Top ranked youth trialler,
and expert status rider nationally, ‘Crosser’ inspired the 16 year old JST Road and Trial sponsored International to an amazing last ditch cliff hanger ending to the 2013 Luscome Suzuki Leeds ACU British Solo Youth A & B Trials Championship. Martin acted as minder and advisor and more or less ran round the three laps of rain sodden Bracken Rocks in North Derbyshire on Sunday shouting out section lines. His voice could be heard throughout the dense woods and his efforts paid off.
Price started the final Youth Class A age group event trailing Kirkbymoorside six footer Dan Peace by 3 championship points knowing full well that he had to beat Peace, and he did, by one place in the results. For Dan Peace it was a dismal ending after a great year. He won Otter Vale and then ran second at Tow Tops, Hope Farm and Stevenston. The only time he missed the podium was at Bracken Rocks.
Billy Bolt turned on an inspired ride hitting every one of the twelve sections with intention. Truly the Marc Marquez of trialling when it came down to recovering a wayward Birkett Ossa. Price had no answer to Billy the Bolt on Sunday.
That 3rd place for Price gained one vital point, enough to clinch the national Class A Championship overall in the final standings.
Welsh champion Iwan Roberts revelled in the tight, tricky and rocky sections, and the more mud (it rained all day), dragged up onto the angled hardware, the better the Ffestiniog Beta UK rider performed. It was Iwan’s last youth ride and on Saturday he hits the big time world of adult trialling and where better to start than the Scott Trial for a baptism of fire? But, Master Roberts was out to win at Bracken Rocks, and he did. One aspect shines out; the harder the trial, the more severe the conditions and Iwan Roberts steps up a gear. This week all his spare time will be spent preparing his Trials Wales/John Roberts Haulage 125cc Beta for its most severe test. The Scott Trial is eighty moorland miles, seventy four observed sections, with no roads at all.
In Class B Porlock’s Tom Hooper was supreme, winning the class and the Championship. Predictably Telford’s Tom Minta and Stafford’s Sam Yeomans stirred up the class as they have done through the somewhat shorter than usual five event series.