A detailed interview with Oriol Puig Bulto + full access to his photo gallery and Trial records.
Then I was lucky ,because on the first day i was travelling from Edinburgh to Fort William on the motorcycle . It's a long way and much of it was on the road with wet roads and rain as is usual .I remember travelling through Blackwater and having a problem and my bike stopped I checked and it had no spark. I made some changes and some repairs and then eventually it starts but then after a while again it stops, but by all of this happening I was one hour late arriving in Fort William. But I'm lucky because I arrived the next day the people from Commerford look carefully at the bike and discovered that the high Tension coil had a crack in it and then was a water this caused the back to have no spark but after a while the heat of the cylinder whilst I was looking at the bike was drying and it was start again, and I would then travel and the bike would stop has a coil got wet again, so this really finished my time in the Scottish on this occasion. But this gave me the opportunity to travel around and meet people who I would have never met otherwise
Some Scottish photos from Oriol.
If i had been competing all week I might not have met Sammy Miller for the first time ever and we will not thinking about signing Sammy Miller. We had not been thinking about signing Sammy Miller at the time, but Sammy is a very curious man and he's a very special man. Sammy saw this very small Light 2 stroke Spanish Bultaco machine and he asked me can I try it . This was the second or the third day after the trial had finished for the day. Sammy went for a ride and came back and said that he liked it. I think that he thought that there was a good challenge here and he said to me that if I am interested he could help to develop this machine as it has a big potential ,and it could be a fantastic trials bike. This was the beginning and I said ok ,I will contact my uncle Paco and later Paco call directly to Sammy and then we arranged for Sammy to come directly to Barcelona with his motorcycle Gov 132 . This was already with the intention of him and us to sign a contract together and help us to develop machine and ride for Bultaco.
Some great photos from Oriol during his time as Bultaco competition manager. He can be seen here with Martin Lampkin, Yrjo Vesterinen and Charles Coutard.
1st photo - Celebrating after martin won the Scottish
4th photo - Vrjo Vesterinen 29/9/74 Alpen trial Switzerland Iberger
4th photo - Vrjo Vesterinen 29/9/74 Alpen trial Switzerland Iberger
When Sammy came here ,he spent about 2 weeks here and it was fantastic.We made sure that when he was here in Barcelona that we had two shifts working with him. One in the day with him and one in the night in the factory. I think at this time that Ignacio was already involved with a team of testing with Sammy . The testing took place in not just San Antonio but many other places because we wanted to try Sandy sections like in Mataro. We also wanted to make tests in more wet and muddy areas as well ,so we visited these places . The testing was also carried out in San Antonio during the day we tested the bike and we made notes in fact. It was my uncle that made the notes for Mr Challamanch and there was a special shift organised at the factory working at night and making gears and opening and dismantling the machine . There are about 12 to 15 very very active men working at the factory in this night shift making sure that everything was moving forward at a good pace
From L. to R : José “Pepe” Sánchez (my MX and Enduro team mate), Manuel Giró Jr., Juan Barragán (mechanic and rider), Juan Soler Bultó and José Mª Llobet bent over the bike, me, Ramón Costa (Motocross and Enduro rider), Casimiro Verdaguer “Caver” (Trial and Enduro rider). We were inspecting the machine prepared for the ISDT.
A detailed interview with Oriol Puig Bulto www.retrotrials.com
We finished with a machine that could go into production. We tested it on many sections and we had to work with the average score that was obtained on each section because in trial you always have to work with average scores because sometimes you get a clean and sometimes no, you get a 5. As an average ,it was better than Sammy's machine and then after this testing was completed and we have produced a bike that we were all happy with, Sammy took one Bultaco back to England.
