Jack Field, 1st place Woodstrokes.
Australia's newly crowned World Freestyle trials Champion , has just arrived back home and speaks exclusively to Trials Australia.
Woodstrokes was the first World Freestyle Trials Competition sponsored by Red Bull and Nissan Europe.
Well Jack welcome back home, and congratulations on your win at Woodstrokes.
Yeah thanks very much, it was a pretty intense week, but I'm really pleased to have achieved the win. The competition was pretty fierce with the best riders from all over Europe competing, and the pressure was on with sponsorship of the event coming from the likes of Red Bull, and Nissan Europe.
What was your preparation for the event and how did you get involved from so far away?
Well apart from our regular shows with our Freestyle Trials Experience Team, I spent the last couple months in Australia training with Jack Kavanagh and the Showtime Yamaha riders Brad Burch, Kain Saul and Adam Bayard,
I was a pretty much unknown to the motorsport comunity in Europe, but from riding with Julien DuPont in Europe earlier in the year I'd managed to stir a bit of interest.
Give us a quick out line of the sport, and the lead up to the Woodstrokes event.
Well Freestyle Trials is a melting pot of a few disciplines, mainly a huge portion of traditional MotoTrials and Freestyle FMX, mixed strongly with push bike trials and flatland BMX. There has been a strong push from a number of riders developing the sport, and it has acheived global notoriety with Julien DuPont's "Ride the World" Movie, and the fantastic "Out of Section" DVD. Two riders Valentin Guyonnet and William Roche have been putting this event together for over twelve months to showcase the talents of the riders, and bring the the sport some media coverage. They built a pretty amazing compound in Southern France, arranged some pretty big sponsors and got the worlds best riders together, it was an awesome weekend.
Red Bull sponsored me to travel to the event, and I was helped out by Gas Gas Motos Australia. I flew over via KL to Paris, ending up at Julien DuPonts place. I landed monday morning in Lyon France but there was no rest after 28hrs in transit. Julien takes me out to the mountains around Lyon to go mountain bike riding with mountain bike legend Pierre-Eduard Ferry. This guy is crazy! He showed me some pictures and videos of his stuff, and is insane hitting 70ft on his bike..... like its normal!
We then headed back to Julz's with still no rest! Turned out he has an important opening of a new restraunt in town and he must attend so of course im dragged along to that. We finally make it home at 2am and i am smashed!
So a bit of a rest before the weekends event?
You've got to be kidding! No important stuff first - We got up Tuesday morning and headed to the Scoot Motors Factory, to catch up with Loris Gubian and the team to sort out my new bike.
This shop isn't small - to give you an idea they sell over 500 trials bikes a year. They were great and gave free range of the work shop to set up my bike as i like. I started with the suspension, stripping out the works suspension and putting in some new stock suspension and setting it to my style. Then with the carbie and reeds I removed the Keihin and reed block and put in a new stock Dellorto with standard jetting and reed block.
I like the standard suspension - I just find it is more responsive to my riding style, and the standard Dellorto and reeds are much more powerful down low. This works for me as i really like to harness the bottom end grunt. I dont need to ride in the high rev range like every one else does.
I then had a ride with Loris and we did a small demo in the car park for 10min for the people walking by. Every one is impressed and we quickly got a small crowd gathering around the front of the shop.
it didn't stop then, we headed out to the famous Trollsports Trial Park, it's about 10 acres of the craziest technical man made sections ever. Julien was on it and proved that he still has what it takes in the traditional trials style and pulled off the equivalent of a very hard expert section in Australia like its was a walk in the park!
I ended up staying with Julien for 2 days before we headed to Vollore-Montagne where the Woodstrokes competition was held.
On the way we made a quick stop over at his friends place, Bruno Glub, who had a old well and truly worn out foam pit.
Julien was eager to try and learn a new trick for the competition, I wasnt so keen to jump into this pit as it had been sitting out in the weather for years and the foam had all but dissappeared. Well Bruno brings a heap of old spring mattresses over and lays them on top to cover the old foam making it more like a resi mat!
And like always our friendly rivalry comes out and we both try to out do each other, after a few jumps we had both decided that our best chances of a new trick never been done before on a trials bike would be landing the flair. We hit the quarterpipe a few more times and we both have it dialled landing it and riding away so we are both really excited for the competition to try it out.
Both of us finally made it to Gorcious Park on Wednesday afternoon to meet the Red Bull / Woodstrokes organisers Valentin Guyonnet and William Roche. We scoped out the park which looked amazing, but it definitelyneeded some alterations.
So it was on the bikes, and practicing your new moves then?
No we spent the next 2 days on the tools! It was shovel and rake - moving rocks from the downramps, shaping lips, and adjusting the park to suit the riders.
We haad a test ride thursday arvo, it was feeling good, the park is really fun, and I made a few back flips off small ramps and then went for for the 55ft ramp. Its a 8m radius not 9m, like every one is used to, and everyone is feeling a little uncomfortable. i felt like i had it dialled and went for a backflip. Well as i hit the ramp it is way more poppier then i expected and as i pull, my timing is all out and the extreme forces pull my left hand off the bars! im upside down 30ft above the ground with bike in one hand and me hanging of it like im doing a whiped out 1 handed lazy boy flip! I pulled it around and I knew i had no chance of landing it! So I bail from the bike and slide down the down ramp. I decided to call it a day and with a few small repairs on the bike im back out there the next day (friday) and trying to get some of the tricks nailed that i learnt in Australia over the last 6 months training with the all the guys at Bayards compound just north of the goldcoast.
The ramps are not agreeing with any one, and another rider went down hard, Peter Weiss from Denmark on his Honda 4rt over jumped the 55ft kicker and landing him self about 70ft to flat on the hard rock packed surface. Peter and the bike went flying, and some how he is relatively unscathed considering he only had a few stitches and felt sore all over. he laughed about it over a few drinks later that night and said he would be back for the competition saturday.
How was the Woodstokes event actually structured?
It much like other extreme sport events. There was a series of invited riders that had automatic qualification, and there was a bunch of unseeded riders that had to make their way through a series of qualifying rounds. Each rider had two x 2 minute rounds to show the judges what they could do, and the leading five would make it through to the next round.
There was some pretty amazing riding, and everyone was pushing each other really hard.
Installment number two will be posted in a few day.
Jack talks about the weekends competition, and bringing home the top spot.
