Humphrey Appleby

If it were just four blokes riding round in circles, I'd lose interest pretty quickly and it's one of the reasons I have little interest in individual racing. Team racing adds all sorts of dimensions, and I think team riding, substitutions and other strategy keeps interest even if the racing itself isn't spectacular. Teams also allow for better continuity - individual riders come-and-go, but fans can establish allegiances to teams over many years. The problem is the concept of team speedway has been damaged by lack of continuity, scheduling conflicts, punitive team building restrictions, inconsistent application of the rules, and so on...

It's not the EU flag. It's the flag of all Europe.

I think it more likely the rioters and looters would have been shot.

Easy to say, but where is money coming from to pay for the stars who didn't draw the crowds when they rode in Britain before? I'd agree that presentation and marketing desperately need improving, but the sports needs to attract a new fanbase, and most non-speedway fans will have never heard of even the speedway world champion. Therefore why waste money on the top stars? In addition, trying to market a sport that takes place in less-than-salubrious stadia and which is an organisational shambles, would just be a complete waste of money. In fact, it would do more damage than good because anyone you did manage to attract would simply never return once they actually saw the sport and what a farce it can be. Sadly, I think the sport in Britain needs to start from the ground-up, positioning itself as cheap form of entertainment and trying to build itself up as a grassroots sport. Only if there can be sizeable investment in a few decent venues running in a remodelled competition should British speedway even attempt to run with star riders, and what serious businessmen would invest money in speedway the way it is at the moment. All very well, but British tracks don't have the same economic model of subsidised stadia as Poland and Sweden, far less stadium availability on one or even two nights a week. Sweden also benefits from having very long light evenings because it's so far north, which is not the case in Britain in March and October. British speedway undoubtedly could be better, but it's not as straightforward as copying what Poland and Sweden do.

Middlesex Crusaders did change their name.

Do people still not get it? The Welsh government pays BSI a sizeable sum of money to have the British GP held at the Millennium Stadium. Cardiff is also the 'marquee' round used to market the whole series to sponsors - which is no doubt what the massive effort to ensure no screw-ups after Warsaw was about. It would seem unlikely that another British GP would be organised that might potentially draw crowds and interest away from Cardiff. Manchester would be too small and doesn't have a roof anyway, even if the local tourist board was prepared to cough up some cash. I think the AFL season starts then, or at least the pre-season.

Yar... and a combine harvester...

It's always been like it - at least for the past 25 years. Of course, the Internet congregates all the negativity into a few places, whereas we previously just moaned on terraces with our nearest neighbours.

What people outside the US often don't understand, is there are vast areas with very little practical law enforcement, and where police help can be many miles away. People need to have guns for their own protection. There have also been a couple of events in the UK in recent times - the container ship wreck and the nationwide riots - where law and order broke down almost completely. This demonstrated that even in the most stable, prosperous nations, we're only ever one step from anarchy if people feel there will be no consequences for their actions. In these circumstances, how are people expected to protect themselves?

And just how many leagues are there in the world...? Are you seriously suggesting the British leagues are weaker than the likes of the German or Finnish? Stop swallowing the OneSport propaganda and accept BSI were just inept. Why on earth would they want an event with 55K to be a failure? There's no conspiracy against Poland, and BSI certainly don't do British speedway any favours.

Roscoe P. Coltrane will be turning in his grave...

He was prepared to allow it to continue in the Northern States that had it. The South wanted to ensure a balance of free and slave states in the Union to avoid being outvoted if abolition was on the agenda. This became increasingly contentious as the western territories gradually became states and entered into the Union. These sorts of racist treatises were hardly unique to the South. Many in the north would have shared similar views, even if they actually didn't actually agree with the institution of slavery. For many years after the Civil War, the lot of the African Americans in practice became substantially worse. Whereas there was often a degree of paternalism on the part of slave owners, the aftermath of the Civil War saw all sorts of racist policies being introduced.

I could understand why it may offend Black Americans, but not black people in the UK. Several nations practiced slavery, not least Denmark which was one of the biggest slave trading nations, yet no-one calls for the banning of the Danish flag in speedway. I think the Confederate flag has been misappropriated by extremists, and whilst it does stand for a regime that supported slavery, hardly more so than the Union and many other nations at the time. Rightly or wrongly, it's also one of the most globally recognised symbols of rebellion which is undoubtedly why it's prevailed over the years, whereas other banners have vanished into obscurity. Do Robins offend anyone? Well of course Southern Democrats stood for segregation and many of the racist laws introduced in the post-Civil War period. The Republicans were wiped out politically in the southern states for a century afterwards, although by Clinton's time there had been a swing back in their favour so maybe he needed to appeal to those old 'traditional' voters. There were some ghastly Southern Democrats - one even leading the Senate into the 2000s.

It's obviously for marketing/promotional reasons to leverage funding out of the local authority, although there are no doubt some aspirations to stage prestigious British meetings given the uncertainly over the ongoing future of Coventry which it could be argued is the current de-facto national stadium. I'd be surprised if it has any official 'national stadium' status.

Saving money on staffing?

Sorry to hear the news.

BSI organise the series, organise the local hosts, and stipulate who has to build the track etc.. etc.. The FIM may have to formally sign off, but frankly what position are they in to refuse if 55k fans are expected to turn up in a couple of days? Quite simply BSI need to be ensuring that required standards are being met. You can argue legalese till the cows come home, but who is going to turn up if the buck is continually passed when things go wrong? I might have been persuaded to go to the GP in Melbourne, but why should I take the chance if no-one will take responsibility for actually putting on a proper show and will hide behind small print?

There's possibly no-one at BSI who has a clue what a decent track should look like. They've largely relied on Ole Olsen until now.

The sudden diligence is commendable, but why wasn't it done last year? And if a sand-based track is known to be a problem, then why was this not flagged previously?

The SWC has used a variety of formats down the years, 4TT, seven teams of pairs, four teams riding in pairs, a 5-team tournament, and as a 4TT with five programmed riders per team. The point is that the format has changed over the years to suit circumstances, so it doesn't have to be run in a particular way. BTW - a 20-heat 4TT format actually means the programmed riders have five races each, although one of those is a nominated heat.

Then why stop at four riders, why not have full test sides of seven or eight riders? The reason is because the SWC would literally become a 4 team competition.

Well team speedway should be about riding as a team - if necessary shepherding your partner home ahead of an opposition rider, rather than selfishly trying to win. That's why bonus points were devised, although being paid for third place is a bit farcical if there's no fourth place finisher. The scoring system should reflect who you beat opposition wise, not team mate wise.

I'm sure OneSport would love British riders to be involved, but just when are they supposed to ride for British teams? The problems with British speedway are many and are well documented, but the BSPA for better or worse are trying to run a regular weekly programme of speedway meetings that allow a significant number of riders to make some sort of living from the sport. It's all very well saying they can do that five days a week and leave the weekends for all these made-up competitions, but the fact of the matter remains that weekend racing (with the odd exception) is preferential from a spectator point of perspective. The modern era of European Championships (as opposed to the FIM-run European Championships that were the forerunner of World Championships) were created by what's now FIM Europe in order to justify his existence, when it was set-up a few years ago in Italy. A member of its track commission told me at the time that it was just to create jobs for people. Since then, the SEC has gained traction thanks to something of a power struggle between different factions within speedway, using the FIM and FIM Europe as their proxies. The Poles in particular, worked out that the FIM and BSI are profiting from the sport without much benefit to Poland, so decided to get in on the action. The Euros are primarily aimed at giving occasional tracks (i.e. those that hold a handful of meetings) around Europe some meetings of apparent significance. The prize money is generally poor, but sticking a 'Euro' title on it gives the illusion of more meaning than a series of open meetings, and part-time riders are probably happy enough to get a few euros to defray their expenses. I very much doubt though, that anyone could make a living out of Euro and World Championship meetings, quite aside from the fact that you can be eliminated in the first round of some of them. And whilst British riders might gain some experience from riding different types of Continental European tracks, I'd have thought regular competitive weekly speedway is of more benefit. I'm not sure how having a plethora of international competitions, or indeed British participation in them, is likely to win back elite riders. Not that Britain can afford the elite riders anyway, but even if it manages to run with its own home-grown riders, having them disappear off to the Continent every weekend for some Euro/World meeting is not very conducive to running a coherent league programme. It's not about being insular, but about British tracks trying to survive financially. I've no particular problem with the World Championships in speedway, but allowing a proliferation of rounds and duplicate competitions, and even worse having them compete with each other for resources, is ultimately not good for the sport anywhere in Europe. Lack of vision, lack of investment, lack of talent... The major professional leagues should have got together years ago to run the SGP, even if it meant hiring a professional management company.

Why should they have been forced to buy something they effectively already owned?

Quite, but why is there a competition more-or-less competing with the SGP? The sport isn't big enough to be stretching its resources thinly. And before anyone says that the other sports have World and European Championships, most of those aren't almost entirely based in one continent, and the different championships are not normally held in the same year.