On The Pegs June 2020 - Volume 5 - Issue 6 | Page 98

On The Pegs 98 1994 was my first Scott Trial win. It’s one of those trials you do need a little bit of luck. You don’t want to have any punctures. It’s very rough ground. There’s always a lot of punctures and sort of crashes and things like that. I had a good phase, and obviously that’s at the back end of the year. I had won the British Championship. I had won the Scottish Six Days. I had finished sixth and the world, and just finished off with winning the Scott as well. So to win those special races like the Scottish Six Days and the Scott Trial in the same year is special anyway, but to do it at eighteen years old it’s something I look back on very fondly. You don’t really think about it much at the time, but now it’s something I’m very proud of. 52017: SSDT Trials win with just one point I thought you might mention that single dab. I try and forget about that. I have a few sleepless nights when somebody brings that up. It’s been done with a single dab before by Gordon Jackson a long time ago. That was back in the ‘60s. I have finished the event on three before, and also on five before. It’s a long wait and obviously the competition level is going very quickly up there. Things were going really well, and then you have an early day just to go pit and stuff. It was working out to be Friday, which is normally not one of the easier days because of how slippery the sections are. So Saturday morning there was a lot of talk around he’s clean, and the organizers are going to probably put harder sections in. I think that’s probably where I psyched myself a little bit really because obviously you never go to an event wanting to finish on a certain amount of points. You just go for the win. I think really I didn’t slam it in the head just exactly how I should approach the day. I do kick myself for it still now. It was early on in the day and I had a little bit of a wobble and I was like, the crowd went silent. I think Facebook knew about it before I got about ten inches out of the inside. I think news traveled very, very quickly that I’d had a dab. I cleaned the rest of the day which was pretty spectacular. It was a strange thing, really, because I don’t think it really annoys me that I have to go clean or how it would have been amazing to go clean. In the years to come, you’ll just remember it as a victory, hopefully, and not about that dab. But it’s how I applied myself that day. I didn’t decide whether I was going for the win or whether I was going for clean. That’s something that always plays on my mind. n