Minders have had their day
By John Dickinson on 30th Mar 07
With trials teams watching the pennies is it now time to let the Minders go?
I'VE had interesting correspondence recently onthe subject of ‘Assistants' in trials, commonly referred to as‘Minders' and with the the 2007 World Trials Championship set tokick-off this weekend in Spain it is as good a time as any to say a fewwords.
For those not familiar with ‘Minders' here'sbasically how it goes. At World (and British) Championship trials,riders are allowed an Assistant (Minder) who can ride a motorcycle around the trial and also go into(or alongside) each observed section when the rider takes his turn. He/she is allowed to ‘assist' the rider by shouting instructions, time taken etc,and also as a safety aspect to ‘catch' should the rider get intotrouble.
The nub of recent conversations has been along the lines of, ''Is thisreally necessary and is it time to call a halt?'' If the answer is''Yes, it's time to call ahalt-there's some serious thinking to be done - mainly because it isvery difficult to de-invent something!
A quick history lesson will tell us how it is atricky one to knock on the head. Minders came about because of ridershelping fellow riders. This has always occurred to an extent but itreally came to light as recently asthe 1980s with firstly Eddy Lejeune and his brother Jean Marie and moreobviously with Thierry Michaud and his brother Fred. Both Jean Marieand Fred were top ten riders in their own right. On the first lap of atrial Fred would often ride the sections in front of Thierry and thenrunback down the section to shout advice or point out a line. The nextstep of the Minder evolution was that on the second lap Fred started toabandon hisride altogether in order to assist Thierry. He would ‘save' him a placein the queue to ride a section and then when Thierry arrived, Fredwouldrun up the section to check on its condition. The ‘Minder' had arrived.
It was a short step from here to allowing official‘Minders' instead of ‘bogus' riders who started appearing in the entrylist who had no intention of seriously competing, they were there to assist a rider. The wholething reached a crazy crescendo when each manufacturer was allottedfive Assistants - and Jordi Tarres had all five of the Gas Gas factory'sboys who massed at the sections round Jordi like a rugby scrum.
It may surprise some of you to hear that themajority of factories would now actually like to see the end of the‘Minder' system as it stands and this has been discussed by the FIM trials committee. It is not hard tosee why they want an end to it. It is very simple - cost. With theexception of the mighty Repsol-Montesa squad, which we can all see has few cashrestraints with Honda money behind it, the remainder of themanufacturers are not exactly rolling in dosh these days. We can all see that the teamshave shrunk dramatically in size and some will shrink further - maybeeven disappear altogether.
Ditching Minders - even if they are only on, say,travel and living expenses, never mind the ones on wages - wouldobviously be quite a saving for a cash-strapped team.
Most people are agreed that there is much tocommend scrapping the Minder system. It has always given an unfairadvantage to the team riders or the well-heeled. Trials is supposed to be about one man and his machine.The problem remains, as I said, you can't just simply de-inventsomething. If Minders are banned, logic would say that we would be straight back to bogus riders again.
In order to realistically end the Minder system,trials would have to change, maybe quite radically. There would have tobe a package of some kind put together so that the trials do not NEEDminders, especially from asafety angle. One suggestion is a return to true non-stop rules,strictly observed, accompanied by less severe sections. It's quite atheory butas we all know, the actual rules and observing to those rules are twodifferent animals - and I mean no disrespect to observers whatsoever -at World Championship level it is a job that is fraught with pitfalls.
I have asked the question - maybe you have theanswer! As ever, I welcome all correspondence, so if you have anythoughts on the subject of Minders in trials just send a quick e-mail or drop me a line...