Spain and Great Britain triumph at the FIM Trial des Nations

Clear favourites at the start of the day, Spain’s dominant men’s team followed the formbook to take top honours at the 2026 FIM Trial des Nations (TdN) for the twenty-second consecutive time while Great Britain regained the Women’s title, Norway topped the International Trophy and Germany ran out winners of the Challenge des Nations competition.

Staged at Arteixo in Spain, home advantage was of little consequence to the all-powerful Spanish trio of Toni Bou (Montesa), Gabriel Marcelli (Montesa) and Jaime Busto (Beta) who steered their nation to its thirty-second TdN win, but the battle for second was intense with Great Britain’s Harry and George Hemingway (Beta) and Harry Turner (Sherco) resisting strong challenges from Italy and France to claim silver for the second year in a row.

Last visited in 2023 when it was the venue for the opening round of the Hertz FIM Trial World Championship, the mostly natural sections were plotted in a wide, wooded valley with imposing granite rocks testing teams from the world’s leading Trial nations.

With a team’s best two scores counting on each of the fifteen sections, Spain and the French trio of Benoit Bincaz (Electric Motion), Alex Ferrer (Montesa) and Pablo Echene (Sherco) shared the lead after two sections with clean sheets, but that all changed at the third where the home side added five to its score, a total matched by Great Britain who moved into second on six.

A strong Italian side comprising Matteo Grattarola (Beta), Francesco Titli (Montesa) and Gianluca Tournour added seven here to take its total to eight to tie with France.

The next two sections were completed by all teams without any further marks, but as the hazards became increasingly tough and technical Spain began to quickly open up a sizeable advantage, especially on the challenging tenth where the home nation went clean, France picked up three, Great Britain needed six and Italy added ten.

With the harder sections positioned towards the end of the lap and rain starting to fall, Spain reached the halfway point in the competition on a total of eight, nineteen clear of Great Britain with France a further twelve adrift and Italy bringing up the rear on forty-five that included a single time penalty.

As the rain got heavier and grip became much harder to find on the smooth boulders, the Spanish team – featuring the top-three ranked riders in the world – tightened its grip on the title and its second lap total of nineteen, while a big increase on lap one, was easily good enough to ensure the TdN title was staying with Spain for yet another year.

“It has been very special for me to win here in Arteixo near my home in Galicia,” said Marcelli. “The whole team has worked so hard and given one-hundred per cent and we are all super-happy.”

With an average age of under twenty, Great Britain’s young guns showed real maturity to maintain second place with a lap two total of thirty-eight taking its total to sixty-five, twenty-nine clear of Italy who staged a fierce fightback to defeat France by a single mark.

Bronze medallists in the TdN Women’s category last season, Great Britain brought ten-time TrialGP Women champion Emma Bristow (Sherco) out of retirement to lead Alice Minta (Beta) and Kaytlyn Adshead into battle and she proved to be inspirational as they claimed an eleventh title on a day when even the smallest mistake could have big repercussions.

Fielding the same team of Andrea Sofia Rabino (Beta), Alessia Bacchetta and Martina Gallieni (Sherco) that won the title for Italy for the first-ever time twelve months ago, the defending champions put up fierce opposition and the opening lap was a game of cat and mouse between the two nations with the Italians leading at the halfway mark on two, two ahead of Great Britain.

The Spanish team of two-time and reigning FIM Women’s Trial World Champion Berta Abellan (Scorpa), Abril Montserrat (Beta) and Daniela Hernando (Beta) sat a distant third at the end of the first lap on a total of twenty-one before a thirteen-mark gap to France’s two-rider team of Alicia Soyer and Margaux Pena (Electric Motion).

Lap two was incredibly close with Great Britain reducing the deficit to a single mark, but that all changed at sections twelve and thirteen where Italy added nine while Great Britain needed just a single mark to move into a commanding lead on a total of seven.

However, there were nervous scenes at the final hazard – a man-made section comprising concrete slabs and giant pipes along with boulders and tree stumps that was under cover so remained dry – where Great Britain’s seven-mark lead could easily have been cancelled out, but both nations remained clean and the title went to the British women for the third time in four years.

“Today has been amazing,” said Adshead. “We all made mistakes, but we worked hard as a team. It all came down to the last section and we did it.”

Spain added twenty-nine to its score on lap two to finish on a total of fifty, thirty-one clear of France, with the German team of Hannah Schneider (Beta), Sophia Reumschussel-Ter Jung (Montesa) and Jule Steinert completing the top five on a score of one-hundred-and-eleven.

The competition in the second-tier International Trophy was incredibly close all day with the German team of Paul Reumschussel (Montesa), Jonathan Heidel (Beta) and Rodney Bereiter (Beta) completing the opening lap for the loss of just one mark to lead Norway’s Sondre Haga, Jarand-matias vold Gunvaldsen and Jone Sandvik (Sherco) by four at the halfway point.

On lap two the scores were reversed with Norway winning the tie-break to take the title for a fourth time.

“It’s been a great day, although it got way more exciting than we expected,” said Haga. “We had a five on the first lap that set us back and we were lucky it started to rain as that made it easier to make mistakes and we were able to fight back.”

The final step on the podium was filled by Japan’s Shinya Hirohata (Montesa), Jin Kuroyama (Sherco) and Yohito Takeda (Honda) on a total of fourteen, seven clear of defending champions the USA that fielded Alex Myers (Scorpa) alongside Alex Niederer (Beta) and Ryon Land (Sherco).

Now in its fifth season, the Challenge des Nation category for two-rider, mixed-gender teams was won by the German team of Marco Laure (Beta) and Magdalena Hubner (Sherco) on a total of twenty-one putting them seven clear of Spain’s Oriol Garcia (Sherco) and Queralt Fontdevila (Beta) with the Czech pairing of Tadeas Mikunda (Electric Motion) and Petra Budinova third on forty-two.

“It was hard work for Magdalena and me,” said Laure, “but together as a team we worked well and I’m delighted with how it went.”