Who is Carter?
A former MSL editor, Tony has been a motorcycle journalist since 1994. Since then he’s worked for or Edited a load of motorcycle titles including on-road, racing and off-road publications.
Tony has tested hundreds of motorcycles around the world and has left copious amounts of skin on various foreign roads.
He is a Taurus and loves long walks in the rain. He’s also obsessed with twostrokes and Star Wars.
Tony’s been out playing with Mikko and Ross. And then sulking for a bit, afterwards.
simple to do but, well, isn’t. Andrew from the Moto Gymkhana championship arranged a couple of days of training for the three of us. We duly turned out with the bike and our warmest kit on a very cold period in March and set about learning as much as we could.
We started with the basics around a couple of cones. A big figure of eight, five times around each cone and then stopping in a finish area. Easy eh? Well, it’s not. You may be reading this thinking: “Come on Tony, it’s a few times around a cone… how hard can it be?” I’m telling you, it’s hard. When was the last time you did 10 times around cones as fast as you can? For me, about 25 years. And time hasn’t been kind.
We progressed to big slaloms, small slaloms, offset slaloms, 270º turns, 360º turns and multiple rotations around a cone with the bike banged onto its lock stops. Don’t touch the clutch. Use the back brake to pull the bike onto the turn.
“What you’ll find is that you’ll be able to apply the back brake, constant throttle and no clutch and the bike will articulate like a truck – the front wheel will go into the turn against the stops and the back wheel will remain still. The front wheel will rotate 360º and the back wheel remains stationary,” said Andrew. Then he showed us this piece of skill. I can’t tell you when I last saw something as sexy on a motorcycle.
Putting a clock on each rider only made us stupidly competitive through the cones too. As you’d expect.
“The fastest guys can do a full rotation around a cone in about two seconds,” added Andrew.
Think about that. In the time it takes to count two mississippis you’ve stopped the bike, got it turned in on the lock stops, drawn the back brake in enough to help the turn, balanced the throttle and put the bike through a 360º rotation. That’s fast.
At the end of our time with Andrew a few things were clear: Mikko is superb at this, Ross is very good and I’m rubbish in such a huge way that every time I do this in the future many people will laugh in my general direction. Moto Gymkhana really should be part of every motorcyclist’s life because it gets you thinking about what your bike can and wants to do in a very different way and if a photographer keeps taking photos of you getting frustrated, don’t be afraid to vent at the lensman.
If you’re at the first round of the championship we’ll see you there. Do come and say hello. I’ll be the one melting with embarrassment at his own rubbish skills.