Humphrey Appleby

My mad plan would be to have a European wide second half competition run after after national league matches - partly to add value to those meetings, partly to give wider access to the SGP qualification system, and partly to ensure a competitive qualification system that rewards the most consistent riders. You could run a knockout system of individual racing after each match involving some or all of the riders, with ranking points being scored towards an international rider ranking each time. To account for injuries, meetings being abandoned, riders competing in different numbers of leagues, and to reduce the chance of riders withdrawing to maintain their 'average', I'd simply take the best x (to be decided as appropriate) results each season, so riders effectively would not lose points by riding, but would have the opportunity to gain them. You'd probably also have to weigh the ranking points according to the standard of each league in order not to skew the rankings. The highest ranked riders at the end of the season would qualify for next season's SGP, although I'd keep open (say) three places for qualifiers coming through a 'GP Challenge' to give (in theory) riders not competing in one of the recognised leagues an opportunity to qualify. The GP Challenge could masquerade as the European Championship or some sort of other grandiose title.

The fact is that it is largely run by amateurs even if the riders are professional.

Because speedway is more amateur, and I mean that in the nicest sense of the word. I'd imagine some of the hosting clubs need to ensure their own dates are available and they have the budget to support the events - in the typical amateur world that doesn't/can't happen more than a year ahead. Then I'd imagine the FIM want to ensure there are no clashes between certain events across disciplines, even if they care little for clashes with FIM Europe dates. That's presumably a reason why things have to wait until their Autumn meeting to be ratified. And in fairness to the FIM, I'm not sure the F1 calendar for the following season gets confirmed very far in advance either, and much more money is riding on that.

Indeed, and by extension why does the public need to know who's riding for which team, or indeed even the scores of meetings? It's not essential to our wellbeing to try to follow the sport...

What about the following? World Champion automatically qualifies Wildcard Top 4 averaged riders in Polish Elite League Top 4 averaged riders in Swedish Elite League Top 2 averaged riders in British Elite League Top averaged rider in Danish League Top 3 riders in European Championship (which would also include non-Europeans) Where a rider qualifies in more than one category, the spare place is filled from the European Championship.

The problem is that underlying product is basically poor and has a dated image, so it won't really matter how you promote it whilst this remains the case. Traditional advertising and old-style promotions are just not going to cut it nowadays - everyone is bombarded by this and that and have to have some inherent interest in watching the sport in the first place. Speedway always was, and probably still is a sport that you get into because you friends and/or family are into it. The problem is that crowds have declined to such an extent that this can't be relied upon any more, even if the kids can be interested in a 1970s era sport. However, speedway does have curious things that are different to other sports, so maybe this could be played up somehow. I largely got interested in speedway through reading meeting reports whilst doing a paper round, but I think the fascination came because I discovered there were different types of meeting, heat formulas and averages that actually interested me in maths for the first time, and all sorts of other weird tactical rules that you simply didn't get in a simpler sport like football. Now I agree most people aren't going to follow a sport for these reason, but equally some people are looking for something different. Cricket should never work as a modern day professional sport, it's too complicated, most of action takes place away from the spectators and it goes on for too long, but billions still follow it. Niche products basically get promoted through viral online campaigns these days, starting by targeting information at selected groups that might be potentially interested in speedway, and offering something to draw in the customer like a round-up of match action, exciting highlights etc.. Along with this, the product on the ground simply has to be cheaper and better - only a handful of diehards are going to pay 17 quid to watch 15 heats dragged out over 2 hours. Races need to be run more swiftly, there needs more of them, probably adding some sort of support event, and maybe even experimenting with different race formats (e.g. more riders per race - obviously with a staggered start). Some of these things may not be to everyone's taste (not even mine), but the sport is doomed to be nothing more than a niche motorsport with a few blokes riding around training tracks unless it moves into the 21st century soon.

Yes, because the selection process shouldn't be decided by BSI.

I'm quite happy with my one national championship in my chosen sport. I think the original point though, that was Philippe was equating riding in a lot of GPs as being a substitute for not earning very much money from them. I also don't think it's unreasonable to point out that selection for the SGP is sometimes down to political and economic considerations.

I'm not sure rider replacement was ever a particularly sensible rule from an external perspective. Imagine if a rugby team playing in the World Cup said, well we've got a player injured, so the other 14 will take turns to play in their position, but BTW we've got an extra player who we might play, but probably not..., unless of course you've got a player injured too when they'll cancel each other out...

Let non-European riders in as they've ridden in European Championships in the past. Those well known Europeans Shawn Moran, Ron Preston and Steve Baker even won European Junior titles, and Steve Johnston a European Grasstrack if memory serves correctly. I actually prefer to have SGP selection primarily based on some sort of rider ranking system (itself primarily based on league competition), with maybe a place or two available through the European Championship.

No-one can argue against riders qualifying through the system as it stands, but it once again highlights how daft it is to use a one-off knockout system to qualify riders for a GP series. Almost as daft as hand picking the same old riders year-after-year for no apparent reason.

It should be synonymous.

How old was Per Olaf Serenius when he won his last Ice Racing WC?

Helped of course by how many wildcard nominations because the series needed a Brit?

Philippe has pointed out reasons why riders would do it, and of course, maybe some riders do it in the expectation of earning better money at some point in future. But the discussion actually started about whether more GPs means more opportunity to earn more money. If the money is actually in the sponsorship, then the question is what's the optimal number of GPs need to leverage that? Hmmm... the 2007 win yes, but when he's huddled in front of a three bar fire in his old age, will he really be reflecting on all those 16th places?

I think there are a number of factors needed to make team competition a success - the primary one is a critical mass of tracks in relatively close proximity to both population centres of a certain size, and to each other. I think it's no coincidence team competition started in Britain - indeed organised professional sport as whole. However, team competition requires a higher level of commitment from the riders, so if the crowds for whatever reason couldn't sustain that, then that's maybe another reason why it didn't succeed in certain countries.

Used to happen in the early days of the World Championship, but I think discontinued after Bluey Wilkinson scored a maximum in a World Final but still didn't win on the night

How would a shorter season with a less certain programme of fixtures support this highly professional circus. The SGP was supposed to have evolved into a full-time circus by now, and yet it's still team racing that effectively subsidises the riders to go GP racing. My view is that the end of team racing will be the end of professional speedway. Teams allow for continuity, variety and regular fixture programming which would really not happen if there were only individual meetings - plus the tactical aspects add more interest, which is even more important if you have an otherwise dull meeting. You can't equate what happened in Dutch speedway donkey's years ago to current trends - which in any case was as much a result of land pressure for building in the Randstad area. No idea about the reasons in the US, but I'd imagine even in Southern California the distances are bit too far between tracks for a sustainable semi-professional competition, plus there isn't much culture in the US of fans travelling home and away to follow their sports teams (again due to the distances involved).

Sure, but does their sponsorship by virtue of being a GP rider change in any way if there were only 8 or 10 rather than 12 GPs? If you're running at an operational loss just by turning-up to a GP, then more meetings are not more chance to earn money. Of course Philippe always mentions rider sponsorship to justify the poor prize money, but are all the riders really doing that well out it?

That's arguably not linked to the number of meetings though. Would sponsorship be any less if there were (say) 8 rather than 12 meetings?

It does seem contradictory how the SGP is touted as being a fairer way of deciding the World Champion, and yet its qualifiers are decided by one-off meetings. However, the qualifiers are only barely tolerated as they are, and I'm sure BSI would rather handpick every rider. The problem with a qualifying series though, is not only one of finding dates in an already full calendar to hold it, but riders having a bad meeting that effectively eliminates their chances anyway. You'd just get a load of withdrawals on spurious grounds and the the competition would end-up becoming a farce. I know the same argument could also be advanced about the SGP, but it's quite a different thing to being out-of-contention but riding in the Ethiad Stadium in Melbourne, compared to having to travel to the likes of Teterow to go through the motions in front of a handful of fans. Oh, hang on... I think a better system would be to allocate a certain number of qualifying places in the SGP to each professional league based on something like UEFA coefficients (in turn radically reducing the number of automatic qualifiers to no more than 3), with maybe a place or two allocated to the best riders in the European Championship to give a route into the SGP for other riders. Yes, I'm aware that riders compete in more league, but if they qualify through more then one competition, then just take the next best riders in the European Championship or something.

Not really in the GP.

I was sort of equating camber with banking, although there's arguably a technical difference. Not sure what the definition of 'big' is here. In terms of length I'd disagree as I feel the best racing circuits are normally in the 300-320 metre range, and I've never particularly enjoyed racing on longer circuits as a rule. If you mean wider and the other conditions are met, then I'd probably agree with you.

That's most probably down to the commercial rights holder - as weren't the commercial rights sold off by the BSPA? It demonstrates the vision in the sport.

At least two.