2006 Indoor World Trial Championship Round 2

No Celebration at the Podium on 26th Birthday

Round two of IWTC was held at Marseilles France on January 13th. It was incidentally Fujinami's 26th birthday, but having somewhat similar performance to the Sheffield round, he couldn't celebrate the day with a podium finish.

Originally Bou wasn't listed as a wild card rider for the French round. But after winning the opening round and being at the top of the standing, he was invited by the organizer to make two consecutive appearance.

The starting order rotates at each round while the sequence of the riders stays the same for the permanent riders this year. Raga, who was the final rider in UK, took turn to be the first permanent rider to start the qualification lap; Fuji was the second starter.

As always, the wild card riders started before the big boys after the starting order was decided by a ballot. At Marseilles, it was Bou who picked the number one starting order. He showed a strong ride again pulling ahead of other wild card riders to finish the observed sections with ten points - almost twenty points better than two.

Fuji watched Raga finished his run with seven points, and he knew he had to finish between Raga and Bou to go to the final lap. He rode very carefully at Marseilles trying to avoid the maximum penalty points. That was why he actively footed at the section three.

It seemed Fuji was going on-course until the section five, where he suffered first five. He recalled it was an easy mistake, but he tumbled before reaching to the hardest part of the section. Fuji went on to the section six, and the biggest moment of the day was waiting for him. It was the section consisting of cable drums, and there were two riding lines he could choose to come down to the ground at the end. First one was to jump off directly from the top of the drum. Fuji saw Bou did it to mark clean, but he thought it was too risky. Another one was to hit the rear tire at one of the drums to reduce the impact at landing. Raga tried the way but he wasn't successful. Fuji chose the later one, but as he hit the tire at the drum, the front end dropped sharply. He landed from the front end and crashed. The impact was so hard that Fuji first thought he broke both wrists. Luckily, he was OK, but he was shocked; as painful as the wrists hurted, to accept tho!
se five points at the section, that supposed to be technically easy for him. Fuji rode two more sections with painful wrists but managed to add one point at the final section to finish his run.

Fajardo and Cabestany, the two started after Fuji showed better ride than Raga, and they finished with four and six points respectively. When all the permanent riders finished, Fuji was fifth place.

Meanwhile, Lampkin suffered a huge crash at the section five. He passed the spot where Fuji made a mistake, but then he fell from more than two meters off the ground to land on his back. It didn't end there because his bike followed to fall on top of him. It took some minutes until Lampkin got his breath back normally. He returned to ride, but there was no way he could challenge the rest, entering the sections to accept three more fives. Lampkin finished his ride with twenty-four points.

The final battle for the day for Fuji was the double-lane against Lampkin. Having ten points separation between Fuji and 6th place Lampkin, Fuji didn't need to put any pressure to the stricken team-mate. Lampkin on the other hand was on the verge of holding the sixth place. Adding six point there, he could lose the position to Bethune. Fuji backed off a little to follow Lampkin, losing the double-lane to finish the qualification lap at fifth place with fifteen points.

The season opened up interestingly with the victory taken by the wild card rider in UK. While Spanish riders continue to show some fine performances, it looks like another struggling indoor season for both Montesa riders.

Quote from Fujigas:

Everybody rode a lot better than round one in Sheffield, but it wasn't the reason I finished the way I did today. I have many talks with Josep, my minder, and I am training hard to be strong at indoor competition. I need to, and I will turn it around before we travel to Russia and South America. Please count on me.

pix: Pep Segales(SoloMoto) & Worldtrial.co

Click for the Official Results PDF

In order to use a PDF file, Adobe Reader (no charge) is required. Please click the banner.

RESULTS TOP | PAGE TOP