Humphrey Appleby

It's actually 2 in 100 events, because Gothenburg was cancelled a few years ago due to a poor track. To put in perspective though, when was the last time an F1 GP was cancelled? Difference is, the SGP only has to sort out 11 meetings a season, with the advantage of being under a roof for three of those rounds, and undoubtedly with more than one bloke turning up on a tractor the day before a meeting. It would actually be interesting to compare the percentage of British meetings called off due to incompetence given how many more are staged per year, with BSI's more than 1 in 50 failure rate with the supposed premier event of the sport.

Yes quite, as happened at Gothenburg. However, they at least had the get out that the track preparation was the responsibility of the local organisers then, but now this quite clearly falls with IMG/BSI because the responsibilities were changed after the Ullevi fiasco. I therefore wonder how they'll manage to wriggle out of this one. IMG may now be the parent company, but I think the SGP is still largely organised by the former BSI people (although has anyone seen or heard from Postlethwaite recently?). I suspected IMG may not really have understood what they bought into, and quite what they must be thinking now is anyone's guess.

I think it once again demonstrates BSI is not all it's cracked up to be.

Claiming you've sold 10,000 tickets does not make it so. Claiming that the barge shipping the shale got wet is also pretty lame. Have they not heard of covering it?

I believe Norwegian is closer to Danish written wise, but closer to Swedish spoken wise. I think the three Scandinavian languages are reasonably mutually intelligible though.

I thought Crump went down a bit easily to be honest, but Gollob did contact him, and I guess you couldn't really make any other decision. Pedersen's exclusion was fair enough, as even if he did get his shoe caught on Crump's bike, then it was only his own fault.

The trouble is, how would it all be paid for? The SGP has already been cut from 24 to 16 riders to save money, so I don't imagine the series organisers are going to do anything that would increase their costs. In reality, I doubt many riders would buy a slot given the relatively poor rewards on offer - BSI had that idea already, and it's been pretty much a non-starter.

The trouble is, any national champion from outside (say) the top eight countries would simply be taking the place of a better rider. Furthermore, I think you'd find more riders adopting flags of convenience to get an easier route in the SGP.

The problem is that would be before the European season had started, and I can't see that riders would want to go straight into a GP race rusty. Each World Championship was a standalone competition each season, so not really comparable. If the GP qualifier was at the start of season then fair enough, but imagine if the No.2 rider got injured in the last GP of the season and then couldn't ride in the GP Challenge? Yes, I know it could be argued this was the case with 9th to 16th placed riders in old days of the GP Challenge (and indeed Andy Smith always requalified at the expense of someone better), but I think it's less of credibility problem for the lower order riders to miss out than the riders who stood on the GP rostrum only a week or two earlier. So why not just seed them and be done with it? Why go through the pretence of a competitive qualification process, if you're just going to hand them their place back anyway?

How absurd would it be if a rider who's finished 2nd after 11 rounds, then goes out in a one-off meeting whilst the 11th placed rider re-qualifies? The need to ride in a couple of GP Challenge rounds would also severely complicate the holding of GPs in places like Australia, which realistically need to be staged towards the end of, or after the European season.

There are only about six countries in the world that could track half-competitive seven-rider teams. Furthermore, speedway meetings without local interest are never well supported, which is why the SWC moved away from staging all the rounds in one country. I doubt there are even seven riders in Croatia.

Although of course the Spar has not always been reliable with respect to where FIM events will be held.

In the days of the old World Championship, it used to be an interesting adjunct to what was primarily a team sport, and I'm sure it probably also helped promote day-to-day racing. However, with so many individual events these days, people just seem to think it's the be-all and end-all of the sport, even though it actually rides roughshod over the parts of the sport that pay the real wages. I don't think it's much different from the past, except that other national leagues have gained greater prominence and prestige at the expense of the British leagues. Speedway is set up different to other sports, and is almost unique in that its competitors ride for multiple teams in different countries. That makes a Champions' League type competition impractical, although there may be scope for a European Super League or similar.

There are simply too many rounds. There should be no more than 6-8 GPs per year. Hardly. It was a cost-cutting exercise so that riders could be given a pay rise without the overall prize money having to go up. I have long been of the belief that BSI only look good because the rest of speedway is so bad. However, I think the SGP ultimately has limited appeal beyond a few countries, and BSI found they got diminishing returns. Probably still a reasonable earner, but whether it can deliver the return that IMG expect, I have my doubts. One wonders if IMG really knew what they were buying into.

In that case, what would be different next time around? However, I believe the local promoter was also responsible for the transport and shipping costs which were significant, and I heard he was shafted for the prize money as well. Good racing unfortunately doesn't pay the bills though!

Rightly or wrongly, most content targeted at an international audience will be in English because that's the language most people are likely to speak as a first or second language. I imagine the provision of interpreters is just not cost effective for something like the SGP which is largely produced on the cheap (hence the commentators in a UK studio).

Well in that case, I definitely won't be drinking the stuff.

There's also overdoing something. Hancock putting his drink can into every camera shot just makes me determined to never try it, even if I could actually work out what he was trying to promote.

It was still largely an open qualifying process though, and wasn't the British Final open to Commonwealth riders in those days? Yes, the odd rider was seeded in the past, but that was usually the guaranteed local place that was allocated on the basis of some sort of qualification criteria itself (e.g. I seem to remember Jan Andersson being seeded direct to a Gothenburg World Final on the basis of being Swedish Champion). That's a far cry from half the field being hand-picked.

What a ringing endorsement, if that's what we've come to expect from the supposed pinnacle of the sport.

Because speedway isn't F1. F1 drivers generally only drive in F1, whereas in speedway there's weekly league racing as well.

Not initially, but eventually you might. However, the above assumption pre-supposes that costs remain the same, when really what's needed is a significant reduction in these. For me, the sport is currently in the position where it can't charge premium rates because its facilities are so poor, so the only real alternative is to market itself as cheap entertainment. GBP 15+ is an outrageous amount of money for the entertainment on offer, and is the fundamental reason why the sport has haemorraged supporters in the past years.

Being a successful businessman does necessarily qualify you to successfully running a sport, because sport isn't like a normal business. Most businesses compete against others in a normal marketplace, but whilst in a professional sports competition you might compete on track, you effectively need to run a league as a cooperative. In addition, far too many promoters in recent times, have got involved in speedway for hobbyist or personal glorification reasons, and therein lies part of the problem.

AFAIK, there's no passenger flights to Daugavpils airport yet. You have to fly to either Riga, or Vilnius (in Lithuania). AirBaltic has regular direct flights from Gatwick and Stansted to Riga, and from Gatwick to Vilnius. Lithuanian Airlines also flies direct from Gatwick, Stansted and a few other UK cities to Vilnius. Neither airlines are true budget airlines as such, but their fares are not usually outrageous either. Riga is several hours from Daugavpils, and Vilnius is probably at least a couple. I think there are rail services from both Riga and Vilnius to Daugavpils, but I think quite slow. If you rent a car in Lithuania, you should check whether it's covered for Latvia as well. I think there's a severe shortage of accommodation in Daugavpils, and in any case, Riga and Vilnius are better tourist destinations. It's a nice country, but neither is it mega-cheap these days either.

Ermm.. but 45-50K is still more than any round of the GP achieves now. Whilst I agree there's no point looking back to the past, I still argue that the nail in the coffin of the World Final was going to tiny venues in smaller speedway nations, when crowds still justified medium-sized venues. Given the enthusiasm of the Ole Olsens and some in the FIM for a GP system, one can only think this was done deliberately. Six laps would just make races even more of procession. The fundamental problem is that the tracks are not condusive for overtaking these days; no more so than abominable Olsen-prepared GP surfaces. I have certain sympathy with respect to the difficulties of preparing a decent track in the one-off venues, but there's no excuse for it in the permanent speedway venues that otherwise normally have decent racing.