The second day of the opening round of the 2012 FIM Trial World Championship held in La Bresse, France proved to be a long and painful day for the Jitsie factory Beta rider Jack Sheppard. The sheer amount of strength and effort required to achieve his top five placing just twenty-four hours earlier had ultimately taken its toll on the eighteen year old from Suffolk who made his debut in the Junior class with some success yesterday despite having not yet fully recovered from his ongoing wrist injury.
With his right wrist heavily strapped after having undergone extensive treatment overnight to give him the best chance of surviving today's competition, Jack and the team were under no illusion that it was going to be nothing other than a difficult five hours out on the course. Sheppard's day hardly got off to the best of starts as he fived the very first section before cleaning the next two hazards. However this brief recovery was only to be short lived as Jack also failed in the fourth section.
Down, but certainly not out the Jitsie factory Beta rider showed great bravery and determination as he made the huge leap in section six much to the delight of the large French crowd, whilst many of his rivals opted to take a far safer route to the exit. This turned out to be one of the few high points during his initial tour, as he struggled to hold on with his weakened wrist. Sheppard was to end the first lap on thirty-three marks and just inside the top fifteen.
Jack did manage to produce some level of improvement on the second lap, reducing his score to twenty-three marks for the final fifteen sections which was enough to net him fourteenth place and two championship points. Obviously frustrated with his day's work Sheppard provided his own summary of today's trial.
"I tried convince myself that my wrist was OK this morning, but the truth is that yesterday had just taken too much out of it and it had not had time to recover. That said I was to blame for some of the early fives, those mistakes were down to me."
"But as the day wore on I simply had no grip or strength in my right wrist - which also started to make my left arm suffer too as I tried to compensate. I just did my best to make it to the finish and to at least get some championship points. It seems like a lot of hard work and pain for two points, but at least I managed to get those."
"It is going to be a case of rest for the next few days, and then starting to get back in shape for Australia which gives me another month of training, so things should be a bit better by then." ended Jack.