At first, Pere Pi probably saw bike trials as a way of introducing children to motorised trials and considered Ot's participation in bike trials to be only temporary. It was Felix Krahnstöver's visit in March 1979 that opened his eyes. It was a key moment for Pere Pi in terms of bicycle trials when Felix Krahnstöver, after seeing Ot's trials bike, told him about his encounter with bicycle trials in Fürstenhagen just a few months earlier. 1 The information that bicycle trials also existed in Germany suddenly made it clear to Pere Pi that bicycle trials were not just for children (as most people had initially thought, including Felix Krahnstöver until his experience in Fürstenhagen in 1978) in Catalonia, but were generally becoming a popular sport.
Felix Krahnstöver's visit took place shortly before 11 March 1979. I know this because on that day, the Spanish round of the Motorcycle Trial World Championship was held in Terrassa (Matadepera), in which Krahnstöver was participating. The crazy thing is that I indirectly witnessed this meeting between Krahnstöver and Pi because of this World Championship event. I was in the German Army at the time and had taken my leave during that freezing and seemingly endless winter in Germany to watch the World Championship race in warm Spain for the first time. 2
At the start in the Sant Llorenc del Munt National Park, I naturally greeted Felix Krahnstöver briefly. When he saw me, he exclaimed with a laugh, ‘I'm going crazy!’ Then he suddenly said, ‘By the way, they also have bike trials here!’ He said he had seen a trials bike at Pi – he briefly explained who that was – (it was the bike that the people in the Montesa development department had built for his son Ot in 1978. See the chapter ‘Felix Krahnstöver and Pere Pi’) and told him about German bicycle trials. They were interested in bicycle trials and wanted to do something in this direction. I could contact him sometime. We couldn't talk any further so close to the start, and I didn't get in touch with Felix Krahnstöver again until later in Germany.
- Pere Pi had consistently kept this encounter with Felix Krahnstöver secret before it was first made public in 2006 in Desmond Lee's film ‘Leaps&Bounds’. In his memoirs, written in 2012, he acknowledges this encounter as a key moment, but adds that he and his colleagues at Montesa had ‘NO idea that such a thing as bicycle trials existed’ before Krahnstöver's visit in March 1979 (Pere Pi: No tengo 200 años, 2012, p. 255). This statement is not credible because it contradicts Ot's participation in Bellaterra as early as 1978. ↩
- A brief impression of this can be found in TRIALSPORT No. 39 (May 1979), pp. 16–17. At that time, I was riding a 326 Bultaco in motorcycle trials in Germany. The day after the trial, I went hiking in the beautiful nature park of Sant Llorenc del Munt and ‘helped’ collect the arrows used to mark the route... they served me well in my subsequent bicycle trials in Bad Nauheim, and I still use some of them today in my non-stop trial in Stadtallendorf. ↩