Humphrey Appleby

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 Poole is a poor venue for spectators, and geographically awkward for most of the country.

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.

The British authorities have obviously been losing the plot for years, otherwise the BSI would never have been allowed into the sport in the first place. In any case, I suspect they simply didn't have the money to pay the asking price, which was not especially high, but certainly too high for an organisation whose cupboard was bare. This notwithstanding, I'd still argue the SGP rights were never the FIM's to sell in the first place. The FIM had about 70 members at the time of the sell-off, yet in only about 5 of those countries (Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Germany) was any significant amount of professional speedway staged. Basically, every professional rider in the sport would have been making their living in those 5 countries, so why on earth should they have to buy back something that they ran and provided the riders for in the first place? I'm sure the FIM would argue it was all very democratic, with the 8 minor speedway nations who stage one meeting a year (plus Poland), outvoting 3 major speedway nations in favour of the SGP, and then having the decision ratified by 50+ nations that have never even staged a single speedway meeting. However, sometimes the democratic process (particularly in international sports bodies) can be a complete ass, and the professional speedway nations should never have stood for it.

Yes - the rot arguably set in with Norden because the Germans thought they were entitled to a World Final, and then we went to Amsterdam because the Dutch wanted one, and finally Vojens because it was run by Ole Olsen. Instead of putting the premier speedway event in worthy venues that were known to draw the crowds, a succession of speedway backwaters basically sucked the life out of it. This was still around the time that some World Finals were drawing up to 50,000 people (at Ullevi, Katowice and Munich), which is still better than Cardiff, and even as late as 1992 there was an capacity attendance of 30,000 at Wroclaw. I'd argue about Bradford being an inadequate venue. It held nearly 30,000 at the time of its World Finals, was in a major albeit unfashionable city (and close to another), and was a better stadium than all but four of the current GPs. And on that note, how many of the current GP venues are better than the World Final venues you mention? Krsko, Daugavpils, Lonigo and Malilla with all due respect are hardly 'adequate' by the standards you set, whilst Prague, Leszno and Bydgoszcz although adequate for the task, are hardly blue riband venues either. In any case, I'm not actually arguing for a return to the old World Final system. I don't have anything against a GP system in principle, but I do have a problem with the ownership (although I've nothing against the owners themselves), and manner in which it's run. I also don't actually think it's promoted as well as people popularly imagine either, but that's another story.

That's the world according to BSI. I certainly remember World Finals being held in the Munich Olympic Stadium, the Ullevi, and the Wroclaw Olympic Stadium during the last years of the one-off final. They went to Pocking and Vojens when the format was run into the ground to justify the introduction of the GP system. The problem is they (and the Poles and Swedes) didn't fight it enough.

Running a handful of events at the highest level of any sport is totally uncomparable with running sport on a week-to-week basis, particularly if you don't have to pay a living wage to the competitors. I still think BSI don't do such a great job given their privileged position, and only look good because the rest of the sport is so shambolic. Their big success was to secure television coverage, but beyond that I don't think the sport has advanced greatly under their stewardship.