Larry Lawrence | June 8, 2016
Trials competition has had some great champions over the years – the current dominant Toni Bou, star of the late-90s and early 2000s Dougie Lampkin, the masters Sammy Miller and Eddy Lejeune and of course America always will remember its first, and to date, only world champ in Bernie Schreiber. But perhaps no one has a name more synonymous with the sport of trials than that of the great Mick Andrews. Andrews was a two-time FIM World Trial Champion and five times winner of the Scottish Six Days Trial, but more than that Andrews was the sport’s all-time biggest evangelist. “Magical Mick” as his fans liked to call him, was the rider most responsible for creating the trials boom of the 1970s. His tours and book (“The Mick Andrews Book Of Trials” published in 1976) introduced an entire generation of motorcyclist to the sport that puts a premium on balance and bike control, where riders can finesse their motorcycles to go over almost any obstacle.
For Andrews it all started with some simple play around his home in England.
“I was 15 when I got a street bike and started playing around in the fields,” Andrews said in a 1970 interview. “A friend came with a proper trials machine and said, ‘Give this a try.’ You know, I beat him!”
Andrews came into the sport early enough that trials machines where still four-strokes with rigid frames.
“I got a rigid James, 40 pounds it cost, and with it I competed with the top. I was 17 then and had my own ideas about riding. One day my father said, ‘Just look in the garage.’ There was a factory AJS! First time on it I beat Sammy [Miller]. He rode a 500 Ariel then.”
That victory on the AJS over Miller was in 1961. Andrews entered the sport in a transitional stage where new, lighter machines were being developed.
“Two-strokes were far superior from the start,” he said. “Sammy and I went to Bultaco. Then I started riding for Ossa.”
It was with Ossa in the early 1970s, when Andrews really began to shine on the world stage.
He spent six years with Ossa, during which time Andrews won the Scottish Six Days Trial three years in a row (1970-’72) and won the European Trials Championship twice (which later became known as the World Championships), all on a bike designed and developed by himself. The Ossa MAR (Mick Andrews Replica) is a well-known machine used in vintage competition the world over to this day.
Trials in America really came into its own in America in the early 1970s, spurred on by Andrews, who came to over in the late 1960s and early ‘70s and began giving trials schools in America. Shortly after, for the first time America began hosting rounds of the World Trial Championship.
Some of the most famous young students who would go on to great things were none other than Hall of Famers Jeff Ward, Kevin Schwantz and Bernie Schreiber.
Schwantz said Andrews was one of his first motorcycle racing heroes.
“He would come out and run schools at our place,” Schwantz said. “I don’t remember that much about what he taught us, the main thing I remember about Mick was that he used to stay at my uncle’s place and as soon as I’d get off from school I’d go and beat him at pool. I remember being out there and watching him but at that stage I was maybe 10 and just wanted to get on and do it.”
Andrews said saw that Schwantz had a special talent event then. His friend Dick Mann kept Andrews posted on how Schwantz was doing as he rose in the road racing ranks in America. He feels Kevin’s trials background definitely gave him an edge on his competition.
“The trials riding would give him the throttle control and control of tire grip,” Andrews explained. “Watch him on the road racer and you can see that he’s incredible at finding, letting go and then getting the grip back again, and that is something trials riders can do. You steer it with body weight, weighting the footrests and things like that, Kevin’s got that to a T. He’s got that little touch that makes a champion.”
Yamaha wanted to develop a trials machine and they knew exactly who they wanted to consult on the project and it was Andrews. So in 1973 Andrews moved from Ossa to Yamaha. He was hugely responsible for the development of the Yamaha TY line, which would become one of the most popular lineup of trials motorcycles of all time.
When testing the Yamaha Andrews purportedly had Yamaha engineers move the footpeg position 16 times before finding perfect feel. It was much the same with spring rates, gear ratios and brakes.
Andrews’ schools introduced hundreds, if not thousands of riders to trials. He had a unique flare for teaching with just enough input without overloading a new rider’s brain with too much detail.
“You can’t really tell a rider how to ride a machine,” he claimed. “You can show him how to do it, but not tell him. Each rider has to make up his own mind on how to ride his machine.”
Of course, ever the showman, Andrews always took the time to give his young students a thrill by clearing some massive rock, or other obstacle, that looked absolutely impossible. “Cameras were clicking and kids were cheering,” one attendee remembers.
A little known aspect of Andrews career was that was an excellent motocross rider as well and competed in MX in his early years. Andrews happened to be in the country when he was asked by Ward Robinson if he would help layout a new track he was building. According to former Cycle News associate editor Gary Van Voorhis, “It was a fall day, cold and gray. Andrews and [American motocross rider] Barry Higgins were let loose on a lush green hillside in New Berlin, New York and carved out a serpentine racing line on a course that would become, in my opinion, America’s greatest natural motocross facility.” Van Voorhis was speaking of course of Unadilla. So in addition to all his amazing credits in trials, Andrews, along with Higgins, can lay claim to being the riders who designed one of the world’s iconic motocross tracks.
Andrews continues to be an ambassador to the sport of trials to this day at age 71. He was honored this past November by the FIM as a Legend at its year-end banquet in Jerez, Spain.