TEAM SPEA UK Rider Jonathan Richardson with Luciano "Lucky" Bonaria

The three words above is how I would describe my vision of trials, in my opinion it is not dangerous and can be practised from a very early age especially with the introduction of the little electric machines now available on the market until a very old age. In Italy, Spain, UK and France for example the amount of young people practising the sport is incredible. This evolution through the Youth and Junior ranks has been witnessed as we have watched riders such as Tony Bou, Adam Raga, James Dabill, Michael Brown, Loris Gubian move through the classes to arrive at the world level. Nowadays many riders reach the ages between 17 – 19 and finish with the sport and disappear, the main reason in my opinion is very simple, the lack of money. To ride trials at world level means it has to be a job and consequently it is necessary to have the conditions to get sufficient earnings, or even a salary. It is not enough to get the expenses and the machines with spare parts. When a young man is approaching his twenties he should be clear in his mind that this is his sport where he is giving his full commitment, it should be the source for his income from his work. I can think of many excellent young riders who we have lost, one in particular that I remember close to me was Pep Manzano (a very talented young Spanish Italian rider who just suddenly quit the sport) who is now a memory, a talented young rider that suddenly gave up a brilliant sporting career due to the lack of money to progress, but this was not unique. Many youth riders give up, and many others will give up unless they realise they have the opportunity to become true professional riders. There are some lucky youngsters with a family that can pay what is necessary or others who are fortunate to have a personal sponsor, but at the end they also need to find a situation where they can earn a living to justify their job; only in this way can they realise they ambitions and be satisfied by their professional roles.

In each of the countries throughout the world the sport has governing bodies, for example in the UK you have the ACU (Auto Cycle Union). My belief is that the federations think that the riders must compete in events for the pure enjoyment and be passionate about achieving goals and is a complete opposite view to my way of thinking, only in this way in their opinion it is possible to appreciate the true spirit of the sport. This idyllic vision of the earthly paradise however is not giving indication to the young competitor on what he can do to collect the necessary funds to pay the costs that a rider must bear to take part in the World Championship and the funds to live on, given that a world rider cannot do at the same time a demanding job so that he or she can assure a decent salary. This reasoning is not to apportion blame on the rider the purpose is to underline the importance of the politics of a National Federation for the success of one sport that cannot be measured only by the number of the amateur riders, but also by the presence of their own champions in the World Series. This is why I have decided to sponsor the building of those four young talents, because it is not enough that the Word Championship series is well organised if there are only a few championship contenders that compete. When the present ones will finish due to their age and end of their career, it is necessary for the sport, that worthy successors are already available to move into their boots. My project will ensure that the four riders I have chosen will grow together and see each other as much as possible; to bond a sincere relationship and all have the same ambitions in the sport, to form some solidarity. Trial’s is an individual’s sport, each rider competes to win and to be the best, and consequently the attitude should be to respect the other competitors. 

A true and authentic sports attitude must be strongly built into the young riders. Building a sports attitude is a hard process and bristling with difficulties but in my opinion it is absolutely necessary to commit and will succeed because the sport is a nicer place if there is respect between competitors. It is necessary to win against the egoistic side of a youth that want’s to demonstrate that he is the best, that they want all the attention only for him-self and he is upset if there is another rider better than him which he is forced to be together with. I want to explain why I have decided this year to extend this multinational project of sponsoring of young talents. The FIM has introduced a very important innovation in the 2011 rules which will drastically change the situation. For several years there was a ruling that a youth competitor less than 18 years old had to use a 125cc motorcycle. That situation caused the young riders to feel inferior, yes it was supposed to help them to build up the control of the motorcycle before they entered the big arena at world level but all the present top riders including Bou had risen through the sport riding the larger capacity machines even from an early age. I am sure with this rule change we will see so much more exciting riding from the young competitors. It also has all riders on a level playing field; all competitors in a championship must have the same opportunity to win. In the Junior World Championship up to 2010, this fundamental principle was not respected: the youths of 16/17 years old were forbidden to use motorcycles of displacement equal to the riders of 18 and older, they resented this and saw it as an injustice because with a machine with less displacement it is not possible to have equal opportunities to win. Now that the FIM has acknowledge this situation the trials world is happy with the progress and some riders/sponsors will take fresh heart and enthusiasm to invest in the youth talents, now that it is possible to compete like in the past that gave us the champions that we still have today. Unfortunately some federations do not understand this progress they continue to have rules with the above injustice but let’s hope that they will soon follow the FIM progress.

I got the inspiration to sponsor different young talents from two important men from trials and I want to acknowledge them. One was Narcis Casas (one of the founder partners of Gas Gas) and Antonio Trueba (Toni Bou’s mentor).
They love trials with a passion and they can be proud that they contributed to the riders over the past years such as Adam Raga, Jordi Pasquet, Albert Cabestany, Jeroni Fajardo got Narcis Casas as his ‘mentor’. Jordi Tarres, Albert Cabestany and Tony Bou got Antonio Trueba as their ‘mentor’s’. I want also to take this opportunity to thank Claudio Favro the Italian Gas Gas importer and ‘mentor’ of Italian trials. Thanks to his passion and his devotion the Spea team in Italy has created in the last 15 years the best Italian riders. Gianluca Tournour was the first boy that I decided to support following in the footsteps of Casas and Trueba. He is a son of friends and I was watching him playing with the trial machine when he was a child, but I didn’t perceive his talent and above all his passion to become a valuable rider. One day, when he was 14 years old, I saw him attempting with the rear wheel to jump in a sequence between two concrete blocks, but unsuccessfully. I become curious observing his wish to succeed, so I gave him some technical suggestions. I immediately observed his capability to pay attention on what I was saying to him but above all his swiftness of learning. After only 10 minutes Gianluca was able to jump from one block to the other with the back wheel. After having discovered his talent, that’s how I decided to sponsor him and become his manager. At this point I need to find a solution for the main and fundamental aspect: who will teach him quickly at high-level trials? It was clear for me that without an excellent training Gianluca cannot become a top rider! Scanning my mental database I found a man that seems to me the perfect instructor: Stefano Dellio. Stefano has been one of the best and spirited Italian riders with experience in world competitions. Stefano enjoyed my proposal to study and develop together a method of work that allows a fast learning of hi-level trials of an athletic and talented boy. That’s how is born the project ‘Squadra Sperimentale Spea’ (Spea Experimental Team), and we immediately started to work hard.

Pol Tarres was the second boy that I decided to support. One day Jordi Tarres asked me if I wanted to join his project to create a top rider together with his brother Francesc. I immediately accepted because I have known Jordi and Francesc for many years, they are very professional and serious about taking Pol to the very top of the sport and above all because I have already noticed since when he was a child that Pol has an outstanding talent for trials. That was the start of the Spea Tarres Team in Spain, where at the beginning there were also o two other valuable riders, Francesc Moret and Pera Borrellas. The training with Pol is held by Jordi and Francesc in the Paradise of trials that is the territory around Rellinars in Spain. Steven Coquelin is the third youth that will join the project. I have known Steven from European competition some years ago and even when he was riding an 80cc machine, he distinguishes himself by his ability and nice style of riding, clean and technical. Sometimes we met in various international competitions and this helped to cement the friendship with all the family. Within a few years Steven gained consistent progress and nowadays he is one of the most promising French riders. With Daniel, his father, we often discuss about what to do to support the growing of Steven and slowly the idea  came to create for him the Spea France Team, where Daniel where available to be the manager. The training of Steven started when he was a boy under the guidance of Jerome Delair, a French creditable professional instructor. To afford the project with more wide International visibility an English rider was missing. During a world competition some years ago I met for the first time Jonathan Richardson and even though he was only 14 years old he was already expressing his talent for the trials. He was following his father footsteps: Gerald used to be a regular competitor in the world championship in his younger days. Jonathan has a valuable manager, Mike Smith who has been supporting and organising him over the last few seasons. Like me, Mike has a passion for trials and we share the fact of not having economical or business interest. We have spoken together about ideas on how to operate to grow new champions and we discovered that our ideas are very similar. During the Italian world round we got the idea to create the Spea UK Team to support Jonathan, the informal launching of the new team was done at Fort Williams at the world round. To help train him he will have his father Gerald and the boss of Sherco Marc Tessier has some ideas on how he can help, Marc believes his young rider can go all the way to the top with this support. I am very happy to have conceived and built this valuable international team with these talented youngsters, I am convinced that they will soon became top riders and maybe one day one of them will gain a world podium. As a sponsor I am expecting in return that they will have a good personal image and be proud to be part of this global team giving exposure to the relevant companies who are supporting this project. Finally I want to express my appreciation to the parents of the boys for their commitment and for the sacrifices they have been making for many years, for always been so close to them and for having been able to teach them a real sports attitude based on loyalty, humanity and seriousness, In advance I want to wish all the riders a good 2012 championship.