Derwent

On the face of it, the GP is not generating much income for the riders involved - however, I wonder how much extra sponsorship they receive from being involved ?

You could also apply that to Mikael Max, his GP performances are nowhere near the standard of his EL racing.

My guess is that as well as cheat and liar, we can also add coward to the list of descriptions.....

SWEDEN (Red) Mikael Max Tony Rickardsson Antonio Lindback Andreas Jonsson Peter Karlsson POLAND (Blue) Krzysztof Kasprzak Jaroslaw Hampel Tomasz Gollob Janiusz Kolodziej Marcin Rempala DENMARK (White) Hans Andersen Nicki Pedersen Kenneth Bjerre Niels-Christian Iversen Bjarne Pedersen TEAM GB (Yellow) David Norris Lee Richardson Mark Loram Scott Nicholls Gary Havelock

Spot on mate. In my view when there is a race off with 2 teams qualifying, if they are going to allow jokers then it should be when you are 6 points behind the 2nd placed team not the leading team (i.e. 6 points from a qualification place).

Joe certainly did his bit as did the rest of the lads, it was a superb team effort all round. By the way, have you ever, and I mean ever, seen Mark Loram gate better than he did last night ?

I've e:mailed both of you my GP programme in Excel format.

It's been confirmed that Simon Stead will be riding in saturday's GP in Copenhagen. Simon will be riding in Heat 4 with Bjarne P, Max and Laukkanen. Another Brit for us to cheer and a remarkable comeback for Simon following his bad injury earlier this season. Lets hope he does himself proud.

Confirmed - Simon Stead is riding in Copenhagen and goes in Heat 4.

I think Havvy hit the nail on the head when he was talking about Lee on the fanzone commentary. He said he had looked at Lee in the past and wondered if he was mentally strong enough and had enough desire to take him to the heights his talent deserved. He went on to say that he's seen a change in Lee this year and that he seems to be more focused and determined, which is paying big dividends. Hopefully Lee can progress from this, his confidence must now be sky high, and now he's proved to himself that he can mix it with the best there's no reason why he shouldn't do it consistently.

Holta's not riding. Holta has decided he will ride at cardiff according to his website www.holtaracing.com

We used countless taxis in Prague last year and never got ripped off once. The secret is to negotiate with them before you get in. Tell them where you want to go and they give you a price, say 500Kr, then you offer them about 300Kr and 9 times out of 10 they'll take you for that price. Worked every time for us !

There are plenty of cash machines in the city centre, all of them let you draw out cash using your Visa/Mastercard etc and if you've got one of the new Maestro cards you can use those too. Or you could just take travellers cheques 'cos there's plenty of Bureau de Change places in the city.

Yeah, but the grading system doesn't apply to PL so what happens there ? All it says is "the team's No. 1 rider" - now that could mean the guy who wears the No. 1 race jacket, it could mean your highest average at the start of the season, your highest average at that time etc etc etc Clarification needed !

The wording of the new rule is confusing. Does it mean you can only have a guest when the rider named at No.1 in your team line-up is out - or does it mean your No. 1 in terms of your rider with the highest average ?

Personally I think it'll come down to who keeps their nerve best, and for me that would be Nicki as I think Jason has a tendency to get a bit emotional and let things affect him. I hope not though, cos I think it'd be a travesty if Crumpy doesn't win a world title and he'll never have a better chance than this. He doesn't want to end up another Gollob, but can he handle the pressure ?

Well if it wasn't Steve or jgl then it must be me who is the numpty ? I don't know, you try to help someone and get emotionally scarred for your trouble :-(

And she's apparently got a plentiful stock of Budvar, which makes her more than ok in my opinion

I was at one of those, but I can't remember which one :? It was the year my childhood idle Lou Sansom lost the title in a 3 way run off after being squeezed out on the first bend. He'd been the best rider in the league all year by a mile, held the silver helmet all year, but fate conspired against him. Tragic. I think it was 1976, but my memory isn't what it was :-( You could always try Tony Jackson at Workington - he has a vast collection of speedway archives.

Too right I will, although it'll be more expensive next year as they switch over to Euro's in April. If Amsterdam and Dublin are anything to go by then prices will rise a fair bit once the Euro is in place. We're desparately trying to convince the last unmarried bloke in our circle that he has to get married so we can go back on another stag trip before April !!!! He's refused so far, some people are just selfish.

Erm, well, it was my stag weekend you see (getting hitched in 4 weeks) and I was sort of in a permanent state of drunkenness all weekend (we arrived on Thursday evening). It became apparent at about 5.30pm on Saturday that we (there were 10 of us) didn't actually care about the GP anymore 'cos we were having such a ball, so we decided to stay in the pub and watch the England footy match. Gave our tickets away to some Swedish folk, who no doubt made a fortune selling them at the stadium Was consoled by the fact that I was videoing the GP at home, except when I got home on Monday I found that the wife-to-be had actually taped 3 hours of pap on ITV. So, still haven't seen the Prague GP, probably never will now ! Still, it was worth it ;-)

Was that the stuff in the green bottles with the red label that tasted like syrup ? On Saturday morning we found a little backstreet bar near the Rose & Crown english bar which was knocking out Budvar at 10Kr (or 22p) a pint - very nice ! Imported beers were expensive (my mate paid £4 for a pint of guiness in one bar cos he was sick of lager) but the local beers were cheaper than water, and the Budvar 12% has a nice kick ! Don't know where Joanne paid £2 a pint at in Old Town Square, must have been in one of the bars near the clock I suspect ? Over the other side of the square there were two British bars - Caffreys and The George & Dragon - next to each other which were very reasonably priced at about 45p a pint. Other bars worthy of a mention were The Thirsty Dog, Bar Jaguar and Sportsbar.

Prague was fantastic, beautiful city and beer prices so cheap it was dangerous ! So dangerous in fact that we actually managed to forget about the GP and missed it altogether !!! Saw lots of Brits around the Wenceslas square area and in the Hard Rock cafe etc - dunno if I saw anyone off this forum cos I've never met anyone. Old Town Square on saturday afternoon was packed with Poles, thousands of them, great atmosphere. A word of advice for anyone going in future - avoid the Irish bars like the plague. Highest prices in town and the beer was flat and awful. Rocky O'Reillys in particular was rubbish. The James Joyce wasn't much better. Best place in Prague ? Club Darling, just off Wenceslas Square. Don't take the mrs though Flew back with a few BV lads on sunday evening, they were good crack and hello to them if they read this !

Oh well, I tried but...... Hi Due to the re-scheduling of the FIM Scandinavian Speedway Grand Prix I will now be out of the office until Tuesday 2nd September. I will be picking up my e-mails periodically. If you need to contact me you can call me on my mobile: Kind regards Nic NICOLA SANDS Media Manager Benfield Sports International Tel: +44 207 578 7453 Mob: removed by request E-mail: nicola@benfieldsports.com Perhaps we should bombard her mobile with calls until they give us an answer ?

And I have rung and emailed Sky, and still no answer I've e:mailed Nicola Sands at BSI who is their "media manager" to ask her if sky are showing it or not. If she replies I'll post the response on here.