Humphrey Appleby

Not sure it was a financial success, although better to ask those that were around then. Furthermore, it was held at a time when speedway was far more popular than it is now.

I'd guess there are probably fewer tracks than in the past, and maybe the financial commitments need to stage WC rounds are higher these days.

I'm assuming there must be some premium seats at Gorzow, otherwise the track is going to be losing money on the deal even with a capacity crowd. Even going on the basis of people coming and spending money in the city (and I'd guess much of the crowd will be locals who'd do that anyway), the sums don't really add up if 300K is just for one event...

How much do you normally pay to get into a GP in Poland?

I'm not sure World Cup rounds have ever been that financially attractive, and the the World Cup Race-Off and Final are potentially a big risk as there's no guarantee of the host team being in them. The GP Challenge is also little more than glorified open meeting these days.

Much like in speedway where the smaller speedway nations seem to wag the tail of those that actually provide professional speedway riders with a living...

There's always been a policy of awarding more prestigious WC meetings to venues also prepared to stage less attractive rounds (e.g. early qualifiers), and that's only reasonable. However, I suspect the reality is more down to fewer venues being interested in assuming the financial burden of staging WC rounds in these chastened times, not to mention the list of WC and EC events seemingly getting ever longer. Either way, I don't see what you'd expect the FIM to explain, even if you could get anything more than the usual nondescript press release out of them.

I seem to recall Phil Rising (and others) mentioning on here they'd lost sponsorship from their local authorities/tourist boards. It doesn't take a genius though to work out from the crowds and ticket prices that some venues must be reliant on more than gate money alone.

Doesn't have to be. In fact, a non-local wildcard has been named on a number of occasions, usually when the host country already had several riders of its own in the GP.

BSI taking the series to the biggest and best venues then? Whilst Gillman might be a great club circuit from what I've heard, I hardly think it's the place to be holding an Aussie GP anymore than the likes of King's Lynn should hold a British GP. Even Adelaide isn't the most obvious city in Oz to hold such an event, not having many direct flights to anywhere outside the country, and certainly not being an obvious tourist destination for foreigners. [bTW - before you say it, I've been to Adelaide (twice) and quite like the place. However, I'm not sure it'll be that attractive for the average tourist. ] Surely there must be a medium sized venue in either Sydney or Melbourne that could be used for a GP. What about the new Sydney Showground in the Olympic Park or the old Melbourne Olympic Stadium? It's utterly tedious, but I imagine it's an issue of who's prepared to host. I guess a GP is not so financially attractive, as we've seen from the withdrawal of Slovenia and Latvia from the circuit.

Probably because none of these countries are prepared to take the financial risk, whereas Denmark and Poland are.

It's a different scenario. When the average Aussie and Kiwi comes over to Europe, no doubt it's just them on an economy ticket and they acquire their gear when they arrive. By contrast, if you stage a World Championship round Down Under, you need to ship all the riders, mechanics and officials there, not to mention the bikes and paraphenalia. In addition, whilst some riders might choose to sell on their equipment in the country (even if the customs issues of doing that could be resolved), you can't expect them to leave their best gear behind. I'd have thought it likely that IMG had already looked into such things, but there must be other issues as to why antipodean GPs have not been considered feasible.

Quite. The 1992 World Final in Wroclaw also received a huge deluge halfway through, but with the help of some pumps and some blading, it was made raceworthy fairly quickly. It surely shows it can be done if the will is there...

Yes, but I'm not sure Denmark or even Sweden have more speedway fans than Britain, and those countries have two GPs each. In any case, I think in the case of the non-BSI promoted GPs, it's more down to what financial support the locals provide than how many fans they're likely to draw. The crowds for the Italian GPs are abysmal, and those for the Latvian and Slovenian GPs are nothing to write home about. I wouldn't disagree though, that two British GPs would likely seriously dilute the attendances.

It's all about finding mug...erm promoters willing to stage a GP. Presumably the majority of promoters in Britain have got better things to do with their time and money, and although I suspect there's a degree of BSI wanting to keep the Cardiff GP somewhat exclusive as their 'flagship'. How many GPs do people want anyway? There are already far too many, and from what I'm reading, the racing is pretty boring at most/all of them.

And of the course the SGP has been the way forward, right? There are a number of things I'd change with British speedway, and I probably would try to go down the route of having just a couple of racenights. However, the fixture issues don't just affect the top league, and neither do I see an even more elite top league as being the way forward. If I were the BSPA supremo, I'd certainly also be going down the route of not letting a third party have the prime racenights so easily.

Yes, but there must be some underlying reason for all the mickey mouse meetings, as I'm sure the promoters don't organise them for fun. It's not that changes can't and shouldn't be made to the British fixture list, but I'm pointing out that Britain is not Sweden or Poland and what works (or doesn't) there, isn't necessarily right for Britain. Yes, but with the best will in the world, it's almost impossible to work around international meetings now. It's not just the SGP and SWC, but the plethora SGP qualifiers, the World U21 GP and qualifiers, World U21 Team Cup, European Championship, European U19 Championship, European Pairs, European Club Champions Cup, and no doubt some others I've forgotten. You could fill every week of the season with some sort of international competition, so just when are domestic fixtures supposed to be held?

It still sounds like a fluffy role to me. If Argentina really wants to enter the SWC (assuming they could raise a competitive side and afford the cost of participation), then surely it's just a case of applying like anyone else? What's so complicated? That's quite aside that there are several traditional SWC teams (e.g. Norway, Austria and Bulgaria) that should be brought back before gallivanting off around the world. [Although I appreciate Argentina at least has some history of speedway.] Haven't we heard this all before, and yet 10 years on we're still waiting for a sustainable GP outside Europe?

Only three other countries have a significant league programme and still organise many fewer meetings than Britain. Furthermore, in Denmark and Sweden they're generally not having to pay commercial rents for their stadiums (which are often leased by local authorities for peppercorn rents) and have traditionally relied much more heavily on sponsorship. They therefore don't need to stage the same volume of meetings to make things pay. In addition, they have shorter seasons and long summer evenings which are more conducive to mid-week meetings than dank dark October evenings in Britain. Plus many of the tracks are in small or smallish towns in remote areas (in comparison to Britain) which don't require one to navigate the M25 or M6/M42 at rush hour if you want to see a meeting. I wouldn't disagree that British promoters are as much responsible for their own downfall as anyone, but the conditions for running professional speedway in Britain are not the same as anywhere else. That's ignoring the fact that it's not physically possible to have a single night for speedway whilst the most tracks are tenants of multi-use stadia, nor indeed that you could fit 40+ meetings into a 32-week season, even without taking out 11-13 weeks for the SGP and SWC.

Of course, it may be that 'FIM Speedway Director of Sport' is akin to being 'moved upstairs' to Director of Football. In practice, they such positions have little power, and are usually an honourable way of putting people where they can't do much damage. I note the press release is devoid of any detail as to what the FIM Speedway Director of Sport will actually entail, quite aside from the linguistically challenged title.

Well generally they're team based, and it's the teams who choose who they want to represent them, not the international federation or the rights holders. At one time though, the likes of F1 did have qualifiers whereby almost anyone could turn up and try to get into a race, but expense and safety concerns eventually put paid to that notion (although not so long ago). This said, speedway does not have the same traditions as other motor sports, and the World Championship was historically based on the principle of every rider having a chance of winning it at the start of the season. Okay, I know in practice that didn't happen, but there were probably 300 or so riders who started out on the qualification trail each year. But obviously too expensive...

Remind me what it's selling again?

It's all very difficult to fathom, but one might conclude that how the tracks were prepared simply wasn't at the top of their priorities whilst the television and sponsorship money continued to come in. I'd imagine that a significant proportion of the SGP television audience is in Britain, so a SGP without a British rider would not be a easy sell. Don't know what the viewing figures are like in other countries, but again that probably influences the nominations.

Well so they say, but again I'm not sure I'd fork out around a million quid a year to have a committee tell me to how to prepare the tracks or which riders I should pick. In addition, I'd have thought given the composition of the CCP, they'd be more in favour of direct qualifying rather than nominations as it gives the smaller nations a better chance of representation. I think few would disagree that a staging nation should have a local rider in the field, but there's already provision for a wildcard in each GP. It's the season long 'wildcards' that make a mockery of the competition.

Through open qualification. I can live with a certain percentage of the SGP requalifying on the basis of their performances, but this nominated nonsense whereby riders are picked because they're needed for a particular market rather because of their ability, somewhat makes a mockery of the system. Yes, a one-off qualification system doesn't necessarily guarantee the best riders will qualify, but it does (theoretically) give every rider outside the SGP a chance, and certainly makes the whole thing more credible. To be honest though, I could even live with a system whereby British, Polish and Swedish league averages were used instead, provided qualification is decided on-track rather than in some back room (or in a pub somewhere). And Scott Nicholls is likely to be on the rostrum instead? I don't see that as a criteria for choosing riders, as in any given competition, most riders have no chance of being on the rostrum, but you still need some also-rans to make the field. It would be better though, if those also rans were there by right rather than patronage.