Table of contents
- Toni Bou in portrait Victory over gravity
- Up to three hours of daily training
- Weightless between heaven and earth
- Mixture of talent and hard training
- Breakthrough on the four-stroke Montesa Honda
- Engine performance is not critical
- Same electronics as in MotoGP
- Coupling is special, but not super special
- Looking for the greatest challenge
- “With every title, the commitment grows”
- The motorcycle: Montesa-Honda Cota 300RR
- To person
2snap
6th pictures
Friedemann Kirn
1/6
Toni Bou has already won 20 world titles in the trial.
Friedemann Kirn
2/6
Superstar without special requests – Toni Bou is completely satisfied with himself and his life.
Friedemann Kirn
3/6
Toni Bou (here with his dog Alice) loves the nature of his adopted home Andorra.
Friedemann Kirn
4/6
The dance on the rear wheel – one of the secrets of success in trial sport.
info@fmimages.com
5/6
He won his 20 world titles on this four-stroke Montesa Honda Cota 4RT.
Friedemann Kirn
6/6
Boulders and gnarled rhizomes – Andorra is a training paradise for trial multichampion Toni Bou.
Sports & scene
Toni Bou in portrait
Toni Bou in portrait
Victory over gravity
The Spaniard Toni Bou can seemingly playfully and weightlessly maneuver his trial motorcycle over the most incredible obstacles – this talent has earned him 20 world championship titles. He learned his skills on a bicycle.
Friedemann Kirn
10/27/2016
Toni Bou enjoys a wonderful view over the mountains of the Pyrenees from the balcony of his apartment. One neat apartment is lined up in this side valley of Andorra, and Bou’s neighbors include Bradley Smith, Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Márquez. They are also motorcycle racers by profession and enjoy the same long-distance view. But that’s where the similarities stop. Because someone like Márquez, who only lives in Andorra for tax reasons, only comes by occasionally.
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And when he’s here, the superstar can hardly go public because he is immediately crushed by autograph hunters and selfie snappers. It’s different with Toni Bou. The 30-year-old has won no less than 20 trial world championships. In 2016 he even won after tearing a rotator tear on his right arm in a training fall in the spring. Nevertheless, he can still go to the movies with his girlfriend Esther, who works in a law firm.
Up to three hours of daily training
“Trial is not a mass sport. The people on the street know and recognize you, but they don’t massacre you. They take a photo or two, congratulate me on my World Cup titles, pat me on the shoulder and say, ‘It’s amazing what you’ve done, we saw a video.’ But they let you live your life, ”describes Toni Bou his situation.
A large part of this life takes place in solitude anyway. Unlike in Spain, nature in Andorra is still unobstructed for the adventurous on two wheels. Toni Bou dares to venture particularly high up on his motorcycle, to where clear mountain streams find their way through rugged rock formations and barren undergrowth. He trains there for up to three hours a day, all by himself.
Weightless between heaven and earth
It is easier to reach the forest interspersed with boulders, in which Toni Bou performs his acrobatics for the camera. He parks his Ford Transit on the serpentine road next to his sponsor Naturlandia, a theme park near the tree line, prepares his Montesa Honda in a few simple steps and hits the bushes.
It quickly becomes clear why Toni Bou is the best in his field. He doesn’t jump over tree stumps and menhirs, he dances over them. Climbing man-high, vertical rock faces is an act of genteel serenity, like an elevator ride in a four-star hotel. And when he has reached a fine ridge, a pinnacle from which it can no longer go, he remains on the rear wheel, weightless between heaven and earth, with a relaxed smile like on a lookout tower. Bou floats through the enchanted forest with such fairy lightness that extreme difficulties seem like child’s play. “Give me your motorcycle, I also want: Trials can’t be difficult,” it shoots through my head while watching.
Mixture of talent and hard training
In reality, there is a miracle talent and a life of daily training and weekly competitions behind this skill. Bou, which is pronounced bo-u with pleasure in Catalonia, had his first trial motorcycle at the age of four, but first got to know the rough air of competitions by bike. “When I was six or seven years old, I went to my first bike trial and came last. The level was very high, and I said to my father: ‘Now we’re going to train so that we won’t be at the bottom in the next race.’ So I worked on my driving technique for two or three months, went to the next race and stayed there Hang out in sports. “
Toni Bou remained loyal to bicycle trials until he was twelve years old and had enough strength and body size to be able to move and control a trial machine with a motor. “You have to do what you enjoy the most,” his father decided, and his son focused entirely on motorcycle trials. “At the beginning I was very good in training, but it was difficult in the races. I was only thirteenth in the World Cup, then ninth, then fifth. And the next year, when I imagined I would be incredibly good, I finished fifth again, ”smiles Bou.
Breakthrough on the four-stroke Montesa Honda
It was the time when he still competed on two-stroke machines. “We drivers like the two-stroke engine very much, you can feel the rear wheel very well, better than with the four-stroke engine. Everything is much more direct, ”explains Toni Bou. Still, his breakthrough came when he switched to a four-stroke Montesa Honda and catapulted himself straight to the title. “Personally, the four-stroke gave me something that I had been missing before. I’m a rider who does a lot with my body, with little gas. And the power from the four-stroke engine’s lower revs helped me a lot with this driving style. He helped me to get ahead and to bring out this decisive plus over my rivals. “
Toni Bou makes a clear distinction between the classic and the modern trial driving style. Classic means keeping the motorcycle on the ground and letting it run. The modern thing is to jump, move the motorcycle with your body, hop on the rear wheel and turn around your own axis.
Engine performance is not critical
The most successful are those who, like Toni Bou, combine both driving styles perfectly. “Let’s say you’re on a rock with your rear wheel. Now you have to be very precise and drop the bike with pinpoint accuracy. Then you drive towards the next rock, but if the motorcycle does not have enough momentum and you just pull up the front wheel and accelerate, the rear will spin and you will get stuck. So you have to combine both things, the style of bike trials, balancing on the rear wheel, being precise with the front wheel, moving the motorcycle with your body, but also driving smoothly, letting it run again, ”he explains.
According to Toni Bou, a trial is not won with engine power. “It is the combination of clutch, motor, suspension and the riding technique of the bike that enables you to climb a wall. Ultimately, you do everything with the body. Of course the engine is a component, but trials is probably the motorsport where engine performance is the least important. “
Same electronics as in MotoGP
Of course, the trial also depends on the set-up and a few technical subtleties. Toni Bou has the same electronics that the MotoGP team uses. “I have four mappings and can choose, for example, whether the motorcycle should continue to run or brake when I take the throttle back, or whether it should rev up faster or less quickly from half-throttle”, says Bou. “Imagine you come across a wet stretch of track in which you need a lot of feeling for the rear wheel. You want little, but easily controllable performance. At the end of this zone you suddenly have a two meter jump and now you need maximum strength. So you need a choice. “
If Toni Bou can play with the electronics within a section, the clutch is about the golden mean. “It’s the most important and most complicated thing about the trial, the most difficult. You have to be able to hop over relatively small boulders with her, say, two hand’s breadths high. You have to be able to control it, have enough feeling, without falling off those little rocks. Then maybe you have to spin on that little chunk on the back wheel and suddenly tackle a two meter jump. Now you need a lot of strength. With little clutch play, over a short distance, you have to be able to dose a lot of power with a lot of feeling. And that’s the difficult part, ”says Bou. “You have to constantly look for the best compromise, to have a feeling and still be able to jump: there is no perfect setup for that. Actually, you should have two couplings. “
Coupling is special, but not super special
But Honda didn’t go that far with Bous’s factory machine. “My clutch is special, but not super special. A clutch works the way it works, and we modify it a bit, with stronger or weaker springs, different discs, but it’s still a normal clutch. ”Toni Bou also foregoes experiments with the traction control commonly used in road racing. “We tried it, but it doesn’t work in the trial. Trial is very special and the spinning rear wheel is part of the event, ”says Bou.
The further development does not come from above, from road racing, but from the basis – the trial bike. “The evolution there is always one step ahead of us. Ten years ago, for example, all jumps were made with the rear wheel, from take-off to landing. Now all bicycles land with the front wheel first, because the flight distance they cover becomes shorter. Then you brake with the front wheel, stop shortly after the landing point and have everything under control. It’s incredible, ”explains Toni Bou. “With the motorcycle, we also start to use the front wheel, on downhill sections, and we have adopted that from the bike. But of course, if you hit the front wheel first on a motorcycle after a jump, it compresses the fork and wants to throw you from behind. That is why further development is taking place in small steps. But the motorcycle will copy the path of the bicycle. Certainly.”
Looking for the greatest challenge
Toni Bou is looking for the greatest challenges, and that is why he prefers indoor trials with artificial, often seemingly insurmountable obstacles in front of an astonished audience than outdoor competitions that lack maximum difficulty and, often enough, the audience. “The concept of the outdoor trial is very old, with no understanding of how to keep the sections close together so that the audience and the media can really deal with it. And the people who organize it make regulations to push the level down, to slow down evolution, so that the drivers are closer together and there is less difference between the first and the last, ”criticizes Bou. “But this recipe is wrong for a world championship. You have to drive progress, try to give the audience the greatest possible spectacle, with the latest technology. There is already a new promoter who has secured the indoor trial. It should be a show like Supercross, like Freestyle, where the riders can do whatever it takes to inspire the audience. “
Toni Bou wants to advance his sport, and it is not a shame to lend a hand himself. After the MOTORCYCLE photoshoot, he spent the whole afternoon in the Naturlandia Park, working with an excavator driver to pile up boulders for a new trial area on behalf of Toni Bou, where children and young talents can learn this sport.
“With every title, the commitment grows”
He just loves all aspects of this sport, and that’s why after 20 World Cup titles he no longer has any fancy dreams – only that his life may continue in the same style. “I am overjoyed with what I have achieved and how I have achieved it. My dream is to continue my life in the same way, ”says Toni Bou.
“With every title, the obligation to build on success also grows. From September to November I enjoy what I have achieved. But from December I will work hard to be able to tackle the next season in top form in January. ”3
The motorcycle: Montesa-Honda Cota 300RR
info@fmimages.com
He won his 20 world titles on this four-stroke Montesa Honda Cota 4RT.
Reaching the class of Toni Bou would be difficult. With the Cota 300RR, Montesa-Honda offers a perfect motorcycle for this. Bou’s career is inextricably linked to his motorcycle, the four-stroke Montesa Honda Cota 4RT, on which he won his 20 world titles. From now on, ambitious customers can buy the Cota 300RR, which is closer to Bous sports equipment than any Montesa Honda before.
The almost 9500 euros on the price tag show that the 288 cm³ single-cylinder is not a toy – the four-cylinder all-rounder CB 650 F is available from Honda for 1,000 euros less. RR stands for Race Ready, and like the factory bike, the Cota 300RR also has various freely programmable engine mappings, even if only two instead of the four on Toni Bou’s motorcycle. At 72 kilos, the 300RR weighs only two kilos more than the minimum weight allowed in the World Cup.
To person
The Spaniard Toni Bou has dominated the Trial World Championship almost at will for ten years now. He was born on October 17, 1986 in Piera / Barcelona. His center of life is the Pyrenees town of La Massana in the miniature state of Andorra. He began his sporting career at the age of eight with bicycle trials. In 1999, at the age of twelve, Bou became world champion in this sport and switched to motorcycle trials. He also proved his talent in this discipline: in 2001 he won the Spanish Junior Championship, a little later the European 250 cm³ Trial Cup. In 2003 he became European Trial Champion.
After a number of other national Spanish and international successes, Toni Bou signed a contract with the Montesa Honda factory team in 2007. On the Montesa Cota 4RT, his first machine with a four-stroke engine, Bou immediately won the indoor and later that year the outdoor world championships. Since then, Bou has won these two world titles every year without interruption and has achieved ten overall victories in each of the two categories.
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