Professional?

[Davetrials]

vince is sponsored by other people who pay him yes.

[B.E.A.U]

Personally i would consider someone like martin ashton or ryan leech as a pro. They both get free bikes (martin with his own company) and both get paid to travel around doing demo's all over the place. Both have also won a load of titles and prizes, wasn't martin world champion for a couple of years? Either way, for me, those riders are pro... and everyone else who just gets the odd free part and stick tarty/selectbikes advertising at the beginning of a video aren't remotely pro.... good riders maybe, but nowhere near the same leagues as real pro's.

neil gets free bikes

[TheChai]

cheers for the replies guys, i think i got my answer one way or another! its been a good discussion wont u agree

[Barbra]

Ok then, Beau's a beast i consider him pro.

I disagree, i've seen trials on tv a few times now, in my opinion it won't become a huge sport, but it will become semi-big, where people can make a living from riding, but it still feels like a tight nick community.

Topics like this remind me of the first time i went brum, and i saw neil but i didn't recognise him so i just kept staring thinking i saw him from somewhere :$ He gave me shifty looks all day haha.

[Rusevelt]

Gezz chai, you must be bored to enquire about such a tricky topic. personally, i reckon your focus should be on promoting trials on a large public/commercial scale, rather than pro status via reaching out to a handful of people from doing demos. in my view, your best chance to make trials a bigger and more noticeable sport to the public eye, is via publicity stunts and via commercial interests with events like this summer UrbanGames and london 2012 olympics. sign yourself up as bicycle stunt rider could help brake certain barriers to ride virtually anywhere to promote trials via possible filming projects ie; jump london style documentary on bikes, or some publicity stunt like that french dude whom calls himself the Real Spiderman by scaling very tall buildings unaided and no ropes. Edited February 27, 2007 by Rusevelt

[spode@thinkbikes]

You can either be a professional in the sense that it is your main source of income, i.e it is your profession, or you can just ride to a professional standard - money has no involvement.

However, if I was making my living from riding demos, I'm not sure I'd say I was a professional trials rider, as generally speaking Demo riders standards are a lot lower so it would give across the wrong message. Maybe a professional demo rider? I think you'd lose a little credit from others in the trials community if you started professing yourself as professional. Then of course someone says "but I can sidehop higher than X, I guess I must be professional too!", and then before you know it, everyone's a pro

Perhaps you make some money from trials, you've got some sponsors and your standard is pretty well above average - then perhaps consider yourself semi-professional? Then it kind of fits the bill in terms of finance AND standards.

It's all academic anyway. If you want to tell a member of the public that your professional after they've just watched you for twenty minutes, where's the harm? They go home with a sense of well-being that they've just watched a pro at work