Humphrey Appleby

Of course it has something to do with the promoters. Yes, teams should only pay what they can afford, but if enough riders turn round and say it costs x in order to be competitive against other riders and I'll be running at a loss, you'll not only lose riders from the sport, but there will be more competition for those riders that remain - effectively negating any cost savings, even assuming you can still find enough riders to populate the teams. Individual riders can't simply decide to cut back on equipment by themselves, and indeed sufficiently cheaper to buy and run engines may not even exist. Promoters need to legislate what can be run for the good of the sport, and if that means maintaining a central pool of engines maintained to a common standard, developing a lower cost engine and mandating its use, or whatever, then that's what needs to happen. Nothing will ever change if those running the sport absolve themselves of responsibility for controlling one of the biggest costs in the sport.

Wages will constitute one of the biggest, if not the biggest cost for a promotion, and is something that the collective will of the promoters can control unlike most other costs. No point simply saying reduce wages and the rest will follow, because there's a certain inherent costs involved in manufacturing small numbers of specialised engines, and then finding the handful of rebuilders/tuners to maintain them. Of course the equipment costs have got beyond the point of stupidity and what can be afforded, but it's partly incumbent on the promoters to find solutions to that - either through bulk purchase of engines, maintaining a common pool of engines, or severely restricting how engines can be modded (and that still won't stop the use of selected parts engines).

Would guess it would be established as a company limited by guarantee, with the track owners as the company members.

That wasn't really my point. Things like the points limit, lack of control over wages, and an engine tuning arms race have forced up costs beyond what is sustainable. Of course you have to get fans through the door as well, but can't reduce prices until you reduce costs. And even if you do get more fans through the door, teams will just spend any extra money on trying to lure riders unless there are controls on this, which doesn't get you any further forward.

Likely to be simplified accounts which won't tell you much.

Rider allocation, centrally-contracted riders, wage control, standardised equipment and procurement thereof are all possibilities.

Would have thought there was always the risk of a rider taking the BSPA to court over the asset system, winning the case, and then getting damages that the promoters (or at least those on the Management Committee) would be collectively liable for. Maybe it wasn't done before because of the need to publish accounts which would open the promoters to financial scrutiny. The law has been changed in recent years though, to increase the amount of turnover before you have to publish full accounts, and I doubt 6.5 million per year is going through their books.

Of course, in a proper sport it would be unacceptable for the same owner to have controlling influences in more than one team in the same team, which is why virtually every (if not all) credible sports competition disallows it. However, speedway is already a joke with teams borrowing riders (guests) from other teams in the same league, that it probably makes little difference in practice. This said, I can see the benefits of running a league as single corporate entity, because that will allow for better control of costs, and better competitive balance. Provided there's a separation of the league ownership and team management once the riders have been doled out, the contracts agreed, and competition starts, then there's no reason why it shouldn't work.

Presumably because those players meet the criteria for being granted UK work visas (which are clearly specified for ice hockey), and Jaimon Lidsey does not. Maybe ice hockey is better at lobbying UK immigration than speedway, not to mention that speedway abused the rules a few years ago and has probably lost the trust of the authorities. However, the visa rules for speedway have been pretty much the same for years, and are fairly generous towards Australians in terms of allowing the top 4 (maybe top 3 now?) in the National Senior Championship or a state championship to qualify. Probably also comes down to the fact that UK population (including many speedway fans on here) wanted to reduce the number of immigrants, speedway contributes little or nothing to the economy or social fabric of the UK, and there's therefore absolutely no reason to give the sport any special treatment. I personally think it's a shame for young Australian riders, but Australia has their rules for Brits wanting to go there too, and it's a reflection of the way our respective wider populations want things to be at this moment in time.

It's actually an entirely different thing. Many, if not most football clubs live well beyond their means, but there's usually another mug with too much money to replace the previous one when they run out of cash. Even where there isn't, there's literally hundreds of others football clubs clamouring to take the place of fallen. Speedway is simply not in the same position. It does not attract rich, and especially super-rich mugs, who're willing to endlessly pour money into a loss-making business, nor does command anything like the television or sponsorship monies that formerly equivalent minor sports are able to obtain nowadays. Tracks are not only not clamouring to get into the top league (which says something in itself), but there's just 24 tracks remaining in the entire country - many of which are leading a very marginal existence. A far better analogy would be ice hockey, which seems to have achieved a relatively stable existence of late, after years of also being a shambolic mess.

That's more there for licensing, regulatory and disciplinary matters - not for the day-to-day running of the sport. It's quite reasonable for those with a financial stake in the sport to be determining how it should be run, but that should be determining the structure and the outline principles during the close season..The day-to-day implementation of that should be handled by a neutral commission or commissioner.

Not really sure what ideas have been taken on board. I suppose he did try to modernise the presentation a bit, but it was typical speedway - done in a two-bob and tacky way. Unfortunately, I don't think the finances ended-up matching the ambition, and the random cancellations and ever changing team really did nothing to encourage fans to come - new or existing. He was really the beginning of the end at Oxford although it wouldn't be fair to put the blame at his door.

Yes - being taken to Belle Vue is mentioned in his autobiography. The Smiths song 'Rusholme Ruffians' also includes the line 'the grease in the hair of a speedway operator'. Would imagine there would have been a fair few 'celebs' who went to speedway in the 60s and 70s though, but the sport is hardly overwhelming patronised by the rich and famous these days.

I notice you don't remember the 'Silver Machine'.

Would only work if costs were cut dramatically. The 'one big league' was a failure because the economic circumstances between tracks were so different, and whilst the reluctance of some teams to release No.1 standard riders didn't help, I think more than few tracks couldn't afford them anyway. That experiment caused several tracks to drop out, and it was only the advent of the 'Conference League' that allowed them to keep running. You're always going to need some sort of two-tier setup however you structure it.

Phillipe will probably tell you that attendances were down due to the women's netball league being on tele or something, but it was obviously not financially viable to run the GP in Melbourne. The Ethiad Stadium was also bought by the AFL in 2016, and that was no doubt a convenient excuse to pull the plug. There's supposedly a proposal to run the GP in Adelaide next year, or more fantastically, at Ipswich. The latter seems pretty unlikely given the remote location, the total lack of track/stadium facilities at the Motor Park, and Ipswich City Council being in big financial difficulties which includes losses on the Motor Park they own.

I do, like to go racing at Ipswich Motorpark...

It's actually closer to 40 miles from the centre of Brisbane, because Ipswich Motor Park is out in the countryside west from Ipswich.

Ipswich, not Brisbane, and not even that near Ipswich. That seems pure cloud cuckoo stuff given there's not even a stadium suitable for speedway there now.

Always found changing planes at Sheremetyevo Airport to be pretty efficient, and Aeroflot to be on par with most European airlines these days. With respect to whether Russia 'deserves' a GP, well on a competitive and organisational basis the answer would certainly be 'yes', However, with Russia you're always running the gauntlet of whether certain competitors will conveniently be refused visas or have their equipment impounded by customs or otherwise mysteriously go missing. Plus getting Russian visas is an expensive and time consuming process (in terms of filling in the forms and getting different photos - can't be the same as in your passport for example), and they'll only give you the exact days of your trip which can cause problems if there are any delays. I will say though, the visa processing centre in London is quite efficient once you've actually filled in the umpteen pages of nonsense (e.g. 'have you ever worked in nuclear research"). [Yes, I know it's the same for Russians coming to the UK, but I don't carry any dodgy chemicals around in perfume bottles. ]

Pretty much a return to provincial stadiums - really only Cardiff, Warsaw and to some extent Torun with any prestige.

Kaparna was a long standing team that raced in Gothenburg up until about 10 years ago, and there was also a track at Malmo. The Ullevi was for a long time though, the biggest stadium in Sweden if not the whole of Scandinavia, and could also accommodate a speedway track.

I don't keep up with these things as much as I used to, but Finland appears to have six speedway tracks (Pori, Nokia, Hyvinkää, Haapajärvi, Seinäjoki and Tampere) running something like 15 scheduled meetings between themselves during 2018. I seem to recall there were 3 or 4 other tracks at some point, but no idea if they're still open. AFAIK, New Zealand now only has Western Springs, Moore Park and Oreti Park running solo speedway, although there are undoubtedly other oval dirt tracks that could run speedway. Don't think they run bike meetings more than once a month at each of these circuits, so let's say 18 meetings to be generous. California currently appears to have active tracks at Costa Mesa (11 meetings in 2018), Industry Racing (14), Auburn (6), Prairie City (6), Ventura (6), Santa Maria (3) and Perris (10). Victorville and Ridgecrest have also staged speedway in recent years, although didn't in 2018. So it would just about be fair to say that Finland and New Zealand have slightly more active tracks (9) combined than the 'non-speedway' nation of the US (with 7), but the US stages somewhat more meetings (at least 56). Of course, I haven't included ice racing tracks or meetings in Finland, but then there may still be speedway tracks running elsewhere in the US (I seem to recall that New York State and Ohio also had tracks running meetings at some point). But I'm not claiming that Finland and New Zealand aren't speedway countries, which clearly they are. I was taking issue with Philippe's absurd statement that the US isn't a speedway country when a substantial number of meetings get organised there, which are even run on semi-professional basis, and the country has a long track record of its riders and teams featuring prominently in World Championships (even managing to win 18 titles). If the claim is that a lack of geographical spread of tracks disqualifies a country from being a speedway one, well I'd say where are the tracks in large tracts of Poland, Sweden and Denmark?

Which Finnish rider achieved national recognition in their own country then? For that matter, which Kiwi rider has been a household name since Ivan Mauger?

Bizarre logic that NZ and Finland are speedway nations and the US is not. Speedway has been run in the US since the 60s at least, and there's probably still more tracks running more meetings than the other two countries put together. US speedway is mostly (if not entirely these days) based in California, but equally speedway in NZ is restricted to three fairly small areas nowadays. And how many world class speedway riders has Finland produced over the years compared to the US? Just admit that no-one is willing to stump up the asking price to run a GP in the US, and BSI doesn't think it worth taking the risk themselves.