IF YOU DONT know who Toni Bou (pronounced Boo) is, you’re about to become one of his fans!
32-year-old from Catalonia is a 24(!) time world trails champion, holding 12 indoor and 12 outdoor championship crowns and to say he’s pretty handy on a trials bike is a massive understatement.
He’s a factory Honda rider and rides a (Honda-owned) Montesa 260cc, four-stroke trails bike that weighs in at a diminutive 73.5kg! Ones of the reasons he’s able to perform the tricks he does, apart from incredible skill and confidence in his own ability, is because of the design and layout of the bike.
The ultra-light bike has an extremely low centre of gravity, low ratio final drive and close ratio five-speed gearbox mean the torquey single cylinder bike can accelerate up inclines that most people would struggle to walk up! Add to that over 170mm of suspension travel front and rear and ultra-low pressure, high traction Dunlop tyres and you have a bike that can go pretty much anywhere.
About ten seconds in we see Bou accelerate up to speed in a matter of metres going on to leap the bike up a 15 to 20-foot cliff like he was bumping up a kerb. Later in the video, he jumps the bike, on just its back wheel on top of some six-foot high tree stumps. With a blip of the throttle, he somehow manages to leap the bike about ten feet through the air and onto another tree stump. I wouldn’t be able to climb up that using my hands – let alone on a trials bike!
