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International Six-Days Trial Prova Internazionale di 6 giorni

It is difficult to date the birth of the use of the motorbikes in cross-country because at the beginning of the century, i.e. when the use of the motorcycle began to expand itself all around Europe, the roads were all levelled. In this age the border between the road and the cross-country was weak and uncertain. The dates of the first Reliability competitions are relatively sure, they have been organized in England and France since the first years of the twentieth century and so called because the winner was not necessarily the faster driver, but the most regular one.
	The first ISDT, International Six-Days Trial, took place in Carlisle, in Great Britain exactly, in 1913. This kind of competitions immediately collected the interest of the public, but until 1950, it was marked out by mostly “street-like” ways, even if considering their very bad conditions. The choice of this kind of distances is the fruit of one aware economic and advertising strategy: already at that time the great firms proposed standard models, whose merits and defects were estimated by a public who used them daily, whether he liked it or not, on the same distances of the ISDT.
In the post-war period this sport only started gradually to refine, to abandon the standard product, in order to be transformed and to acquire those essential peculiarities and all those project exasperation, typical of the motor sports.
The street and the off-road motorbikes began to be more and more different, as well as the distances, that increased progressively in difficulty and hardness. Following up the modifications occurred in economic and trade flows that animated and followed the post-war reconstruction, also the strategies of the great motorcycle manufacturers changed and developed. They began to advertise their trademark, and all their range of production, through the competitions and in the same they invested in studies and searches.
The result of the commitment of several Sport Departments was expressed in real technological jewels, that increased, even more, their grip on the public who immediately fell in love with them.
		The gold period of the Off-road Reliability was between 1947 and 1990: the richest and more fruitful period involving, for different reasons but with the same results of work and participation, also East Europe, otherwise absent in many other disciplines combining sport and technology.
While for the industries of the West the agonistic commitment was justified by a considerable commercial feedback, in East Europe people devoted to Off-road essentially for strategic-military character reasons.
The results, in terms of commitment, technology and victories, are equivalent for many years. That made comparisons particularly passionate, and their fruits are still today present and tangible.