Vince

You are, entirely reasonably, thinking climate controlled facility equals a large warehouse with the ability to control the temperature and moisture content of the product store there. This is Speedway so a tarp keeping the rain off is controlling the climate by not letting the rain get to the shale

I personally would have excluded Tai but don't think for one minute that it was a clear cut decision and in reality neither of them done much wrong and the track was largely to blame imo. Perhaps its time that there is the option to not exclude anybody in such an incident.

I would say that generally the last 3 or 4 years have been good but before that it was very hit and miss and some have been worse than last night. I suspect that I, and many others thought they had got to grips with it and would now be able to serve up a decent track every year. However as soon as something goes wrong it seems it's back to guesswork. That's why you need somebody who has expertise in all sorts of groundwork and not just Speedway tracks to advise on all aspects, including storing the shale. There would be other people who could do the job I am sure but Ian is the one that I know of and am certain he could provide a good surface every time if they followed his advice.

More luck than judgement that there was only one broken bone during that GP, could have easily been far worse. There has been enough time to learn how to put down a temporary track by now and if not give Ian Barclay a ring and get him in to do the job properly. He won't be expensive, his methods might but it would be worth it to have a good track every year at what is supposed to be Speedways premier event.

Well I think both are unfair and Speedway should be about the 4 blokes in the program racing bikes and not a management game!

I managed about 10 laps of Leicester last April before setting myself up for a few weeks in plaster! Admittedly on a flattrack bike and not especially fast. My thoughts at the time were initially the same as most at first look, long straights and really tight bends and it just looked wrong. However it didn't ride exactly as it looked and the problem for me was the surface more than the shape. These days without the oil going into the track it seems to take a lot longer to get a good surface and I felt that a couple of years down the line it could be a decent track that allowed overtaking by riders running in deep and cutting back. For that to happen I would think you need consistent grip rather than ripping up certain areas of the track and that is going to take time. The shape might not be ideal but I think things can improve and Glyn knows a lot more about tracks than most of the people complaining. Huge track changes by bringing the inside of the bends in 10 yards or whatever might produce the desired results but then again they might not and the money spent be the end for the club.

I thought the most shocking thing was that Holder and Batchelor were out partying together, for some reason I had it in my head that they hated each other although not sure why I thought that.

For all we know it could have happened at 3am with no witnesses and he was traced in other ways when the Police weren't called until hours later. You can't run from what is not there no matter how you try to paint it! There is a difference between what is known - fact - and what you think - conjecture.

Leaving the scene of an accident and running from the Police are two different offences. Nothing theoretical about it, he was convicted of one but not the other.

As you say we don't know the details but given there is no mention of drugs or running from the police I would hazard a guess that it's not 'slightly worse'

Speedway has supposedly been a dying sport on and off since the 30's yet somehow it's still here. I think it will survive even if at a reduced level for a while and then who knows maybe there will be another revival like in many of the previous decades. Maybe not and it will become a mainly amateur sport with a thriving World Championship like most motor sports but it will still be here. It's easy to have all the answers in theory and to blame the promoters for everything but in the main they are succesful businessmen with an enthusiasm for the sport and therefore far better qualified for the job than the majority of us on here. They are also far better informed than we are about the actual income and expenditure of the sport and as it's their money I find it difficult to argue that they shouldn't spend it as they see fit. I might think that I have some ideas that would help the sport but the fact is that if they are tried and don't work I lose nothing, very easy to be sure of oneself in that situation. I do think that there is a real danger of talking Speedway into it's grave by always emphasising the negative. It is still a great sport, it's still fast, dangerous and very often exciting and perhaps if people were told that rather than how silly some of the rules are they might give it a go. I keep saying it but I have been going to Speedway since either 1967 or 68 and I honestly believe that the racing and the riders are at least as good now as I have ever seen in that time.

That's one of my points, the asset system as it stands actually works against young British riders. The other is that the case of clubs from the north being turned down for places by British riders is often used to claim lack of determination (as it was in this case I think) when there are riders who would willingly do the job if only offered the same deal as their supposedly more dedicated foreign counterparts.

How many times did they offer the young Brit help with digs, workshop and transport like they did the Aussies? A young rider from the south of England would have to average 4 just to pay for getting to and from home meetings before he spent a single penny on his racing equipment let alone actually eat!

The point isn't whether any of those particular riders are able to hold onto a place if given a long enough run (although I believe that if given a long run some could) but if they aren't given the opportunity how many others will see that and walk away from the sport before ever reaching that level? Perhaps some will not even try the sport in the first place. We often see that people want riders to come across from MX or other sports, they will only do so if they can see they are going to get chance to compete on a regular basis, they are used to being able to practice and / or race every weekend and sometimes midweek if they want to. Are they really going to give that up for a few NL meetings knowing that they probably won't be given the opportunity to move up and get frequent racing? get enough British kids on bikes and the chances of finding riders of a good standard increases pro rata.

Because Sam and Billy didn't make a success of moving into the PL doesn't make it wrong for others to try and it didn't do any damage to their careers in all honesty, they didn't make it because they weren't dedicated enough. There were also other things going on that caused problems for Sam at the wrong time so it's not as cut and dried as you think. Ater all there were also more experienced foreign lads tried at Newport that didn't succeed either. In my opinion it's very little to do with 80cc or organised junior racing either (though both could be only good things) and everything to do with kids riding bikes for lots of hours. You only had to talk to Mads or Kristian to understand just how much time they could spend riding round a Speedway track for minimal cost. We once worked out that Kristian could spend more time on track in a month than a British lad was likely to get in 2 years and it was costing him about £8 per day with some proper coaching often available. That is why they are more succesful at an earlier age. I personally don't think that matters so much and we should be comparing British lads at 22 or so with their 16 to 18 year old foreign counterparts. The other problem is that whenever these things come up the talk is about the Ward's and Jensen's. Those riders would come through whatever their nationality because they are exceptionally talented, a British lad with Wards natural ability would be in the same position although maybe a couple of years later. We need to concentrate on getting kids into the PL and keeping them there, the rest will follow in time.

So a foreign rider is being hard done by to get by on £150 a week when they are set up within a few miles of their home track and not scoring while a British lad who lives at the other end of the country is OK to get by on nothing at all if he has a bad spell. Not only that but he will be dropped if he has more than a couple of bad meetings because he will never become a club asset. For my money the British lad who is paying out to travel hundreds of miles every week with very little support is the one showing real dedication. The truth of the matter as far as I see it is that there is little difference between the attitudes of British and foreign riders. Some are very dedicated, some are on a jolly and if anybody thinks that every Aussie, Kiwi , Dane etc is hugely dedicated and spends all their time working on their bikes rather than partying they are mistaken.

Surely if they were in the UK from such a young age they could apply for citizenship and ride in the NL. But it is still more important to safeguard the future of young British riders than to worry about a few possible exceptions in any case.

British riders can and have lived in places such as a caravan by the track, subtle difference that it's not subsidised by the need for promoters to pay toward accomodation by work permit requirements.

I think we need to forget about developing World Champions and concentrate on getting as many British lads into the leagues as possible. Eventually when there are enough of them the odds will be in favour of producing top class riders. As for riders of other nationalities, if you have the talent Darcy Ward yo are going to get all the help you can ever need whether you are Australian or Afghan. For most though it seems they come over with savings and help from family and friends. Once here they do tend to get a good amount of help with lodgings, facilities and work. In my experience on average they are no more motivated or dedicated than the average British rider. You have to remember to compare like with like and you tend to see the better foreign riders come over so you can't compare them with British youngsters doing amateur meetings or second halfs and hoping to go on from there, those who made it here are already way past that stage. Many British youngsters and their families make huge sacrifices to support their racing, no more or less so than the foreign riders and their families. Very different thing for British riders to go to Poland with no guarantee that if their first race is poor they will get another chance. They are also going to be competing against home grown riders who have spent hundreds of hours more riding Speedway bikes in many cases and have systems in place to make sure they can retain their team place. Compare that to somebody coming to the UK who once signed will be given a lot longer in a team to find their way than the home grown rider because of the way our asset system works. Is it taken for granted that a British rider will stand on his own two feet financially? Very much so. Would he be helped with digs, workshop, transport etc? Not as far as I am aware, certainly not at the outset of his PL career.

At the end of the day if you say, for arguments sake, 1 rider in every 20 makes the grade in the PL or above then you need as many British riders on bikes as you can get. If,as I believe, that difficulty getting enough racing is one of the reasons riders walk away from the sport before they hardly get going then it doesn't make sense to be giving places to foreign lads. Especially as in many cases the main reason the foreign lad is better than his British counterpart of the same age is because he has 10 times the amount of riding hours.

I wonder how many of the posters on this topic (including myself) have ever written something along the lines of "Speedway should be a simple sport, 4 riders, 4 laps" while blaming the powers that be for making it complicated? I think that has happened more than a little here, some people think the sport is as good as it's ever been while some think it was better in the old days. No right or wrong, just an opinion. Obviously those who think the latter are mistaken though

I favour the idea of the losing team getting the pick of 1 & 3 or 2 & 4 gate. If the scores are even then positions are swapped each heat but as soon as one team is ahead the other gets gate choice. No massive advantage but maybe just enough to keep things closer for away teams without looking like 'it's a knockout'

A curtain on a truck is exactly the sort of thing you would need for a permanent track cover that could be fixed behind the fence and then pulled over and attached to points inside the track. It is heavy duty with webbing reinforcement and has brackets and straps attached. For one to fit a double deck trailer which is approx 45' x 12' you will pay in excess of £1000, so to have them custom made to fit the track you would have to estimate at least £15000. Then you need to make something outside the fence strong enough to attach it to but that also retracts below the top of the fence and put fixings on the centre green so I would have thought that would double the cost of the sheet so my guess would be in the region of £30k for something long term.

Like Horse racing, Cricket, Football, Tennis for example where events are never postponed because of surface problems caused by the weather despite being far less susceptible!!!