Humphrey Appleby

Ultimately, I don't really see the mileage in basically just repeating the Saturday event on a Sunday with the same riders. Other motorsports will generally have practice, qualifying and different types of race (if not different classes) on different days. Plus as others have said, you can usually camp overnight and not pay the ridiculous Cardiff hotel rates. I know it seems to work with ice racing, but I think it's telling that the Amsterdam experiment was never really repeated in speedway.

Just add a speaker connected to an iPod with speedway exhaust sounds, as well as a smell generator that drips Castrol R into some sort of heated pipe.

I think I saw that they're trying to re-open the old Central Line extension to Ongar as a 'heritage' electric railway.

It doesn't really matter what the rights and wrongs are. Noisy combustion engines using carbon-based fuel are going to get outlawed sooner or later, regardless of whether there a few or many. I'd think things like heritage railways are also going to come under scrutiny, even if they can still get hold of coal. There's probably going to be a market for old London Underground trains in future.. Again, it doesn't really matter whether they're justified or not - complain they will and use every spurious argument. It will be harder to counter the noise argument if much quieter engines are available.

The Dutch F1 GP was nearly prevented from happening because of a legal challenge on environmental grounds, and this sort of thing is only going to increase as the world moves to electric vehicles. Whether traditionalists like it or not, speedway is going to have to move to electric if it's still around in 10 years time, and possibly even before. I'd have thought speedway with its short races would be well suited to electric propulsion, and might even bring down the costs of engines and expensive tuners.

For some reason, multi-day events in speedway never seem to have been popular. Not really understood why as it seems to work in other motorsports, and indeed ice speedway, but it is what it is.

I think that horse has bolted now, and the British leagues just need to try and move forward in a financial sustainable manner without trying to accommodate the multiple International demands they derive no benefit from. If that means teams essentially being made-up of juniors but who're able to turn up every Friday or Saturday, then that's what needs to happen.

Not sure that such a competition would attract plenty of spectators or TV deals. It didn't when the World Championship featuring all the top riders was a knockout competition, and I'm not sure what the interest would be in European/Nordic/Overseas meetings held at a neutral venue without the top riders. I'd think such an event would depend very heavily on spectators to pay its way, and having so many meetings at one venue (or even one country) in such a short time would have high costs and wouldn't attract enough local interest quite aside from the track preparation demands. The SWC held in one venue/country didn't really pull the fans, so I'm not convinced this would be goer financial or logistically. The bottom line too, is that these qualifying meetings are distributed around Europe to give different countries a chance of staging a 'World Championship' event. It probably also helps to spread the financial risk as well. Fundamentally, I think it's daft to have a knockout competition deciding the places in a GP series, and particularly with so few SGP places on offer. As I said, I'd rather have all or most of the riders qualify from some sort of season-long competition linked to the major professional leagues, with perhaps a qualification path (e.g. via the European Championship) for riders outside of those leagues.

The proliferation of FIM and UEM competitions over the past few years is really to raise the status of meetings in the smaller speedway countries. The likes of Hungary probably find it hard to attract semi-decent line-ups to their domestic meetings, so sticking a World or European Championship title on it - whether U19 or otherwise - not only raises the apparent profile of those meetings, but they probably also get away with paying far less than they'd otherwise need to be paying to get a similar line-up. That was of course, one of the rationales of the SGP to give more countries more high profile meetings on a regular basis. Again, that major professional leagues have allowed this to happen is very poor, although weekend speedway probably doesn't really impact Poland and Sweden (or Denmark) in quite the same way other than their riders possibly getting injured. I suppose a big loser is longtrack which used to be able to pull the top speedway riders to their Sunday meetings, but the rise of the Polish leagues started that trend anyway. The three or four professional speedway leagues should have taken control of the FIM competitions years ago, whether still under the FIM banner or under a new body. Bernie Ecclestone and the F1 teams did that years ago, and whilst they nominally respect the FIA as the sanctioning body and pay licensing fees, the F1 participants and their venture capital partners fundamentally organise and run the competitions for their own benefit. Yes, the SGP, SWC and SON competitions could be condensed to run on less weekends, but probably television wants regular meetings throughput the season. The UEM speedway competitions should have no place at all in the calendar, except perhaps as a lower tier competition for riders not competing in the main professional leagues. Speedway is primarily a European-based sport anyway, so it's absolutely ridiculous to have these duplications that are effectively competing with each other for riders and sponsors. That the FIM allowed the UEM to do this was another fiasco. I'd possibly even abolish SGP qualifiers as we know it, and select riders based on their averages or some sort of season-long 'second-half' qualification competition in the main professional leagues. You might want to have some qualifying events for riders who don't ride in these competitions to gain 'ranking points' or maybe a place or two in the SGP, and these could be staged in the smaller speedway nations. But I find it absurd that a GP competition uses a knockout format to determine places in the competition. When it comes down to, it's really only the British leagues that are hugely affected by the FIM calendar, but that a (once) major speedway league providing employment to most professional riders in the world allowed its position to be undermined so much, shows very poor political lobbying. No doubt many of the British promoters were of the ilk that 'that they need us more than we need them', 'pull up the drawbridge' and even 'Britannia Rules the Waves', but in the end were totally outmanoeuvred by those in the FIM and private promoters. But they might have persuaded the other professional leagues to their way of thinking by pointing out the potential amounts of money going to the FIM and out of the sport to a private promoter with little or no skin in the domestic speedway game. A total lack of vision combined with the sticking of heads in the sand...

In the early years, GP 'stars' were possibly thought of as a drawcard as British fans expected to see 'the best riders in the world'. And quite possibly promoters would have seen decreased crowds without them, so it's understandable why they got sucked in. However, history has shown that the inclusion of GP riders did little or nothing to improve crowds or revenues, or ultimately justify the costs that were incurred. That's not the fault of the GP riders who are largely only interested in making the best living they can whilst they can, nor indeed can you blame them for having their cake and eating it with respect to riding in the SGP, if that's what British promoters put on their plates. But at the end of the day, they merely hastened the downward spiral of a sport that had already started on the downward spiral. As I said, the moment the SGP cat was allowed to be let out of the bag, the British leagues had stuffed themselves. A GP series was inevitable in the modern world, just as similar disruptive influences like the IPL and Big Bash were inevitable in cricket, but if you're the incumbent running the sport then at least make sure you're part of the bandwagon and get your cut from it...

I'd guess many fans would prefer to watch the GPs on television rather than go to their local track. That's why the die was cast from the moment the professional leagues allowed the SGP to go to a private promoter. Cricket has similar issues when England are playing, but domestic teams at least accrue some of the revenue when fans are off watching international cricket.

The die was cast the moment that the professional league promoters, but particularly the British ones, failed to grasp the opportunities offered by the SGP and allowed the FIM to sell it off to a private promoter with basically no benefit accruing to them. The SGP affects the Polish and Swedish leagues much less - if at all - but even so it's ridiculous that they allowed a prime asset that basically utilises their assets for free to escape them. Very poor vision and even poorer politicking in the FIM corridors of power. Once the SGP got a foothold, the British leagues were screwed either way as the speedway-going public were used to seeing the top riders in Britain, so any stand against using GP riders would cost fans, yet by trying to accommodate the SGP they found they had to run on off-nights and/or not on prime summer weekends, and lost fans anyway. The GP riders dropped Britain once the wages dried up, not least because the fans stopped coming. I'm quite sure they'd still be turning up if the British leagues paid Polish wages, whatever other excuses they may have given. But the whole issue of insufficient riders is a wider one, and is another thing that wasn't well addressed over the years. Doubling-up is fine as a development pathway through the league structure, but ridiculous when it's just a way to make up the numbers. It just becomes the thin end of the wedge - reduce opportunities and you ultimately reduce the number of riders competing for those places.

History and ever decreasing spiral that’s speedway, suggests that GP riders were not the draw cards that was thought.

The BSPA were never going to be able to keep the World Final for their own exclusive benefit though, especially once the Swedish, Danish and then Polish leagues started to take off. They should have seen the writing on the wall with private attempts to promote a GP-type series, and got together with the other major countries to ensure they got in on the act and the potential benefits. That would have become easier in the early-90s with the rise of satellite and cable television that was looking around for cheap content. How Saturday GPs would square with Friday and Saturday night tracks would still be a matter of conjecture, but at least the revenue could have compensated those circuits.

There was an element of wanting their cake and eating it though. The SGP has never paid a living wage, so riders effectively expected to their domestic league activities to support their world championship ambitions, and the British promoters allowed it to the detriment of their businesses. Very much a case of the tail wagging the dog, but that's really speedway in a nutshell.

But again, the SGP was a missed opportunity for British speedway. Instead of allowing a private promoter to skim off what little cream there was in the sport, the major professional leagues could have run the competition for their own benefit. The demands of international cricket mean that the top players have rarely appeared in county cricket for the past 20 years, but at least the millions that the England team generates largely goes to the counties. Speedway isn't in anywhere near the same league in terms of revenue (maybe a million or so in profit per year), but precisely nothing came back from the SGP to compensate for the loss of Friday and Saturday racing.

The problem was that a 'top league' was just was much needed as a lower league to protect it against inflationary pressures. There were always more successful tracks that could run with higher costs, and with a single league that dragged up the costs of the other tracks in order to be half-competitive. Of course, so many tracks had disappeared that I think the sport was down to about 21 in 1995, so it was barely possible to cobble together two leagues by that point. But the 'one big league' whilst providing more variety that was desperately needed, was too expensive for the lowest common denominator and merely accelerated the closure of tracks (I think a couple more had closed by the following season). That of course was the impetus for a (new) new National League, so the sport quickly ended-up effectively reverting back to two tiers.

The big decline really started in 1985 when the British League lost (I think) 5 teams, dropping from 16 down to 11. The set-up was never healthy from that point onwards, and even though the National League gave the appearance of being vibrant for a while, the lack of cooperation and understanding that the health of both leagues depended on each other, ultimately dragged the sport further under. Doubling-up is not an issue if it's to cover for injuries and to give lower league riders experience of riding in the top flight, and as such the antipathy between the BL and NL which led to a refusal to use riders in the other league was really quite pathetic and led to the ever-increasing professionalism of the NL which eventually forced some of those tracks to fold. Doubling-up is only an issue if it's employed because of a fundamental lack of riders to fill all the teams. You could also point to 1989 when the BL decreased again to 9 teams, the BL/NL merger in 1991 that was vehicle to get Poole into the top league, the even more ill-fated 'one big league' BPL in 1995, followed by the introduction of the BEL in 1997. Endless tinkering that's did nothing to address the underlying issues or have an resemblance of longer term thinking.

That was the reason as I remember.

It's why a finger needs to be stuck in the air at some point, but practicality tells us that evening sports events start at 7.30pm for a reason, and most people probably don't want to be in the stadium for more than a couple of hours if that. There's noise and light pollution reasons, public transport reasons, cold night air reasons, and simply because people might want to get to the pub for a round or two afterwards. I'd honestly find it hard to fathom that the majority would want less rather than more action, and you can work out in practical terms how quickly you can run races. 2 minutes to get everyone to the tapes, one minute for the race, 30 seconds for the celebrations and then stick on the 2 minute warning for the next race. Maybe 5 minutes every 4 races for grading and mini-intervals, which means you should easily be able to run 20 heats in around 90 minutes if the will was there. Split things up into a (say) 14-heat match, so those that want their one hour thing can bugger off straight afterwards, but put on a (say) 6-heat individual novelty competition for everyone else who wants the value for money. The British leagues can no longer afford the top stars anyway, so just structure the contracts and pay rates so the riders you do sign take the whole meeting seriously.

I believe there's now a disused car factory just down the road...?

I think Oxford has been a bit different in that it's always had quite a supportive local council who were wise to the games of the stadium owner, and effectively safeguarded the facility against housing development. It's been a battle of wits over the past more than decade as the owner has allowed the stadium to fall into disrepair in the hope of having it condemned, but for some reason the traditional arsonist never managed to visit to help get the job done, and the council has consistently failed to to cave in. By contrast, Swindon Borough Council has a different political make-up that you'd think wouldn't have much time for working class sports but more time for housing developers...

Cricket is very different to speedway though, in having marketing and financial contacts in high places, and talented people wanting to be associated with the sport. It does also have a much wider grassroots base, being more widely played and at very least, more people actually having heard of the sport.

Unfortunately, the writing was on the wall for Swindon the day Gaming International got involved. You only have to look at its erm... track record to see it was naive in the extreme to have believed any of the promises. Not sure what could have been done in the practical terms though as the sport is unlikely to have the money to buy up stadiums to keep them out of the clutches of asset stripping developers. Probably just a concerted PR campaign to raise awareness of Gaming International's proven behaviour...

They don't. Anyone can run a speedway meeting or even set up their own governance body. However, there's ultimately little or nothing to be gained from splintering governance and regulation of the sport, particularly in motorsport where there are more complex technical and safety standards. 'Alternative' sanctioning bodies often leech off the standards and utilise the trained officials of established bodies whilst claiming they're doing things cheaper and better, but it's rarely a sustainable far less improved model. I agree that pressure sometimes needs to be exerted on a sanctioning body to implement needed reforms, but in the long run no-one really wins when everyone is just doing their own thing.