James Dabill, No.1 JST GAS GAS UK Rider has once again finished 7th at the third round of the World Trials Championship in Portugal.

After two 7th places at the opening two rounds in Ireland we were commited to getting the Top5 result that James is so capable of in Portugal yesterday. Fully confident after the Practice sessions, Dibs was ready for Sunday morning.
He 'breezed' the first two sections easily and studied the difficult third with the rest of the world's elite. With him being perfect online at the difficult middle part of the section he was a little too steady with the throttle and failed for a five. Not a big problem because it was a very difficult section.
Then the 4th which rattled us all (especially me!). The section was easily 'cleanable' for Dibs (as he did so on the second lap) and he was confident. He nodded to the observer halfway up the section and he called Dibs in. After he launched up the first big step, the bottom observer blew his whistle which confused us all. He said he wasnt ready and ordered James to get out of the section which we all presumed a re-run would happen but NO! He was adamant that he was the boss and he wasn't ready and also not prepaired to give Dibs a re-run so a quick, frustrating '5' was given. NOT HAPPY! Nevertheless Dibs shrugged this off and blitzed the next section with ease.
He then went on a role until the difficult section 11 which he did but was timed out ;-(
Another '5' on 12 which was very hard saw the race to the time control for the allowed 3h10min first lap rule. James went into Enduro mode and arrived at 13 on a mission which he cleaned. A scrappy 'two' on 14 pushing for time which he also lost one mark because he was late ;-(
A steady ride to 15 and an easy clean to finish the lap on 29 in 7th. Five marks behind FUJI and 8 behind Doug....game on!

Now Dibs is making a habit of some good second lap comebacks which was needed. He was on a role on the second lap and was impressive to watch. He fived section 6 because i made him do it my way (oops!) but then he did the rest of the lap for only two more which was awesome. Doug struggled in the latter stages so we knew that we had beaten 'Legend Lampkin' but what about FUJI ? At the finished James was pumped with his second lap but then he was stunned to see Frexias' lap of 8 which took Marc to 5th place....fair play!
We then waited for Fuji and although James was 4 better then Fuji on the second lap he just managed to stay infront of Dibs by 2 marks ;-(

I know you should never say 'if and but'.....BUT without the plonker on section 4 and the two time penalites then 5th would have been Dibs'!

What we need is a massive effort from James, Jack and myself at Carlisle at the UK round and the support of the British public, i know James can have an awesome weekend and get Top 5!!

Thanks to Jack and Kev ;-)

Congrats to;
Toni Bou / Montesa.
Alfredo Gomez / Montesa.
Jonathan Richardson / Sherco

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Other GG weekend news...
GG riders filled the results at the First Round of the Womens and Girls BTC yesterday.....Becky Cook won on her Sherco so congrats to her but ACE GG rider Donna Fox was 2nd and JSTGG rider Emma Bristow was 3rd !
ACE GG rider Joanne Coles won 'Girls A Class' only 5 marks behind Becky and ACEGG rider Hannah Styles was 2nd.
Emma Morph (GG) won the womens intermediate class and Harriet Shore (GG) won the girls A intermediate class!

Ross Danby (JSTGG)was 12th in the European Round in Portugal on Saturday and 8th yesterday at the WTC Juniors.
Jonny Walker (ACEGG) was 3rd in the European Junior class Round on Saturday and 7th yesterday at the WTC Youth.
Dan Thorpe (JSTGG) was 2nd at the Victory Novogar National Trial
Sam Haslam (JSTGG) was 5th at the Victory Novogar National Trial


NOW TO SSDT !!