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When Was The First Pre 65 Trial?


classicguy
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1964 not accepted as an answer :) 

 

I am returning to trials after quite a long lay off and I have been to a few as a spectator lately to try to decide whether to go for a Twinshock or a pre65 machine when the thought came to me, when was the first pre65 trial? as a separate class to regular trials. I am sure I remember reading the the Trials and motocross news in the 1980's and seeing Pre 65's listed in Regs avaliable.  

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Hi,

 

The very first trial organised specifically to cater for those of us who owned older British bikes and couldn't afford to buy one of the wonderful new Spanish machines that were flooding in was not actually labelled as a pre-65 trial, that definition came some months later in my column in TMX when I was answering a question as to how one could define this different sort of trial.

 

That first trial was jointly organised by John Smith, Derek Lord and myself as a Rochdale club trial.  It was held on the moorland that Rochdale regularly used above the 'Red Lion' pub in Shawforth in August 1972 and attracted no less than fifty-three entries.  We called it the Bigger Banger trial and it was won by Arthur Lampkin riding one of his rigid ex-works Gold Stars. At the time my trials bike was an Ajay and John Smith's was his uncle Ted Ogden's ex-works Norton 500T.  During the trial Stan Pitts of my other club, West Leeds, riding across the rough moorland between sections, said "They should call this the Shawforth Shake", which we promptly did for the 1973 event onwards.

 

Nowadays there is an excellent choice of classic trials around the country, many of which are ignored in the commercial press but reported in 'TC's unique  digital magazine for classic enthusiasts (ORRe) in exclusive photoreports, again a format not seen in the commercial press, but acclaimed by people wanting to understand which machines are acceptable and what are the events actually like - for example the next major event in the classic calendar is the Scarborough Two-day, which will have a comprehensive photoreport.

 

PS.  Why was the term pre-65 selected in the first place?  Because 1964 was the last year that any manufacturer included a pre-unit construction competition machine in its catalogue and sales literature - the company? AMC in their AJS and Matchless catalogues.

 

If you need any more detail - just ask thru TC.

Edited by laird387
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