Eddy Lejeune – A King of Trial

With the 2016 FIM Trial World Championship set to visit Belgium this coming weekend, the moment seems right to remember one of the real Kings of the sport. There is no doubt about it Belgium’s Eddy Lejeune dominated the slow speed discipline on the global stage back in the early eighties with the spectacles wearing rider winning the FIM Trial World title three years in a row – 1982 / 1983 / 1984.

During his top-level career that spanned from 1979 through to 1989 Eddy contested a total of one hundred and twenty-two Trial Grand Prix events. Aged just seventeen years old Eddy made his FIM Trial World Championship debut in Ireland in ’79 and placed just outside the top twenty at the notoriously muddy Newtownards venue. Later the same season he scored his first points with an excellent eighth place in Great Britain before then claiming his maiden podium finish just a week later at his home GP. 

By the time the triple FIM Trial World Champion had finally signed off from the international scene in 1990 Eddy – the middle one of the three Lejeune brothers - Jean-Marie being the eldest and Eric the youngest – he had amassed sixty podium results and thirty-two GP victories to truly secure his place as a King of Trial.