Humphrey Appleby

Needs to be re-iterated that it's not a proper team competition.

Where did the SGP actually go that was a 'non-speedway' country? I can't think of a single GP that was held in a country that didn't have at least one speedway track that holds meetings every year. Yes, speedway might not have a massive presence in the likes of Italy, Finland and Croatia, but speedway is a minority sport in every country where it's ridden (including Poland). A 'non-speedway' country would be somewhere like the UAE and Malaysia that the Spar occasionally speculated about on slow news days. And let's not forget that GPs were held in these alleged non-speedway countries because they were either cheap to stage or because there was some promoter there willing to fork over a staging fee. You'd hope that in return they'd get access to the promotional, marketing, organisational and technical skills of BSI, plus the Rolodex of potential sponsors, yet it seems local promoters were largely left to their own devices which is why stuff like no signage or insufficient beer happened. Tampere was a disaster because the stadium was totally unsuitable for a track and the racing was a poor spectacle. That should have been pointed out at the start by people who you'd thought would know something about building a track. Riga was a comical joke - the stadium was clearly in no fit state to stage a GP, and it seems there was no supervision over the preceding months to check how things were progressing. Speedway is a hard sell at the best of times, but fiascos like the two GPs mentioned above will certainly not endear you to existing fans let alone win over new ones.

I'd question it. I'm not suggesting that keeping the old World Final format was the way forward, but the latter World Finals that were held in decent stadia had pretty decent audiences compared with most GPs today. After about 1993 though, these events all seemed to be held in small and often remote venues with few other attractions, and the results were there to see. But I'd have thought even Coventry managed to pull crowds that some GPs would be happy to have today, and of course the Millennium Stadium (or the other indoor venues) wasn't built yet with its stakeholders needing to fill an expensive loss-making venue. BSI - unlike the BSPA and other speedway promoters - did understand how to leverage money out of local municipalities and tourist boards, and how to court the relatively new cable/satellite channels desperate for cheap content. And I suppose at one point their founder did harbour ambitions to be a sort of Bernie Ecclestone, taking the SGP to better venues and new markets around the world. But when it came to the crunch, there were really only a couple of prestige venues in any given year, with the rest of the series filled with the sort of tracks like Landshut and Linkoping plus the obligatory Polish ones just as in the old days. Other than the Millennium Stadium and perhaps Prague, few other venues proved sustainable in the long-term and the SGP never ended up going to 'new markets' except for the handful of GPs in Australia and NZ, and that was really only because some other mugs were found to throw away their money. Plus there were numerous fiascos with GPs being called off, moved at a day's notice to another venue, and indoor meetings being abandoned with fans in the stadium. In the end, IMG/BSI seemed to either realise the SGP wasn't really going anywhere or just lost interest, and seemed to settle on running the competition as cheaply as they could get away with. Although ironically, going to proper speedway tracks seemed to improve things in some respects. I'll say in fairness that I think speedway is a hard sell, with expensive set-up costs, vulnerability to the vagaries of the weather (seemingly even indoors ), the sport having no sort of high profile anywhere other than Poland (and even that's debatable), an unattractive spectator demographic which is somewhat reflected by the rather thin list of sponsors, and virtually no wealthy patrons or those that can open doors to sources of funding. But a change of promoter is long overdue and the rights should have been re-tendered years ago. It will be interesting to see what Discovery/Eurosport can do with speedway, although they did make Ski Jumping cult viewing so who knows?

The SON is really nothing more than a Best Pairs competition with an U21 rider chucked in.

The fairest thing would be to give the higher place to the lower ranked rider - whether based on the championship standings from the previous season, or the intermediate classification.

It's ridiculous that speedway is reliant on such ancient and inconsistent mechanisms. You could have a laser start gate that switches off when the race starts, but could detect false starts. It would also make it much harder to anticipate the start.

One minute the government is 'concerned' about the number of rising cases, the next it's saying no social distancing is needed in theatres and sports venues. Doesn't seem to know its a**e from its elbow. For the record, sports stadiums in Queensland have been open to spectators for weeks; albeit with reduced capacity. No face masks required either.

That absolutely sums it up. Speedway is a popular 'regional sport' in Poland, akin to how Rugby League is in Britain. Most/many people in Britain know what Rugby League is, but it doesn't mean they follow it.

Not sure why you and Grand Central put so much faith in politicians. Most are far stupider than you give them credit for, and generally make decisions on what will make them more popular / less unpopular tomorrow than what's better in the long run. The simple fact is that a 'Spanish Flu' type scenario has long been postulated, and the spread and mitigation of other infectious diseases long been studied, including quite recently. That Grand Central and yourself are apparently ignorant of this, and prefer to believe government propaganda that it's the first time anyone has ever had to deal with such things, sums up the sheep-like mentality of much of the population that's been scared into submitting to the edicts of their supposed lords and masters. There are far more sensible measures that could be taken that would allow a modicum of normality for the least likely to die age groups, whilst limiting economic destruction and the loss of important social and sporting institutions. Whilst sport obviously has to come a long way down the list of priorities, there seems to be little real scientific analysis applied to countries declared to be COVID-19 hotspots.

There have been pandemics before, and there has been planning for them - for many years in fact. But for some reason this time, governments are taking panicky knee-jerk reactions to every development, even though these are in many cases entirely predictable. And the UK government has been amongst the worst for its inconsistency.

They're just making it up as they go along...

We've had this discussion before, but I don't think he'd have made for a good supremo for various reasons. And I think we really only ever heard his narrative on his non-appointment. Undoubtedly a very good promoter, a good understanding of how to run sport, and someone with substantial vision. But the reason why speedway has ended-up in the mess it has, is due to the majority of promoters who couldn't or didn't want to see the bigger picture, and/or who were unprepared to take the leaps of faith that were necessary. Anyone running a member-based association has to accept there will be multiple opinions on how things should be done that you'll have to defer to. You can rarely do things the way you'd prefer, and you have to have considerable diplomatic skills to steer a course that keeps the majority of your members happy. John Berry would have got frustrated very quickly, and likely fallen out with people over trivial matters in the way that he did. That's not the qualities you need for such a role.

I'd guess BSI will have contracts with television and sponsors and need to try to put on meetings so they won't have to repay some or all of the money (or conversely they'll receive some money from those sources). I guess monies are also contractually due to the FIM, although maybe they'd agree to waive some or all of this because of the exceptional circumstances.

It's looking a bit like the old and not missed FIM Champions Cup.

I'd have thought not running speedway would actually save money. The major sports have so much television and sponsorship money riding on them, that it's still worth their while to run behind closed doors. I can't see though, how speedway could be run without spectators as that must be its major/only source of income, at least in Britain. And it's been practicing social distancing in the stadiums for years... Even for the SGP, running without spectators must be really be getting close to being unviable.

You do have to ask who's advising them on their communications. Surely the main point is also the risk of spectators spreading it around?

The question possibly needs to be framed better. Yes, a track reserve can make the Semi-Finals with enough points. I believe 5 points is the theoretical minimum needed under normal circumstances to make the top 8 (assuming there aren’t multiple exclusions in some heats), whilst 8 points will guarantee it. 6 or 7 points is probably the realistic minimum required, although it’s possibly conceivable with 4 points on a tiebreak (they would also have had to have won a race in this scenario). A track reserve can obviously only take a maximum of 5 rides, but that could be anywhere in the programme so they could theoretically ride against another rider 5 times, and could certainly ride against one rider more than once. So yes, it’s very unlikely that a track reserve would ever ride against every other rider. However, this has to be traded against the fact that opportunities for track reserves to ride during a meeting are relatively rare, and they have to alternate rides with the other track reserve (unless that reserve was promoted to a qualified rider pre-meeting). It’s somewhat unlikely, unless there was an early injury that they’d get a full complement of rides, and the law of averages would suggest they’d get a mixture of opposition. One rule I would add is to make the 9th to 16th placed riders after Heat 20, reserves for the Semi-Finals. And similarly the 3rd and 4th placed riders in the Semi-Finals, the reserves for the Final.

Just tradition, for the same reason as there's no No. 8 or 16 (there once was).

The seeds of Reading's demise were sown before BSI got involved, by the previous promoters not fulfilling terms of the lease for whatever reason. Maybe the money was just never there, but I think Reading was ultimately doomed anyway once the location and its surrounds was earmarked for re-development - inevitable in a growing Thames Corridor town. Even a long lease wouldn't have protected it, although might have been a bit of leverage for finding an alternative site and funding a new stadium. Didn't think the Rubbish Tip was too bad in the 1980s and the site had a lot of potential. I quite liked going there, but it did get rundown towards the end and the crowds seemed to be woeful much of the time.

Didn't mind the 3TT over an Easter weekend, although the format was a bit incongruous. But if you thought that was strange, you should see the 3TT they've devised for cricket in South Africa - where three teams takes turns to bat and bowl against each other for 6 overs at a time; much like the speedway version.

It is easy. If there's any significant uncertainty about an event scheduled in a couple of months going ahead, then it needs to be cancelled. People will have/will be booking transport and hotels, but can usually get refunds or re-arrange up to a month or so in advance. On the other points, regardless of who actually runs individual GPs or collects, IMG/BSI is the championship organiser which should mean ensuring some sort of standards for the customer. It also means that dealing with the FIM and FIA comes with the territory - it's a necessary part of the job. I think it's also a stretch to claim that IMG 'run about 700 events in a normal year'. Their own website actually says they 'own or represent 800 events' which is different to actually running them. Indeed, as you're happy to point out most of the time, IMG don't run most of the Speedway GPs. I don't doubt that IMG have been badly hit by this whole thing, just as the FIM and FIA will have difficulties with loss of income and staff, and having to deal with multiple different jurisdictions in trying to work out how to restart things. But they're hardly in a unique situation, and with respect, the importance of their industry and contribution to the world economy is relatively insignificant. Airlines and tour companies for example, have to deal with refunding huge amounts of money. I'm also intrigued to know why Pinegen needs to furlough staff as the Star is still being published as far as I know. Genuine question?

Because it's lazy journalism harking back to the era when it was more difficult to check such claims. Even a cursory understanding of the geography of the area would reveal that the Olympic Stadium can't be on the site of the Hackney or London Stadium.

Yes, only 11 teams in the league that year, riding home and away once (preceded by a League Cup, also riding home and away). So that would have been a maximum of 20 matches, although Oxford were unable to ride their remaining two home matches as they ran out of time. It's also not really fair to compare different eras with different heat formulas and different gate selection rules. Oxford were also so dominant in 1986 that Nielsen was probably rarely used - if at all - as a tactical sub, so would have only ridden against the other No. 1s a limited number of times. Nevertheless, Nielsen only dropped 12 points (all at home) during that league campaign.

Fixed gate positions were introduced in the BL in 1988, although were trialled in the Knockout Cup the previous year I believe. I seem to recall the NL using fixed gate positions before that - maybe 1986 or even earlier.

The various Speedway World Championship should be run by an international association of professional leagues, whether under the umbrella of the FIM or not. The events should be run for the benefit of the sport with the majority of (any) profits being shared amongst the tracks running professional speedway, perhaps with an agreed percentage going to develop grass roots speedway. With respect to Poland, whilst I'd generally say that the sport in any one country shouldn't just run in isolation without consideration to anyone else, I think there's little choice in the current circumstances if any speedway is to be run. Borders are closed, or at least quarantine measures are being imposed, so it's simply not going to be practical for international competitions to be run in 2020, and certainly not have riders travel back-and-forth from league-to-league. So it's pretty obvious that riders are going to focus on the most lucrative league, and if Poland can get going and can still afford to run behind closed doors, then you have to be fair and let the riders try to earn some money this year. The SGP isn't going to be paying the bills, and frankly should be amongst the lowest priorities at the moment.