed slo pes with bed rock some tw o fee t bene ath th e s urface sa n d , ce rtainly o ffe rs p oten ti a l. Once again, for me r World Championship runner-u p a nd IO- ti me co nsec u t ive Bri tis h tria ls cha mp Steve Saund ers piotted th e 14 sections. Thi rteen of these were virtually h and-carved out o f th e h ill s id e s, with the last one bein g a totall y manmade arena haza rd right by th e finish: ing post . . Saun ders' hard work built on his last year's first effort, and Martin Lampkin summed up th is year's sections bes t: "Last yea r we had a trial on a converted mo tocross course. With so much sand on them the sec tions changed a ll the time . This year we had a genuine trials course. It was excellen t." Satu rday'S ope ning loop of 14 sections pretty much se t the scene for the weekend . The sections were all pretty equal for the degree of difficulty, and all were lo ng eno ugh, with a seemingly never-ending su p ply of climbs, drops, • Briefl s tee p turn s' and the inevitable ro ck steps, to str etch the three-minute limit. Lampkin and Colomer looked a class above the rest right from the start, with their opening scores of 21 and 22, compared to the 28 of [ustribo, and the rest of the .field tightly packed in behin d . In fact, Limpkin ought to have enjoyed an even bigger lead ing mar gin as he was d esperat ely unl ucky to be d ocked five points for d islod ging a marker on the eighth section, which he rode for a dab. •• Over n ig ht ra in m a de co nd itions mu ch mo re slippery for the first of Sund ay' s loo ps . It was then, w he n cond itions were at their wo rst, that Lampkin -