Ventoux Trial Classic
Dimanche 14 Octobre 2012
 

Sunday starts cold and humid, with a warm coffee served by Annemarie. Alex has already got crusty baguettes from the village. During breakfast, Walter is showing his swollen hand and soon it is decided, that Alex will ride with me on Walters BSA. Ernst is also not sure, wether he could start, but the Birchermüesli at breakfast  has brought back power. At 9h, the sun is rising finally. Today, the starting time is enforced: 9.47 for the Swiss 4 Strokers, reduced to 2 members.

Swiss breakfast
Edy is pushing his fine Triumph Twin to the start line	Ernst at age of 70 something with his Cota 247
Alex doing some final checks	Pat and Alex looking forward to start

 Today, the zones are the same as yesterday, with some minor changes. Alex is very fit and needs hardly any dab. Partly, we are riding with the champions Team Coutard, Berlatier, Franc. Very impressive, how they can ride, I'm really enjoying watching their performance (see next page with clips). Unfortunately, my Honda stalls again with a plopp after landing behind an obstacle...I open the low rev screw a bit and use the clutch plus gas more carefully. Alex has only to catch me once in the zone 1, as i nearly manage to reach the top, but the sandy rock plate is trapping me. Yesterday, I could pass with 1 dab. Alex has a great control and manages to find grip after first contact with the slippery rock plate and passes with zero. Unfortunately, he wants to continue the zero round, but instead of 1 he fails at the exit of zone 2. Bad luck. At the end of the day, he still has only 8 points, I guess one of the top scores on a Pre65 bike.

Alex in the wind washed rocks	nice wine yard
wine, wine, wine	beautiful weather
Alex and Manx man Phil Redshaw in the last zone 17 at the start	Team Trail 70 in mechanical troubles
beautiful Fantic 300	Alex at zone 5
Charles	a Honda waiting for the rider
a special BMW	nice exhaust
Alex and his mum Annemarie	Alex's 8 point card
crowded at the finish	finish and you get a bottle of vin de Provence

To sum up, it was a great event. Almost 400 Twinshock riders, international friends, interesting zones. Bad luck for my two BSA friends, but we still were classified 18th (142 points) out of 28 teams riding the red expert lines. Without crashes and the 5 points for not riding the rest of zones, we could have made it around 10th place (out of 130 teams).

The winners were rightly so "Les Vieilles Gloires" Coutard, Berlatier,Ranc with 21.5 points for 36x3=108 zones. Bravo, world class!
3rd was the spanish team Rovira and last years winners, the italian "Dragone" came in 4th at 39 points.

Les Trois Suisse Kämpfer / Stampfli / Kunz became 17 in the yellow line, despite Ernst's fighting hard to finish

Alfred Müller was 8th in the team with the two french riders Marchal / Longet

Ranking Red

Ranking Blue

Ranking Yellow

link to Ventoux Trial Classic page

link to youtube channel of Claudio (photoclaudio07) 3 long videos there

Claudio Part 2

Here the friends from zone 68 trials club, Alsace

We bought many parts and clothes at the dealers tents, had a nice diner, watches the Austrians jump in the space and drove back to Switzerland with many good memories.

Patrick

Part 4: Video clips in youtube and pics from the sony cam, helmcam video, on channel HondaPat4RT

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