Felix Krahnstöver's encounter with bicycle trials in Fürstenhagen was to have lasting consequences. Krahnstöver was not only a dealer for Montesa trials motorcycles, but also a factory rider for Montesa. In this capacity, he traveled to the Montesa factory in Barcelona (Esplugues) two or three times a year, where he always met with Pere Pi (Pere Pi i Parera, born in 1940; at that time he was still known as Pedro Pi), the then head of the research and development department at Montesa. During his visit to Pere Pi in March 1979, Felix Krahnstöver enthusiastically reported on the guys in Fürstenhagen and informed him about the existence of bicycle trials in Germany. This was the first contact between the two developments of bicycle trials in Germany and Catalonia, which until then had been unaware of each other.
Pere Pi's first encounter with Bici trials
At that time, Pere Pi had already come into contact with Catalan bike trials, albeit rather involuntarily. Pere Pi, who had been six-time Spanish motocross champion between 1961 and 1966 and the first Spanish trials champion in 1968, wanted his son Ot (Ot Pi, born in 1970) to follow in his footsteps and become a successful motocross rider—I know this from stories told by Felix Krahnstöver. In September 1977, however, Ot crashed during a children's motocross and trial event in Montornès del Vallès and refused to touch a motorcycle ever again. 1 That's why Ot was now supposed to compete in the rapidly developing sport of bicycle trials, since he wasn't riding a motorcycle.
But to do this, Ot needed a trials bike, which Pere Pi built with the help of the employees in his research and development department at Montesa, just as he had done previously with the children's motorcycle for Ot. This fits with what Pere Pi said in a 2006 interview for Desmond Lee's video “Leaps&Bounds”: “This sport came to me when Ot was seven and needed a bike” – right after Ot's fall in September 1977, because Ot was born in September 1970. 2 Accordingly, the first bike for Ot was completed in 1978. 3 In the same year, Ot rode his first Bici Trial in Bellaterra (near Sabadell). 4
- https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ot_Pi 11 March, 2019 ↩
- A few years later, in his memoirs, Pere Pi gives a date one year earlier for the construction of the special bicycle for Ot: “I started it in 1976.” He claims that he did not make the alleged earlier construction of the trial bike at Montesa “public” (en Montesa, inéditos); Pere Pi: No tengo 200 años, 2012, p. 253. The date of 1976, corrected forward by one year, is apparently intended to make the shift to bicycle trials appear as his own idea and avoid the impression that it was a shift to the already existing Bici-Trial that came about due to external circumstances, namely Ot's fall. ↩
- https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montesita 07 March 2019 ↩
- Pere Pi: No tengo 200 años, 2012, p. 297. ↩