Today was the first BIG day of the BIU World Championship. We are all very tired and would like to sleep on a bed tonight. Here in Spain it's totally different than in other countries I have been to. The terrain is very dry and dusty with lots of loose gravel, which made it extremely difficult to ride on, not to mention the HEAT.

Today we all lost about 20% of our body weight through our skin pores. The good thing is that we have a very nice pool next to the camp and we hit it every day to cool off. But we actually won't be going back tomorrow because we got kicked out along with all the British for pushing the life guard chick in the pool - she was very mad.

JJ. rode Master along with the Martins and several other new guys. Ot Pi did not ride and will not ride in France or Germany - just Japan - some personal issues. Shaun Miller rode Expert and it was not easy at all. Both of them had a difficult day. Hopefully France and Germany goes more our way. I guess the problem was Ot wasn't there to show the guys how it's done.

Dabbing was the key to success today, everyone that had that skill mastered had an advantage. There were eight sections for the Master and Expert class. Only the first section at the start was actually cleaned by JJ. and some others. The remaining seven were up at the dusty slippery hills. The sections were so extremely hard that everyone was taking 5 at best 3 on one or two of them. I later came out with a NEW terminology of that kind of riding (Maser Dabber).

Master Dabber: to be extremely precise in placing ones foot at a BikeTrials competition in order to finish a section with less amount of negative points possible.

I personally prefer the more attractive, accessible, bigger moves sections that are actually more entertaining and pleasing to watch. To the BikeTrials knowledgeable crowd, the first round of the BIU Worlds was for the most part actually challenging, to me it was frustrating and exhausting. I was not able to take good footage of our sport or even enjoy myself watching the riders excel in performance and ability.

I spoke to Pedro Pi later and explained to him how silly the sport looked when the riders in Master could not finish more then half the sections even if they walked it all. The amount of dabs was just way too high! He admitted that in fact it was and apologized for the Master class. We actually had a GREAT conversation after the competition at the Monty factory and he understood everything I explained to him about making our Sport more entertaining and attractive with a very different type of BikeTrials competition. Soon I will explain what I have in mind for the future of BikeTrials to you all.

Results

Elite (Top 20" category)

1. Cesar Canas 32
2. Dani Comas 55
3. Benito Ros 60

Master (Top 26" category)
1. Martin Simunek 44
2. David Cachon 51
3. Theirry Klinkenberg 52