Sport takes many forms. Motorsport more than most.
You’ve seen it on the telly, on social media, on YouTube, try to deny it, you want to have a go!
Most motor sports fall into the category of “How do you make a small fortune in (add your chosen genre)?” Answer is “First you need a large fortune….!”
You have seen the exciting, dramatic, spectacular videos of motorcycle and car motorsport experts doing their thing in exotic locations, perhaps even you have practiced computer simulations for hours and think yourself ready to try it for real? And yet you haven’t - for very good reasons. Well, here is an opportunity.
Curious? Read on.
There is a variety of motorcycle motorsport that is intended for grassroots participation that is as testing or easy-going as you the participant choose to make it, is closely related to high-level motorcycle competition, is easily accessible to amateur riders (doesn’t need competition licences) and doesn’t cost a fortune to prepare for or participate in.
Synonyms: Navigation Trials / Regularity Raid / Classic Enduro
Imagine riding your bike through wilderness terrain, alone, following an international-style rally routebook, for hours at a time while keeping to a monitored schedule…. Sounds like a Dakar or Baja event?
But no! A Vancouver Island Motosports Event, on the north of Vancouver Island.
By accident or design, a set of circumstances exist in British Columbia that permits road legal motorsport, but…
Vehicles and riders/drivers must be road-legal (conform to construction and use regulations), fully licenced for the vehicle class, registered for highway use and ICBC insured.
The roads over which the event is run must be “designated highways”. The forest service roads on the Crown Lands on Vancouver Island are designated as such and just about every backcountry gravel road north of Highway 28 (Campbell River to Gold River) is a public highway.
While “racing, stunting and speed trials” are closely and carefully defined and prohibited in the relevant BC laws, “navigation trials” that do not require breaking speed limits and do not require participants to ride contrary to motoring laws are permitted - and your ICBC insurance is in operation!
Full disclosure: This form of “rallysport” isn’t new. Regularity Rally (to give it it’s original name) dates back at least 75 years to the amateur car clubs that sprang up in the immediate post WW2 years, if not before.
What is new is the combination of Dualsport and Adventure bikes, electronic route book and gps timing technology and rough mountain gravel roads that would break cars if they were driven at the speeds that DS/Adv bikes are able to travel at.
So how does this all work?
The history; Various forms of “rallysport” all have the defining component of navigating an unmarked course, described using a notation standardised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the world governing body of all forms of rallysport. The course description is organised into a “roadbook”. A junction-by-junction, line-by-line route description that uses junction diagrams (tulip diagrams), compass headings (CAPs) and distance measurements. No maps, no gps, no photos.
A paper roll roadbook ready for The PDF equivalent A rally “navigation tower to carry
loading. the roadbook display system lights
For rallyraid, the wilderness or desert course is navigated against the clock as a speed event with riders/drivers starting at intervals of one or two minutes. The very nature of open-country speed events dictates venues to be as far away from human habitation or sensitive environments as possible. The organisational challenges for such events are immediately obvious.
In order to make organising and hosting events easier, “regularity road rallies” developed. The routes were over tarmac roads, the routes were still described in roadbooks but the “as fast as possible” element was replaced by the challenge of meeting set average speeds between timing control points around the course. Pre-internet, these control points would need to be staffed by an army of stopwatch-equipped timekeepers. A relatively unthanked role.
With the development of satellite GPS, road legal dualsport, adventure and rally replica motorcycles and GPS-driven timing apps for smartphones and tablets, the prospect of new motorsport horizons has been realised.
So how hard are these events? The difficulty of an event can be broken down into a number of different factors.
The technical/riding skill difficulty is nowhere near as difficult as say trials riding, motocross or hard-enduro. You need to be competent at dualsport riding but you do not need to be a motorcycle athlete. All these routes can be accomplished on two wheels (no wheelies or front wheel-lofting antics required).
The trade-off with “technical difficulty” is endurance. Each day’s route is a minimum of 150km. The routes take in high level passes with climbs and descents that can be steep in places. Expect every type of weather the backcountry can serve up and keep your electronics dry!
While the physical-technical difficulty might not be hard, you can expect to be challenged to a thinking test. You have to read the routebook icons (fairly self-explanatory set of symbols that don’t use the full FIA icon codes), you have to track your compass heading, distance travelled and time taken. You have to keep your “head” in order as you are riding solo. You have to manage your navigation technology (smartphones).
A motorsport for the thinking rider, success in which hinges on the rider’s skill in following the route directions rather than racecraft.
So what is needed to participate? Likely you already possess the requirements
A road legal dualsport or adventure bike. 250cc is perfectly adequate. The winner of this years events (clean sweep Sasha Sabinin - photo above) and others have successfully campaigned on 250’s. DR Z400 and 650’s, KTMs of every variety, adventure heavyweights (remember you have to be able to pick it up when it falls over….). Go for off road, aggressive tyres to suit the abrasive granite gravel roads.
A full motorcycle licence, road registration (not OHV registration) and ICBC insurance. While riding the event, your insurance is in operation as is your licence. All usual road motoring regulations apply.
A couple of smartphones that do not need SIM cards. One smartphone mounted on your handlebars displays the route roadbook as a PDF on an app that also provides an odometer, a compass, clock and speedometer. The other device runs the gps timing app. You need two phones as each app requires constant access to the gps chip. You can use secondhand devices with limited battery capacity provided you can rig up a couple of usb charging ports.
And that is it. You can go as fancy as you like with the bike, tyres, navigation towers but the essential component is the mechanism between your ears and behind your eyes…
The events for this year are over and won. Next year has yet to be conceived but will be run to the same format as previous years - Rally Roadbook Reader, Gaia and Richta Rally timing.
I hope to see you soon.
Yorumlar