Janine Jungfels - a lone star in an invisible sport

All photos: Lachlan Ryan

Janine Jungfels can jump her bike on top of a van and side hop over your mother. She’s competed against the men to win the highest honour for trials riders in Australia, and a rainbow jersey is just a matter of time. Why is it then, that this impressive 25-year-old may struggle to compete in 2015?

When I talk to Janine she’s sitting in her car outside the gym in Brisbane where she trains a few times a week. She’s driven there straight from her job on a revegetation project to revive koala habitat in Brisbane’s green belt. Janine has spent her life on Brisbane’s south side, and it was here that she first took up trials riding when a family friend lent her his bike nearly ten years ago. She was hooked in an instant.

‘I’ve always been really bad for challenges. I’m just super determined to get things. I can’t leave it alone until I can do it,’ she says.

Trials is like that. It can take months to pick up even the most basic skills, like getting up on the back wheel and hopping forward, but the rewards are immense.

‘Once you start doing some techniques on a trials bike it’s incredibly fun, and there’s so much cool riding you can do, so it’s really enjoyable,’ she says.

Training for trials

I’m lucky to catch Janine between training sessions. She rides her trials bike at least four times a week, but usually more, then maintains her endurance by mountain biking, sometimes at night after work to fit it in. She does bouldering for forearm and grip strength, to help with power moves on the trials bike, then she spends a lot of time at the gym. For Janine, her sponsorship and Brisbane’s World Gym is ‘crucial’. She’s started Olympic lifting with a personal trainer twice a week. Most people would think twice before challenging Janine to an arm wrestle.

‘Trials is such a horrible sport to train for because competitions last two hours, so you’ve got to have the endurance to last two hours, but you ride in sections that last two minutes 30 seconds max, and within that you’re doing repeated, explosive moves. It’s horrible for your body. (See box Competing in Trials for more on how horrible trials riding is.)

All this strength training makes sense, too, when you consider that in Australia, where there are no other women at her level, Janine competes against the top men in a sport that depends largely on strength and power.

‘I have to ride against the guys,’ she laughs.

Spare a thought for those guys. In 2011 and 2013 Janine beat all of them to claim the overall National Championship title, and came second in 2014. And her achievements go much further than that. She’s placed at nearly every World Cup she’s ever attended, and won the Jayco Cyclist of the Year award three times in the last five years, as well as winning Female Mountain Biker of the Year in 2014. With all this to her name, Janine remains one of the humblest, most gracious athletes I’ve ever interviewed.

The clandestine sport

Janine practises her riding at home, in built-up places, on natural features like rock formations and in creek beds in the bush and on the coast.

‘To my mum’s horror I’ve got some pallets and logs and stuff that I use in the backyard. Every now and then I’ll drag something home and say “check out what I’ve got” and she’s like “oh no, not another thing.”’

‘I’ve also got Karawatha Forest and Toohey Forest close by, then down the coast, and a lot of creeks I’ve found nearby. Those are the regular spots, so there’s a fair bit of variety,’ she says.

‘Brisbane and Melbourne have probably got the biggest trials scenes – which aren’t very big – but that’s the nature of the sport,’ says Janine. ‘There’s actually a good little group in Brisbane and the Gold Coast now. We’ve probably got 10 to 20 riders and on a group ride a good turnout is five to 10 riders.’

Venturing into the built environment is risky though, for a style of riding that can be seen, by security guards and sometimes even the public, as delinquency at worst, and punk at best.

‘If you ride in places where there are a lot of people, where you’re going to be seen, you’ll get moved on. I hardly ever go to practise in the city anymore,’ says Janine.

I wonder if this makes trials something of an underground sport; a sport that’s misunderstood, perhaps to its detriment. Janine agrees it’s probably one of the things that work against growing trials’ popularity, but there are others as well.

‘If someone with no experience grabbed a mountain bike and tried it out, by that afternoon they’d be able to ride down hills, around corners, and they can have a great time from one ride,’ she says.

‘If they tried trials the next morning it’s not like they’ll be hopping on the back wheel by that afternoon. The amount of time you have to put in to learn the techniques – even the basic ones – is immense. You have to have a lot of patience, and a lot of time, and people don’t necessarily have that. But if you stick to it, the rewards and satisfaction, balance and co-ordination, and the all-round fitness are just amazing,’ she says.

It’s also really mentally challenging, you have to stick at it, you have to keep going, and battle with your mind to overcome fear of crashing and worse: fear of failure.

‘People who are determined and have that mental strength to keep trooping are the ones who ride trials,’ says Janine.

‘I’d love it to grow, it’d be awesome for the sport. I think potential for the sport is massive. Danny Macaskill has been able to bring trials to the public. He’s not a competition rider, but he’s been clever enough to integrate freestyle riding and BMX with trials and it’s been a great success – but it’d be great to see the competition side grow a lot larger,’ she says.

‘I think the format of the competitions are too complex to follow (she’s right, see Competing in Trials box). It’s normal for trials riders, but we’ve got to make it simpler so it’s accessible to everyone. Once we do that it’s going to get more popular.’

For example?

‘How simple is downhill!? You start at the top, finish at the bottom, the person who goes the fastest wins. And BMX, you start here, you finish there, the first one across the line wins. Trials is like a test match. We trials freaks can watch it all day, but then a lot of people love 20/20s. We need to find a happy medium.’

Women in trials

Trials gives a lot to those persistent enough to gain some skill in the sport, not least a huge sense of achievement. On one hand it’s a wonder so few women take it up. On the other hand, it can take some serious work to override the survival instinct that might tell you not to jump off a ledge, or ride along the top of a fence two inches wide.

While living a long way from the world’s trials hubs in Europe has been hard when it comes to making it to events, Janine’s isolation has had its advantages. She’s learnt to ride like a guy because she didn’t know any different.

‘I’m probably the strongest female rider in the world at the moment because I’ve been on my little island here riding with the men from day one, watching them and trying to emulate the good male riders. Their technique and strength is how I’ve always tried to ride, so I’ve got a bit of a male riding style. In trials, if you’ve got strength, the better you’re going to go.’

Privateer

After a long chat Janine’s still in her car waiting to go home, and it’s getting late. My last question is about how tough it was starting out all those years ago, funding overseas trips – most trials World Cups are in Europe – and fitting training in around work.

‘To be fair it still is really tough,’ she says.

‘I fund 90 to 95 per cent of my trips myself. Now that I’ve got a bit of a network over there and can team up and travel with other riders, it’s a bit easier, but the way I’m going now, if I keep funding this myself without finding some financial sponsors, I’m going to end up broke. I’m at the stage where I have to decide whether to kiss the 2015 World Cup Series goodbye and just continue working, or whether I should suck it up and ride the whole season and the World Champs and come back broke and with no job or place to live!’

When I ask her about her goals, it’s clearly difficult.

‘The whole next season is dependent on money – on how long I can stay over there,’ she says.

And the amount of racing she does will affect her results.

‘If I can only make it to World Champs, then of course that’d be the one I’d be aiming for,’ Janine says.

‘But my biggest problem is getting competition experience, and I can’t get that over here because we don’t have that many competitions – they’re all overseas. That’s why I want to go over, so I can ride the World Cups,’ she says.

What’s holding me back in competition is that calmness – not panicking, and it only comes from doing comps, lots of comps.’

‘You’re so nervous for your first event of the season, and it’s a sport where nerves can play a big role, but then you ride another one and it gets a bit better, and then the next competition is a bit better again. I’m worried about going straight to the World Champs without that experience.’

‘I’m working on approaching some sponsors at the moment,’ she says. ‘I’m not any worse off if I try.’

Looking through the podiums shots on Janine’s website, I can see the difficulty of being exceptionally good at a very small sport. While the XCO, BMX, and Downhill podiums are climbed by athletes in matching sets of their sponsors’ hats, kit, shoes, socks, and sunglasses, the girls on World Cup trials podiums wear t-shirts and shorts, mostly black, with barely a logo in sight.

While the best swimmers, cricketers, and tennis players in Australia count their achievements in millions: of dollars’ worth of prize money, of followers on Twitter, of households who recognise them, here’s an athlete who measures her achievements in centimetres jumped, kilograms lifted, and in the number of times her foot touches the ground.

Trials is called that for a reason. Far from the impressive Macaskill videos, it’s a sport that requires incredible patience. It’s slow, it’s complex, it has a high failure rate – all of which, to me at least, make Janine’s success all the more impressive.

Follow Janine @janinejungfels or at www.janinejungfels.com

So what is Trials?

Format

In 2014, a Women’s UCI Observed Trials competition would feature six sections, each with several obstacles numbered in the order you have to clear them. Unlike XCO and DH disciplines, nobody is allowed to ride or practise on the course beforehand, although competitors can walk through to get a better look at the obstacles.

Riders are allowed two minutes and 30 seconds to get through a section, and must complete three laps of the six sections in less than two hours.

Scoring

In one sense, trials riding is a little like golf, in that the person with the fewest points at the end wins. In each section riders can gather a maximum of five points before they have to move on to the next one. Competitors are given a point for every ‘dab’ (that’s using any part of your body to support you, usually a foot down on the ground), although If you put both feet down at the same time it’s five points and you have to leave the section.

In another sense, trials riding is a bit like chess in that there are strict time controls on your moves. Once you hit the two minute 30 time allocation for any section, you’re given a point, then another point for every 15 seconds after that.

Tactics

In women’s competition, all riders are on the course at the same time, with up to 15 riders and six sections, it’s easy to get caught in a traffic jam, eating into your time limit. Competitors are constantly watching other riders and the six sections to determine the best order to attempt the course.

Trials isn’t just about cleaning each section in time. A bit like playing cards, you can sharpen your odds if you keep an eye on what’s on the table. Riders monitor each other’s points to see how many dabs they have and how much time they’re taking. If you have a few points up your sleeve, for example, you might choose to put a foot down and take a one point penalty rather than risk a manoeuvre that could leave you with two feet on the ground – a five point penalty. In top level competition riders have ‘minders’, usually a coach or a friend, who keeps an eye on other riders on the course so competitors can focus more on their riding. Minders give their athletes the lowdown – and usually a drink – as they move between sections.

Wheel size – it’s a thing in trials as well

Mountain bikers have, by now, adjusted to the fact that different wheel sizes suit different types of riding. In competition trials it’s no different. There are three sizes – 20, 24, and 26 inch – each demanding different riding styles and with different applications. This year Janine’s back on a 20-inch, the smallest wheel size, after spending last year on a 24. Because there are so few female competitors in international trials, they compete in just one category, while men’s competitions are categorised according to wheel size.

With the bigger wheels, you’ll roll more easily, and there’s the potential to get up bigger obstacles, but bigger wheels mean heavier bikes, which means the rider will need more power.

‘My style has developed for a 20-inch, and also the women’s competition sections are usually small, technical, tight lines, so it’s easier to manoeuvre a small bike through them than a larger wheel size,’ says Janine.

‘Out of 10 to 15 female riders who compete at World Cup level, only one or two ride a 24-inch wheel.’