TRIALS

Suddenly there is an interest in trials! or rather trials style riding. I will do my best to explain this little known motorsport here. I have written a little bit on the history in my earlier blog so we just skip it and move on straight to what it is.
Trials is a form of offroad motorcycle competiton where each rider will ride on, up and over obstacles without putting his foot down. Each dab or footing and falling off will be penalised with certain points. The rider with the lowest score is declared the winner at the end of the comp.
Trials sections or lines are laid along natural obstacles i.e. rocky section,stream,ledges, fallen logs etc to  test the skill and ability of each rider competing. Observers are stationed at each section to observe and giving out penalty points to riders. Normally there are 6 or 7 sections to be ridden twice by each rider. It is only a one day event except ISDT and SSDT which are run for 6 days.
Trials bikes are specialised machines designed for a single purpose use,only for trials. The ergos of the bike is only suitable for stand up riding. Practicaly it has no seat for easy movement and the fuel tank only holds 2 to 3 litre of petrol. It is very light weighing only between 140 to 160 pounds. Tires are very grippy with low pressure of 6 psi at the rear and 8 psi in front. Engine is tune for more low end with a heavy flywheel for traction.
Trials bike are rare in Malaysia. Certain bike shop used to import few units of these in the early 90s but there were few buyers, it was not a viable bisness. If you can find one today, probably it was imported without any papers hence illegal.
The current most popular form of trials competition worldwide is vintage and twin shock trials. It is very popular in UK and USA. Due to the high cost of new machines, enthusiast and amateur riders  take old machines and modified british single to enter trials competition tailored for such machines.
A new form of offroad motorsport which has evolved from trials is endurocross. Actually it is the best of both world for MX and trials. Endurocross needs the speed of motocross and the riding skill of a trials rider. The slow speed of trials does not seem to excite young riders but they need to learn trials riding techniques to succed in endurocross, reason why most endurocross champs are trials riders.
Do  not confuse yourself with trick riding as what you normally watch on internet. Normally trials competition are held in natural areas and not in the middle of a town but there are stadium trials too.
In the local context we can just start riding technical trail  on our trailbikes just to learn the basics. We can progress to proper trials if and when real trials bike are available hopefully they are affordable too. Meantime just learn and practice endurocross style riding on our local trails.