The 2020 X-Trials World Championship Is About To Kick Off In France

The floor is lava.

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Janaki Jitchotvisut

By: Janaki Jitchotvisut

Nov 13, 2019 at 2:06pm ET

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Are you ready for the 2020 FIM X-Trial World Championship? We sure hope so, because it starts the weekend of November 16, 2019, on the French island of Réunion and we are here for it. It’s been an entire eight months since Toni Bou clinched his 13th consecutive X-Trial World Championship title. This series is no mere parade, though; with the X-Trials competitors, the competition is so close, it’s nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat stuff almost every single time.

Luckily, you can find the FIM X-Trials World Championship on YouTube so it’s easy to follow the series if you’re interested. The video above is from the 2019 Barcelona final. Barcelona is arguably one of the trickiest events of the season every year—and 2019 saw a tight competition between two old rivals. Toni Bou and former champion Adam Raga have a long-standing history. Their comparative skill levels are also very close, so it’s breathtaking to watch them do what they do.

By the time the 2019 season final in Marseille rolled around, Raga had unfortunately only made it to the runner-up round. Bou won his 13th X-Trials title after beating Jeroni Fajardo in this event—a feat no less impressive, but it doesn’t have the same history as the ongoing Bou/Raga rivalry.

In any case, if you’re interested in following the 2020 FIM X-Trials season, here’s the full calendar:

November 16, 2019: Réunion Island, France
November 23, 2019: Rennes, France
January 19, 2020: Budapest, Hungary
February 2, 2020: Barcelona, Spain
February 15, 2020: Bilbao, Spain
March 21, 2020: Wiener Neustadt, Austria
April 25, 2020: Andorra la Vella, Andorra

There are five fixed riders in a season, with a further three riders added at each event for a total of eight. As current champion, Toni Bou is of course a permanent rider for the duration of the season. Adam Raga, Jaime Busto, Benoit Bincaz, and Gabriel Marcelli are the other four permanent riders for 2020.

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For this opening round, Miquel Gelabert, Jorge Casales, and debut X-Trials competitor Kieran Touly will also be competing. The really cool thing about watching X-Trials is, different competitors might be scoring well or doing badly—but as long as you’re watching, you, the spectator, are definitely not ever losing.

Sources: YouTube, HRC, X-Trial