Humphrey Appleby

Another point is that vans are generally fully tax deductible as business expenses, whilst cars are not.

Wikipedia effectively offers free advertising, so the likes of the FIM and BSI could and should be using it to raise awareness of their competitions. The amount of stuff on speedway on Wikipedia is very poor, and whilst I have been tempted to write/re-write text myself, I simply don't have the interest in the sport that once did. I see some other people have ported some of my pre-Wikipedia stuff though, even though it's now largely out of date. I did write a number of articles related to my profession in the past, despite official hostility towards Wikipedia so I had to do it under a pseudonym. Eventually they did become a widely used reference and proved to be far more useful than anything that our so-called PR department managed. Yes, I've experienced that, and even worse had a page marked for deletion on the grounds of being 'unverified information'. Eventually after putting the page back a couple of times, the silly moderator or whoever gave up.

Lesser mortals such as ourselves can't be expected to understand the munificence of BSI.

I've generally found Danes from Jutland at least have some familiarity with speedway, and could name Olsen, Nielsen and Gundersen etc.. I think less so those from Copenhagen. In contrast to most Poles who seem to know nothing about the sport, despite us being constantly told that speedway is the most popular sport in the country.

Well for the avoidance of doubt - Brisbane.

Whilst I'd agree that extensive nationwide promotion would be a bit pointless, there is a community of non-solo speedway and motorsport fans that might not be aware of a world championship GP taking place and who might be interested in a weekend in Melbourne. Brisbane is only a couple of hours by plane to Melbourne.

There's nothing wrong with trying to take the GPs to decent stadia, but it's obviously not as straightforward as just holding them there and expecting people to come.

I live in Australia and haven't heard a thing about the GP, but Phillippe will no doubt blame the Ethiad Stadium as the local promoters. In fairness it's probably a reasonable amount - some more years than others.

I didn't mention BSI in the context of my remark. I just said I doubted there was much science behind the promotion of a GP, whoever is doing it. However, we know local organisers promote the individual GPs, but BSI are responsible for promoting the series which includes selecting the venues, or are you going to claim the FIM does that? I think the selection of Tampere (unsuitable track shape) and Riga (unfinished and untested stadium) demonstrates that it's merely about taking the money rather than assessing the suitability of venues for viability. And of course when they fail, they're unceremoniously dropped and publicly criticised. Copenhagen, Stockholm and Gelsenkirchen have also demonstrated that Cardiff can't simply be replicated by going to an indoor stadium, and of course BSI did/do promote those. And then we have Warsaw which you'd undoubtedly have liked to claim as a BSI success despite being promoted by the PZM, but as that didn't go so well, let's blame the locals for that too... As opposed to the 'official media' that makes no investigation of the real issues, or indeed provides much of any substance to improve anyone's supposed lack of understanding at how things work.

Almost as farcical as British speedway...

Well it seems to work okay for BSI, although it doesn't do much for the sport as a whole. Get someone else to not only take the risk of staging the event, but pay you for the privilege as well. Then when they've done their wedge, move onto the next venue. Fortunately, some promoters are in it for the longer haul and despite the criticism, do manage to keep their tracks running year after year. Something that BSI singularly failed at when it actually tried. I don't actually think there is much more to promoting the GP than that, as the likes of Tampere and Riga demonstrated. The Cardiff GP is the exception although whether that was down to good luck or good judgement is debatable as Copenhagen and other prestige venues have had mixed success, and some such as Gelsenkirchen have been a disaster.

Yes, but what about the other GPs?

Not quite. You have to be a permanent resident for at least two years (and have resided in Australia for at least four) and spend a certain amount of time in the country in the 2(?) years before your application for citizenship. I could well imagine a speedway rider plying their trade in Europe would not fulfill the residency requirement.

Why is speedway always surrounded with such nonsense and BS? It's been obvious for months that no stadium is going to be built before next March.

Are you sure it's not because they *don't* have a criminal conviction...

Is it just me, or does the online version of the Spar not work on an iPhone running iOS 9? It just hangs for me on an iPhone 5s.

IMG were interested in running the Olympic Stadium, so would be surprised if the possibility hadn't been investigated at some point.

Then why don't you tell us who you think was ultimately responsible rather than muddy the waters as usual? Yes, things can happen but you can mitigate them. There is no excuse whatsoever for not having a backup starting gate in a GP meeting - something that's critical for running an event. In many years of watching speedway in everything from amateur meetings to GPs, I think I've seen reversion to green light starts on about three occasions, which suggests that promoters everywhere else manage to have serviceable equipment or at least replacement parts. As for 'two separate starting gates', I think everyone but yourself imagined a replacement mechanism that could be swapped in the event of failure. I can't imagine how the organisers could expect to synchronise two sets of tapes to go up simultaneously when they have difficulty with one. LOL

Not really anywhere, beyond continually allowing BSI to screw up. If SpeedSport or whoever are contracted to deliver a track for a GP only a day before the meeting starts and they don't deliver to a satisfactory standard, then what exactly is the FIM supposed to do? Whether or not they're formally responsible for signing off or not, if they don't sign it off then there's no meeting and the promoters will then be liable to refund monies. So they're in a difficult position and you can see why they'd sign off on a track unless it's actually dangerous to ride on. The failure was down whoever prepared the track (including starting gate) and ultimately the BSI who are or should be their supervisors. Yes, starting gates can fail - we all accept that - but it's unforgivable to not have a replacement set at a GP event. It's totally amateurish in fact. To me it's the usual exercise in trying to deflect blame from the sloppy organisation.

The irony of promoters complaining about riders breaking contracts. To be fair, what other leagues were there? The Polish League was behind the Iron Curtain, and the Swedish League didn't allow foreigners and in any case rode on a day when most/no BL teams did. Dunno about the Danish League in those days, but imagine was a fairly amateur affair, whilst German meetings would have been on a Sunday.

Do you have anything positive to say? Yes, but if that was the responsibility of SpeedSport who they had to contract to do the track?

The PZM probably carried the liability from the perspective of the punters as they were the promoters of the event, so probably trying to offer a sop. It's not much of a sop though, if the punters only have a week to redeem their tickets for the free event. I doubt the PZM could really be blamed for the starting gate, state of the track or intransigence of the riders (delete as applicable) which were the responsibility of others. I must have missed all the positivity elsewhere on this forum. So it seems that despite a GP being called off in an indoor stadium just 2/3rds of the way through, everyone is happy with a free open meeting that they have one week to claim their tickets for. And how do they actually physically redeem their 2015 tickets in that one week window?

So last year's fans apparently have just 7 days to buy their tickets to watch some sort of mickey mouse select meeting the following day? Quite pathetic...

It was probably only a rotting portacabin though. You were probably better off outside in the cold...

Certainly an enigma in terms of starting businesses that don't work out, and I'd imagine it's tough on the investors in those. Whilst Stadium Australia was undoubtedly too big, it was at the time a white elephant looking for a purpose, so maybe it was as cheap to hire as a smaller venue. I seem to remember it being reported from Down Under at the time that Lander was unhappy about being charged for things that he shouldn't have been charged for, amongst other things.