Excerpt from Bernie Schreiber’s forthcoming Autobiography exclusively on Trials Guru in 2027. (Photo: Len Weed)

Chasing the Impossible:

“American Trials in the 1970s, National Success, and the Dream of Competing in Europe.

When I look back at American trials in the early 1970s, it is difficult to explain to someone today just how different the sport was. There was no internet, no YouTube, no instant access to European results or videos showing how the best riders in the world trained and rode.

If you wanted to learn, you watched other riders, studied photographs in magazines, experimented on your motorcycle and figured things out for yourself.

For a young rider growing up in Southern California, Europe seemed like another world. That was where trials really lived. Spain were producing the motorcycles. The great factory teams were there. The World Championship was there.

Names like Sammy Miller, Malcolm Rathmell, Mick Andrews, Martin Lampkin and Yrjö Vesterinen weren’t simply successful riders to us – they represented the standard we were trying to understand.

I wasn’t thinking about becoming World Champion at the beginning. I was thinking about becoming better.”

The Autography of Bernie Schreiber is the copyright of Bernard Schreiber, Zurich, Switzerland.

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