Very soon the best riders on the planet will be brought together in the spiritual home of UK Indoor Trial to compete over some of the most technically challenging sections ever created – it is a mouth-watering prospect that gets even more flavourful when you consider that the DL12 Indoor Trial V3.0, that takes place in Sheffield’s Utilita Arena on Saturday 18th January 2025, will be the final chance for fans to savour this unique and incredible experience.
Following in the tradition of top-flight Indoor Trial at the legendary Steel City venue that stretches back to 1996, in January 2023 the first DL12 Indoor Trial received rave reviews and twelve months later Co-Promoters Dougie Lampkin and Jake Miller built on these solid foundations with their second sold-out edition.
However, all good things must come to an end and this forward-thinking partnership’s three-year Indoor Trial plan will conclude with the third and final edition that promises to raise the bar even higher with a star-studded line-up of invited riders, widely regarded as the strongest-ever assembled for this season-opening event, making it an occasion that is simply too good to miss.
Leading the field is thirty-six-time individual FIM Trial World Champion Toni Bou – Repsol Honda. Out of his sixteen visits to Sheffield the thirty-eight-year-old defending champion has won fourteen times and will start as favourite in his sole scheduled UK Indoor Trial appearance of 2025, but the Spanish superstar will face fierce opposition.
Winner of the inaugural DL12 Indoor Trial, at the age of forty-two Adam Raga – Sherco, who has now retired from FIM Trial World Championship competition, will make an emotional final appearance in front of a capacity Sheffield audience. The six-time world champion – who was second at Sheffield in 2024 – would like for nothing more to go out with a fourth win to add to his victories in 2005, 2016 and 2023.
Bou’s main opposition in the FIM X-Trial World Championship over the last two seasons, Jaime Busto – GASGAS has an enviable one-hundred per cent podium record in DL12 Indoor Trial events with second in 2023 and third in 2024, but the top step has so far proved elusive for the twenty-seven-year-old.
A career-best second in the 2024 TrialGP series, twenty-four-year-old Gabriel Marcelli – Repsol Honda completes the powerful Spanish quartet that dominated in the Utilita Arena last time around. Although on that occasion he had to settle for fourth, the ultra-aggressive fan favourite was third on his Sheffield debut in 2023 and certainly has the skills to unsettle his more experienced compatriots.
Home hopes rest on the young, strong shoulders of Jack Peace – Sherco and Harry Hemingway – Beta who both just so happen to be Yorkshiremen and as such can be confident of deafening partisan support in the White Rose County.
In 2024 Peace won the FIM Trial2 World Championship and although the twenty-four-year-old from Scarborough – a veteran of the first DL12 Indoor Trial – is not hugely experienced indoors, his pedigree is not in doubt and after a winter of training in Spain with Raga he will have his steely focus fixed firmly on a place in the Final.
The DL12 Indoor Trial V3.0 will be Harry Hemingway’s third consecutive appearance in the Utilita Arena and while at just eighteen years of the age the Leeds lad is very much the baby of the bunch, he already has an FIM gold medal after winning the 2022 Trial3 title and in 2024 he emerged as a strong contender in Trial2.
The final two competitors will offer fans a glimpse into the future with Norway’s Sondre Haga and Frenchman Gaël Chatagno giving electric bikes their eagerly-awaiting debut in the Utilita Arena.
Haga – GASGAS made history in 2024 when he claimed a first-ever top-flight win for e-bikes with victory in the Trial2 class at the TrialGP of Japan and the twenty-five-year-old, who exited the competition in the heat stages in 2023, will renew his rivalry with the man from Marseille as they continue their battery-powered battle.
Chatagno – Electric Motion has also made his own entries into the Trial history books. The twenty-eight-year-old, who ended the 2024 season ranked sixth in Trial2 – one point and one position above Haga – with a day win at the final round, was the first e-bike rider to go head-to-head with combustion-engined machines in the FIM Trial World Championship and in 2024 he became the first e-bike rider to compete in the FIM X-Trial World Championship when he scored points in Geneva in Switzerland in early April.
The stage is set for the grand finale – don’t miss this historic occasion and grab one of the last remaining tickets NOW!