Toni Bou (Piera, Barcelona, 35 years old) He has been winning the Trial World Championship since 2007, both in the outdoor modality and in the indoor specialty. This past weekend he added his 30th title in Barcelona, in an atypical season that he arrived after a fibula fracture and the coronavirus, but even so he has not missed his appointment with success and your visit to AS to celebrate.
The talk begins with the review of the successes, “Between ‘indoor’ and ‘outdoor’ I add 194 victories”, in the 30 World Cups. Recognize that after so much winning “You have to refresh the numbers.” Custom, however, does not mean that Bou’s exploits are easy, and he takes as an example the last championship, with only two indoor events: “At the beginning I was very uncomfortable, I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t even want to run it, the regulations called for a minimum of five. There was a lot of risk.” In fact, he admits that “mentally he was the hardest of all because he could escape very easily.”
“It is very difficult to learn when you win. When you lose you look at everything with a magnifying glass so that it does not happen again. You learn much more from defeat. I do not know what will happen when I lose, but I imagine it will be a great motivation for me, a very challenge. big “, he assures. But Bou does not lose and does not know where the limit is. He is being asked to reach 40: “A lot of pressure. What we have achieved two per year is not normal, this is going to end for sure. We are going to try to get the maximum, if we get 35 we are going to want 40, for sure. Whatever it is, I always start from scratch. I start as if I had never won. “No one has achieved, or even approached, such a record, nor Dougie Lampkin, nor Jordi Tarrés, two of the Barcelona referents, with 12 and 7 titles respectively, “who have marked an era” and who would have loved to measure themselves over the obstacles.
In fifteen years many things change, the way of training and the way of competing. There have been many rivals that Bou has faced, veterans, like Adam Raga or younger ones, like Gabriel Marcelli, runner-up and runner-up in Barcelona. And who can beat Bou? Is the Bou from 15 years ago better than the one with more experience now? Would the Repsol Honda win over his own younger self? “If I were to face the 25-year-old Toni, I don’t know who would win, because experience is important … I don’t know if I would beat myself.”
Tribute. Thinking of the many tributes he receives, he is given two special illusions that Juan Gutiérrez, AS deputy director, throws at him: a photo with all his champion motorcycles, in the style of Valentino Rossi in Cheste, and a recognition from the club of his soccer loves, a kick-off at the Camp Nou: “I have two bikes of all that I have won, I hope to keep this one, the one from the 30th World Championship. But a photo with the 15 models would be a ‘photon’, it sure is an idea you would like. And receiving Barcelona’s tribute in the center of the field would be very good. Maybe they are waiting for 40. I would give the ball a punch so that they understand why I’m riding a motorcycle, “he says humorously.
And finally, taking a look at the future, Bou sees himself linked to the world of trials and aims to share his wisdom: “When I finish I will have to make a museum with everything I have achieved, and a school”. On trying other specialties, as for example Laia Sanz does, he is not so clear, and he explains: “The problem is that when I’m going to do something I’m going to try to win. The Dakar for a person with my character is very dangerous. You can’t go to win the first year, you can hurt yourself a lot.. I like enduro, and trial technique, I like it. But when I go to train I like it and it gets boring. With the trial it does not happen to me “. But the nearest future is a well-deserved vacation, assessing whether the plate on his injured fibula is removed and 2022, in which the 31st and 32nd may arrive.
