Moto Gymkhana Taster (via LADAM) 06.04.25

Kenneth Kwok, Friday, 30 May 2025

Context

Depending on when you got your license, you may recall the “joys” of the Module 1 part of the license or sometimes known as the “off-road” skills. It covered everything from manual handling of the bike, to negotiating figure-of-8 circuits, U-turns and then proving you could run at normal speed as well as performing emergency braking manoeuvres.

I am equally young enough to have had to deal with such aspects, though thankfully old enough that I did not have to mess around with obtaining an A2 license before upgrading to the full A license.

Truth be told, I do not recall the Mod 1 being a particular sticking point for me back in my learner days – partially (to mostly) because I learnt on a trusty Honda CG125 back in the day so performing the manoeuvres posed no problems. Since then, though, I have been riding mostly sports/sport-styled bikes! Sports bikes whether they have the “proper” clip-on handlebars or the tubular handlebars on naked bikes such as the Street Triple or Hornet or MT-09/10 typically have a peculiar design choice – namely a reduced amount of steering angle available compared to say a similar sized adventure bike. This has some obvious consequences – turning circles are larger and if you have the clip-on handlebars, it can often feel clumsy performing turns at slow speed. Hand and wrist clearance to the fuel tank is also a challenge – it is quite easy to have the wrists “lock” out or not have any room to adjust the throttle when at full-lock with the restricted space. As one might expect, with a reduced width, you also have to put in a little bit more effort to steer the handlebars as well compared to the usual tubular handlebar design.

There are a range of reasons for the reduced amount of steering angle available on such bikes with the aforementioned clearance between the hand and fuel tank at full-lock being one of them. Another is the geometry effect of the caster angle with the front forks. Without going into too much detail or off-track, the caster angle affects the stability and steering effort of a bike (and indeed even your road car). The more aggressive the angle away from vertical, the more stable and effort required – think cruiser bikes like on most Harley Davidsons. The opposite is also true, so the more upright and “pointing straight down” the forks are, the easier and lighter the effort required.

You might be thinking then – why on earth am I attempting Moto Gymkhana on the proverbial “hard mode”!? Well…I missed out on last year’s event due to other commitments and as I am sure many will agree: you can never have too much training. Since my learner days, it has been rare that I have actually had to practice or perform U-turns so to say those skills were “rusty” would be a bit of an understatement and it is also a bit frustrating when performing such turns realising you have messed up so you need to either paddle or worst-case, do the embarrassing hop off and push…

My initial thoughts were that I would be attending the event and borrowing one of the event organiser’s bikes for the majority of it after hearing the verbatim of others from the previous year. This turned out to be not the case following the briefing! Though I was able to eventually sample one of their bikes in the end and actually probably worked out the better for it learning on my own machinery.

“Track Layout” and Venue

The event was held at Next’s HQ rear car park here:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Qxo2KJquDryhfoXn6

This meant there was plenty of space for a variety of layouts and challenges ranging from the fairly standard figure-of-8, to “extended” figure-of-8 with slaloms, constant/decreasing radius and even a mini “Autocourse” style arrangement.

Considerations and Findings

The day was about exploring one’s own limits and trying to stretch them, but also to discover how far one could push their bike or possibly maybe even find where those limitations are. For my bike, the geometry and weight peculiarities came into play. At slow speed, I find my bike’s willingness to tip into a corner too keen sometimes – sounds completely daft I know, but the way it has been set-up does make it fairly easy to flick it around on a good A-road whilst stable enough to not try and spit me out into a hedge. Here at the lower speed with a fairly hefty weight for a “middleweight” sports bike (211kg with a full tank), it turned into a bit of a work-out trying to navigate my way through the slalom. On one hand fighting it to stop it overly tipping in, but then conversely working hard to pick it back up and over to the other side.

The aforementioned steering limitations came into play with the 3 constant and decreasing radius circles – the idea of the exercise is to start with the outer circle and gradually make your way into the tightest one. After the second one, I was already against my steering lock stops and rather than finding the deck I had to bail out each time – you can hear a little bit of my frustration in the footage, but the price I pay for my bike sadly. That being said though, it was not entirely all “there’s another limit” and feeling a bit glum, namely around my physical riding position. For a while, I reverted a little back to my learner days with my head up as high as I could so I could “look where I wanted to go”. This, however, had the consequence of being a bit too “tall and proud” on the handlebars so steering was less fluid than ideal as well as requiring a little more effort. Instead, adopting a tucked in position closer to the handlebars made movements significantly smoother and despite my head being a little lower down, did not cause any real detriment to my vision points.

I was able to briefly try out one of the instructor’s bikes through the slalom course – I want to say it was a CB500 twin, though not entirely sure…Either way, it was another way to hammer home the point that the kit I have has some physical barriers and I am just too used to straddling a bike in the racer position. The instructor’s bike was so easy to snake my way through the cones, but it was weird being in a more upright position again. Though that is not to say I was not able to show my bike off in a better light when we changed the slalom to the Autocourse style. I will let the footage speak for itself!

In Summary

All in all, a fun day out even mainly being at slow speed – the unusually bright day at the time probably helping a lot. I surprised myself as well with how much the old Mod 1 training came back after the “rust” and “cobwebs” were shaken off so I was very glad at the old algorithm sticking around. Though now with a slightly different “mode” to manage across different bike styles.

There was also an interesting briefing note from the instructors that they were against use of the clutch. Their primary reason being that it cuts some power and therefore to some extent control with the bike. Instead, they advised to only use the back brake as the means to smooth out the power delivery from your own throttle control.

Given the obvious risk of stalling the engine and then finding the floor this obviously is a little peculiar. I tried it to at least see if it was applicable for my bike and I would have to say – only if I was going at a higher pace because I was close to stalling a few times with the engine not sounding particularly happy. Hence, now with a more “informed decision”, I will stick to using all 3 as taught in the learner days – throttle, clutch and brake. All are tools at your disposal as a rider to then manage and of course, incorrect usage of any of them will be a detriment.

YouTube Footage

Right now that you have made it to the end (and hopefully not nodded off), here’s the link to some of the footage I captured, featuring a couple of cameos from Chris and Sandra too.