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The world champion in trials, indoors and outdoors, assures that he is still as excited and motivated as when he won his first trial at the age of 18
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“It is increasingly difficult for me to recover from injuries, but my passion for this sport pushes me to continue competing at the highest level,” says Bou
It is not going to stop. It is not going to change specialty. He is not going to change his sport, much less the brand, or the team. He is not going to change his mind. It will not change the way you are (wonderful person). Not even his way of being passionate about what he does. Nor, of course, his sacrifice and his forcefulness when training. Nor, much less, at the time of competing. “I do what I do because I love what I do.”
Toni Bou, who is 35 years old and has just won his 30th world trial title at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, plans to continue his training sessions next Monday. And, yes, of course, of course! He is no longer that four-year-old boy whose father suddenly put his first motorcycle in the room and he, Toni Bou, went completely crazy when he saw it. Until today.
He is not that child, not even that young man who, at 18, won his first grand prix in trials. Nor, either, the one who at 20 got his first double. It is not. Or yes, it is in spirit. “If you don’t wake up every morning with the illusion, the desire and the passion to train like when you were 18 years old, then you have to leave it, you are no longer good for this. Because if you don’t train hard, like the first day, even though this is a minority sport and you have the rivals you have, they pass you by, because they do, ”says Bou, the day after lengthening, nobody he knows how far (“not even me, of course”), his legend, his extraordinary record.
Always on top
Bou knows himself to be privileged, but he hides all the sacrifice he has had, that he has, to do to continue at the top, at the peak, at the top of the trial pyramid. Admired by the whole world, pampered by the Honda brand and always protected by Repsol, Bou remembers with pain, with great pain, those months of extreme suffering and doubts of 2018 when he broke several vertebrae and feared that his career would come to an end . “It was a hard moment, so hard that when I got over it I thought I would not suffer so much again,” he says. But, look where, this season, a lukewarm broke a month before starting the first World Cup. But he also won it.
Bou believes that trial is a specialty in which the rider can make a difference. That does not mean, of course, that I downplay the bike “far from it, I have the best” and, of course, much less the team “it is the ideal, perfect”. It means that that sacrifice, that passion, that training, which go from three to four hours a day, is essential to continue improving the technique “now very based on the rear wheel” and continue to imitate everything that he learned from mountain biking and has transferred, with an incredible, unmatched skill, to the motorcycle.
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“I am no longer 20 years old, not even 25 and, therefore, I have to dose myself a little more in the effort, in the training, although in competition those 30 titles suppose me more serenity, confidence and experience to face the zones”, he comments while savoring , almost embarrassed (“yes, yes, I am somewhat reluctant to say that I have won again”), the new title. “If something costs me more now than ever, it is to recover from injuries. It is clear that, in that sense, not just for me but for any elite athlete, it is not the same to recover from an injury at 20 or at 35, but we always get ahead ”.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.