FIM Trial des Nations – a Spanish lesson!

The undisputed powerhouse of the modern sport, the Spanish men have won the competition on thirty-one occasions – compared to five times for France, four times for Great Britain and once for Italy – although they had to wait until the event’s sixth edition to take their first win.

This year’s Spanish men’s team – comprising Toni Bou (Montesa), Gabriel Marcelli (Montesa) and Jaime Busto (Beta) – is fully expected to emulate the achievement of Amós Bilbao, Andreu Codina, Gabino Renales and Jordi Tarrés who claimed their country’s very first TdN win in 1989 when the competition was held in Belgium.

A week earlier the FIM Trial World Championship had concluded with Tarrés taking the second of his seven solo titles and the Trial legend would add another six TdNs to his racing résumé before making way for the following generation of Spanish stars.

Fielding the same team in 1990, Spain lost the title to France before its fantastic foursome – with Marc Colomer replacing Cordina – bounced back in Großheubach in Germany in 1991 to reclaim the crown and they did it again in 1992 when the TdN made its historic and so far only visit to the USA, with Renales replaced by Joan Pons.

An unchanged team made it three TdN wins in a row in 1993 in Northern Ireland and there was more of the same in Andorra in 1994 with Angel Garcia taking Bilbao’s place in a triumphant Spanish side.

The competition travelled to Austria the following season where the quartet of Bilbao, Colomer, Pons and Tarrés took win number six to overtake France as the TdN’s most successful nation and Spain extended its win-streak in Sweden in 1996 when Marcel Justribó took Pons’ place on the team.

After its winning run was halted in 1997 on the Isle of Man by a team from Great Britain featuring Dougie Lampkin who had just won the first of his seven outdoor crowns, it was business as usual for a Spanish side in Italy in 1998 that featured Jordi Pascuet – who these days can be found overseeing sections in the Hertz FIM Trial World Championship – who replaced the recently retired Tarrés.

Following another loss to Great Britain in 1999, this time in Luxembourg, Spain celebrated the new Millennium by hosting the TdN for the first time – at Seva, around sixty-five kilometres north of Barcelona – and taking its total to nine wins with a team comprising Albert Cabestany and Marc Freixa alongside Colomer and Justribó.

Little did anyone know at the time, but the British victories in Portugal and Italy were the last time any national anthem other than the Marcha Real Española would be played to honour the winners of the Men’s competition…

With home advantage in Córdoba in 2004, Spain returned to the top with Cabestany, Freixa, Raga and Jeroni Fajardo and rest is history. Joined for the first time in Italy in 2005 by Toni Bou who was brought in to replace Fajardo, the Spanish have remained unbeaten ever since with Bou – who would go on to become the most successful rider in the sport’s history – and Raga forming the mainstay of the team with back-up from Cabestany and Fajardo every year until 2016 when teams were reduced to three riders and Fajardo stepped away from the competition.

Cabestany only lasted one more year before a young hotshot called Jaime Busto made his TdN debut, but in 2018 Fajardo was recalled to take Raga’s place as Spain maintained its stranglehold on the competition at Sokolov in the Czech Republic.

Raga was back in the team alongside Bou and Fajardo for a famous home win on the island of Ibiza in 2019 and, following a year’s hiatus because of the pandemic, when the TdN was restored to the calendar in 2021 Busto returned in place of Fajardo in time for Spain’s twenty-seventh victory.

An unchanged team won in 2022 in Italy and Gabriel Marcelli then replaced Raga in the 2023 squad in France, but the veteran was back alongside Bou and Marcelli in his final season in the top-flight when he signed off with his nineteenth TdN gold medal.

Last season and for this year’s competition, Spain will start with the world’s top three riders in Bou, Marcelli and Busto and as odds-on favourites to extend its winning run to twenty-two and its total of TdN titles to thirty-two.

So, who is the most successful individual rider in the Men’s TdN? Until 2022 that honour belonged to Raga with eighteen wins until Bou drew level in 2023. Both riders claimed their nineteenth wins in 2024 and Bou upped his total to twenty last season, a number that is almost certain to increase this weekend.