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Epic timing SGB quote: "Anlas hit the headlines in the opening Grand Prix rounds of the season when some of the most successful competitors chose to use them." FIM quote: "The FIM has taken the decision to temporarily suspend the use of ANLAS Speedway tyre with immediate effect. The ANLAS Tyre can no longer be used until further notice in any type of motorcycle Speedway World Championship events and this includes SGP in Gorzow this coming weekend."

I think the line its not enough time to prepare is a bit lame

There`s not many tracks better than Bydgoszcz - if any !! Would love it if Prague had to be called off, the GP rocked up there next weekend.

Cook is no big loss to be honest, if it rained the weekend before he'd want it called off.

And now British Speedway have announced a partnership... with Anlas

Crumpie should be in it as well!

And even more bizarrely just a week later will see the cars run a World Final in the same stadium with a crowd nearly 3 times the size which is all perfectly fine as it's a grass roots amateur sport

Pathetic knee jerking from the hapless government again. 1000 limit makes no scientific sense at all. If anyone is transmitting coronavirus they could the first person with a ticket or the two thousandth. How many others they may infect is again purely random. It's all spin to make everyone think it's safer.

To be honest you can’t blame riders that haven’t rode a bike all season for giving it a miss.

He did hit Barker and the changing room walls.

Peter Leung needs to take a rest from the sport,after his big crash in Sweden he just doesn’t look right.Misjudging things on track.Although his first crash looked like a bike failure tonight.

I've heard people say they don't want to set bikes up for one meeting.

Looking forward to reading Triggy's account of that night at Cradley. I was there as a wide eyed 7 year old, but standing on the second bend was obviously unaware of the gun incident. For the onlooking crowd the abiding memory of the night was Mike Gardner whacking Middleton on the head with his crash helmet following an incident near the end of the meeting, after which the nearest anyone in the crowd got to seeing Middleton was a blanket in the back of a car as it inched out of the stadium.

Cook & Howarth both posted on twitter they are not riding

Hope Bydgoszcz stay up

No cook,Wright,Nicholls,howarth,who the heck will be riding?

Injured

The last time I stood in that spot I thought their average age had come down a little.

Re-reading it, I think he probably meant to say Middleton "stood in the middle of the pits" (not the track), so that would be our mistake.

that is possible but we still get the 'big names' people. In Newcastle the basketball team had a guy called Fabulous something or other. He was a big namr round here and i guess people went to watch the team to see him. In.world basketball terms he was a nobody really. You can promote and make big stars out of what's available if you do it properly.

It surely has to be the case, going forward, riders expecting promoters to give them big bucks to turn up and ride, will, in many respects go. The money just won't be there, not sure it really was there anyway. The current situation, could mean, promoters 'setting out their stall' in a 'reboot' way and looking at things from a fresh angle, with the emphasis on the sports survival.

I'll just be happy if all the matches go ahead when they're supposed to...

I think you've gone to Aussie enough to feel as much as home there as here... Rory has done the journey... he's got my respect and I'm a Wolves fan who used to have a big can of "Bee" repellant a few years ago!!!

This whole ticket situation is a shambles.Money grabbing and not wanting to refund is what it is about.Any proper business would just have refunded and Re-sold tickets In keeping with restrictions imposed.

It may well already be over subscribed ....

Spot on. The reality is, those championing restrictions as things stand now, are championing NEVER seeing family again at Christmas. Even if Covid-19 was to disappear overnight and never be seen again, Christmas is multiple times more dangerous for respiratory viruses than it has been for the last three months.. including now. Of course, they are all hypocrites and would do so immediately once they weren't programmed what to do.

So then new restrictions on gatherings and the possibility of a 10pm curfew! Yet this country full of fools still believes they are acting in our best interests. Get real people and realise we are now living n a totalitarian state! Yes infections are rising but what matters is hospital admissions and more importantly deaths, which have fallen through the floor. So for those who agree with it then get your vaccination and microchip and the rest of us will continue to enjoy what freedoms left we have!

I don't think crowds would drop by 50 % by not having "star" riders about because in reality not many of the Worlds top 30 riders compete in the UK anyway, haven't done for a number of years now and In real terms the smaller amount of fans (compared to years gone by) )that still go to British speedway meetings have long since gotten used to the idea. Also theirs probably not enough interest from current non speedway spectators to potentially come along just cause some foreign guy who finished in the top 10 of previous seasons GP has signed for their local club. Likewise I don't think that most fans nowadays necessarily view watching the highest level of speedway as the be all and end all. The better the rider, the less mistakes they make, the faster they become which both add up to overtaking become much harder and less likely which is a key element to good racing. This is why NL racing is often better entertainment. My local NL track Mildenhall have in my opinion made the correct decision in staying in the lower cost, mainly amateur 3rd tier of British speedway because moving up into the Championship (2nd tier) would increase outgoings on rider wages and travel costs massively but crowd levels wouldn't go up enough to cover these extra costs. This was proved in the 2006-08 spell when Mildenhall moved into the 2nd Division. Likewise 2nd Division clubs moving up to the top flight have found the same thing as well for years now! I do get your theme of British speedway being reborn cause I think sooner rather than later British speedway will have to evolve into a mainly part time, lower level status and clubs and riders will have to cut their respective cloths accordingly. This will involve not paying out big time wages if the crowds can't pay for it, less expensive overseas and/or top level riders and riding on racenights that suit the individual clubs not the F.I.M. While I can't see British speedway returning to the halcyon days of the 70's I do think theirs enough interest for it to be sustainable if run within its limitations and more locally based riders are found that would help to stimulate interest!

OTD September 2, 1973: Jerzy Szczakiel became Poland’s first World Champion, after defeating defending champion Ivan Mauger in a run-off for first place in Katowice. It was a huge shock to most people outside of Poland, although the Opole star was more than a match for anyone on Polish turf. Szczakiel was often unfairly branded the ‘Worst World Champion’ by British fans. He crashed out of the 1973 Daily Mirror International Tournament at Oxford, while he failed to score in the World Team Cup final at Wembley a fortnight after becoming World Champion while riding with an injury sustained practicing for the event. But he wasn’t a one-hit wonder. He scored a paid maximum for the triumphant Poles in the 1971 World Pairs Final in Rybnik, when he and Andrzej Wyglenda took a comprehensive victory and left the New Zealand pairing of Mauger and Barry Briggs trailing in their wake. Szczakiel won his opening three outings at Katowice, including a victory over Mauger in Heat 8 – a race in which the Kiwi only mustered a third. Russian Grigory Khlinovsky bundled the Pole wide in Heat 15, but he came behind to recover second place. He needed to win Heat 18 to clinch the title, but he finished second to Ole Olsen to join Mauger in the run-off for first place on 13 points. Polish ‘boy wonder’ Zenon Plech should have joined them in the run-off, but for some bizarre refereeing from West German Georg Traunspurger in Heat 19. Khlinovsky, also in with a chance of the run-off, knocked off Plech as they battled for the lead on the final lap. The referee stopped have stopped the race and excluded the Russian, but allowed it to finish, before booting out the Russian. Under FIM rules of the time, a re-run was not permitted, while first place had to be given to Peter Collins since he had completed the race and Plech had not. Maybe it’s just as well that Plech wasn’t in the run-off, since he had gained an extra point when Edward Jancarz let him through for victory in Heat 16 in a race stage-managed between four Polish riders. On the other hand, Szczakiel had won all his points fair and square. In the run-off, he took advantage of a typically ragged start from Traunspurger. Mauger closed in, but he misjudged his inside pass of the Pole on the third bend of the second lap and came crashing down. Szczakiel completed the remaining laps alone to thunderous noise from a crowd of over 100,000. Szczakiel become the first rider to defeat Mauger TWICE in the same World Final – a feat only John Louis would repeat. To his credit, Mauger was magnanimous in defeat and often praised Szczakiel. Research showed in the years between ’71 and ’73, the head-to-head between the two riders stood at a very close 7-6 to the Kiwi. Not many riders were able to go toe-to-toe with Mauger over this period. Szczakiel passed away yesterday at the age of 71. RIP Jerzy.

The old boys playing jazz on Charles bridge is my favourite place in the world.

Well he’s not going to take one out his back pocket? It doesn’t really matter if the tyre was on a bike or not

I brought 2 tickets for the British final and all I got was a confirmation email from PayPal. Speedway gb then said the proof of payment from PayPal was all you need to enter the track. So without actual ticket numbers for example if you bought ticket 1500 what is to stop you turning up just before gates open and producing your email from when you ordered the ticket and walking in ?