TOP 7th FOR TARRÉS AT THE UCI WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

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For the second year in a row the UCI Trials World Championships 2018 were held in the 5th biggest Chinese city, Chengdu, at Sichuan district. With more than 11 million inhabitants, Chengdu is the perfect place to hold an event of these dimensions. Pol commented that Chinese people are trials fans and last year was the first time they could meet and talk to their idols, the best trials riders of the world.

The whole national Spanish team met in Amsterdam to travel to Chengdu all together. The team was formed by 10 riders (2 women, 2 juniors and 6 elites), 3 coaches and a doctor. The Xinhua Park was chosen to be the location of the competition and Trials, BMX freestyle and Mountainbike Eliminator disciplines were living together from 5th to 11th of November.

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SCORPIO WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION

The World Championships is the last and most important competition of the year, which will decide who can wear the rainbow jersey of World Champion. For this special occasion Pol worked side by side with Scorpio to design a special painting for the bike. The pearl white and shiny red matched perfectly with Tarrés’ brand new POC Tectal helmet and the national spanish jersey.

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NEW RULES

Since last year the Trials World Championships has different rules so the winner will be the one with more points. To get the points the riders have to clean the gates without puting the foot on the floor. Each gate means 10 points with a total of 6 gates per section, so maximum 60 points each section. About the sections Pol told us “I really like the sections even you have to work hard to finish them and to get as many points as posible. Although the concrete section is specially hard and scary because there is a gate at 4 metres high, I think I can do a good performance and get a lot of points.”

THE SEMIFINALS

The semifinals of the 26” Elite Men category started Saturday at 1:30pm. Tarrés started really confident in the sections, you could see he was enjoying the sections and collecting many points. He crashed in the concrete section and he could only get 30 points. At the end of the first lap Tarrés did 180 points and he was the 4th best rider. The second lap did slightly better and he could get 210 points. He was there, 6th position and with the ticket to the big final with one lap left. The last lap Tarrés also did 210 points but he was overtaken by the french Vincent Hermance (3 times world champion), and Pol could not make it to the final. Even he was happy with his performance he did 2 mistakes that kick him out of the finals.

“I have a bittersweet feeling of the competition because I rode really well and I am 7th, one position to the finals. However the goal was to be in the final and I didn’t achieved I am happy that I fight and did some really nice moves. I am still learning and I am really hungry for 2019. About this 2018, it has been the best so far of my life, with a 4th place at the first world cup, bronze medal at the European Championships, and 7th of the World Cup Overall and at the World Championships. Now that the competition season has ended I want to thank all my partners and everyone who has helped me in any way, otherwise I would not be where I am.” — POL TARRÉS

DAILY BLOGS

Since last year, Tarrés, whenever he travel through international competitions, gives us a daily video in which we can see not only what they do with the bicycle but also their travels, as well as telling us about their experiences. We leave you with the video of day 1, you can see every day on Pol's YouTube channel.