Humphrey Appleby

F1 fly out marshals for the Middle East GPs. Ther's nothing wrong with volunteers, some of whom are very professional and do it for the love of the sport. It's the professional organisers who need to be professional. Lots of retired people act as volunteers for the likes of the National Trust and English Heritage. The places wouldn't be able to open otherwise.

I think a speedway meeting was generally 20 heats - 13 heat match + 7 heat 'second half' of which a couple were usually junior races. The 7 heat 'second half' was largely replaced by a junior match in the BL from about 1985 onwards (albeit with an additional 'Golden Sash/Snowball' race for two highest scorers from each side), with the main match being extended to 15 heats in 1988 (after a trial in the KOC in 1987) and the junior match being reduced to 5 heats (extended to 6 heats the following year). This state of affairs lasted until 1993 when the main match was extended to 18 heats and junior match scrapped. This is turn lasted just a season before the main match was progressively reduced to 16 and back to 15 heats with no corresponding compensatory extra races (although some tracks did put on some junior races). The NL was a bit different. I recall they had 16 heat matches from the early-80s, but I think there was still some sort of mini second-half. It should be perfectly possible (and was) to run 20 heats + interval in under a couple of hours. People have just got so used to meetings being pointlessly strung out to make them seem better value for money. I'm not suggesting a return to 13 heats, but 'second halves' could have been linked into some sort of national competition to give them more relevance. It sort of happened with the pointless 'Golden Sash', but that didn't count towards anything meaningful and wasn't taken seriously by anyone.

Did I say having a PA in the pits was unprofessional? However, there's a lot of noise in the pits (from bikes being revved), noise in the stadium, and potentially the connection may break even assuming there's any direct connection to the referee's box in the first place (as presumably most information that needs to be provided is primarily related to the running order and could be related by someone in the pits such as the CoC). What about screens in the pits relaying race control information as a visual backup, text based communicators to key officials in event of audio/visual problems, or for the worst case scenario, a designated runner on standby to shuttle messages to/from the pits? It's really not rocket science.

At one point in the 90s the number of teams in the league didn't evenly divided by four, so it was decided to run one of the groups with 5 teams. A 4TT was run at each track in the group with one team sitting out each round, but it basically meant Reading (?) ended up finishing 5th. In fairness it wasn't as bad as running a 4TT with three teams, as also happened...

I'm not running an allegedly professional speedway show in my world. That a GP is relying on a public PA to relay information to the pits with seemingly no obvious other reliable method of communication is astonishing, as is the admission that the referee didn't exclude a rider but didn't fix that mistake. On the issue of the red lights failing (or not), there is again a well documented procedure for what happens in this event. However in my world since you asked, I've been co-promoting a small motor sports series for 10 years, and guess what, we've run into many similar problems (well apart from having big crowds LOL). Probably some new problem occurs every year that we haven't encountered before, but we have good communications, a chain of command, and defined contingency plans for when things do happen, and this is at a totally amateur level with a budget of a few thousand, not millions. I don't pretend it's anything on the scale of running the SGP, but I do have some grasp of how to organise an event. Okay, complexity increases when you start involving a lot more officials and then throw big crowds into the mix as well, but BSI have been doing this for *15* years now and they're still not getting it right. The track problems are almost forgiveable given what is for sure a huge and difficult logistical task, but piss poor communication and dodgy trackside equipment is not. It's been reported on here that one of the starting gate stanchions didn't look aligned, yet seemingly this was not picked up in all the alleged testing? Blaming the FIM is also comical. How an event is organised and equipped on the day is entirely the responsibility of the staging promoter - down to providing adequate means of communication for officials. Sadly, whilst we appreciate your input on here, I really think someone in your position should be far more publicly questioning about the whole set-up.

I seriously think it would be better that in the 21st century, officials were able to communicate with each other properly. Is it beyond the wit of a professional organising company to have refereeing decisions relayed by some modern communications method? Some modern 'walkie talkies' even have texting functions if it's too hard to relay race control information to a screen trackside (something that your average corporate kart circuit can manage). Even assuming all that's too advanced, the SCB regulations from donkey's years ago made provision for the referee to have coloured lamps in the box to indicate exclusions if the lights failed. This is from a race series that doesn't seem to have heard of transponders used at even the lowest levels of motor sport.

3rd out of 4, aim high ;-) Mind you, better than finishing 5th in a 4-team tournament which has happened in British speedway before...

Which also sums up how pathetic the officiating was, despite the attempted exoneration in the Spar. I would accept that so many things went wrong that the officials may have become overloaded in their rational decision making capability (it's a well understood phenomena), but it merely highlights the pathetic underlying organisation that caused all the problems.

Which is exactly what I've been saying for years. I've met precisely one Pole in my life outside of speedway that actually followed the sport. When I looked at this 3 or 4 years ago, speedway did have the highest average attendances of any sport in Poland, but football had a higher aggregate attendance. However, it's always been apparent that football and basketball had higher popular interest, yet speedway commentators inanely parroted their rubbish. Regardless of how popular speedway is though, Warsaw will have been far more of a disaster than previous ineptitudes. This happened in the capital city in front of a huge audience, and it was reported in the Spar that the national president and Lech Walesa were in attendance.

Yes, but who is responsible for providing the equipment (and the spares)? All very well testing, but if there's something wrong with it that causes it to fail prematurely, that surely is down to the suppliers. The stuff about walkie talkies also made me chuckle. Didn't they go out with the Vietnam War? You know, it's also very loud at a Formula 1 race, but they have radios with headphones so the officials can communicate with each other. And there's even this amazing technology called SMS that teenagers use - you might have heard of it? LOL

Which Welsh League would that be. The one that doesn't even have the top Welsh teams?

Of course BSI are responsible. They are the series organisers, they choose the local organisers (the PZM in this case) and make stipulations as to who prepares the track etc... The PZM may technically be responsible for the event, but if you can insist that a particular company prepares the track, can you not insist on contingency plans and ensure they're in place? The FIM is really only responsible for the officials with respect to the actual event, but after one fiasco after the next, they must surely question whether the company they've leased the rights to is up to the job? Maybe that is indeed the issue. I see the Star repeated the story about the shale coming from a Derbyshire quarry and being shipped through King's Lynn and Gdansk, despite the reported transport ship apparently not calling at those ports in the past weeks. Of course, the ship's name may have been misreported, and the shale may have been delivered some weeks previously. However, is it possible something went wrong in the shipment or storage and a local source had to be hastily found - thus necessitating a delayed start to work on the track?

Or the one with chicanes in the bends?

I've read somewhere that Wembley costs 250k per day to rent, plus 10% of the gate takings. The Millennium would probably be somewhat cheaper, not least because it's subsidised by the Welsh government. My guess would be maybe half that amount, but a lower fee for the extra days for track building/dismantling. So maybe half a million quid in total for the week - but that's really something of a guess.

Yup, Olsen clearly being set-up for the fall in the Spar, with only relatively mild criticism of BSI given the circumstances. Wonder who the 'blue chip crisis management expert' commenting was?

Yes, but maybe the riders have tired of riding on dodgy surfaces at the sport's premier event. You wouldn't ask England cricketers to play a test match on a rutted wicket, even though it might be tolerated in a county or club game.

Why does it? The cost structure of staging the events, average income of spectators, and expected attendance will be completely different between the UK and Poland.

It's not mad at all. It's perfectly reasonable to ensure that meetings billed as between representative international teams are officially sanctioned, and not just random selections of a meeting promoter. The ACU/SCB sanctioning rules obviously apply to meetings held in Britain, but it may be different in other countries (although I'd imagine their federations have similar rules). However, whilst these Best Pairs may not be an official European Championship, they're undoubtedly inscribed by FIM Europe and I'd guess have received permission to use national names. Test matches are after all bi-lateral private arrangements between federations and/or promoters' associations, but are normally considered to involve official representative teams even when they've often been who can be persuaded to turn up.

Stadium owners just want to fill their stadia with events - they generally couldn't care less with what. They rent out the stadium to third party promoters, whether that's speedway or a rock concert, and it's up to those promoters to organise the events, sell the tickets and take the financial risk. It's largely irrelevant to the stadium how the event is run, whether it's cancelled, or whatever... provided the stadium is not damaged and returned in the same condition it was hired in (although the stadium probably takes responsibility for post event cleaning). They'll no doubt also charge for every day the stadium is rented to a third party, even if the stadium is otherwise not required, because the renters will still be using electricity and other facilities. For big events you might get a certain lead-in time for preparation as part of the hire cost, but I'd be surprised if it's more than a couple of days for no extra charge.

Phillipe has been quiet for a while - has he been spin doctoring...?

Is there a Polish equivalent of a small claims court? Get a few thousand people submitting claims and bog them down in paperwork...

Except the statement isn't even accurate. It could be argued Riga was temporary track, whilst Western Springs wasn't. Tampere is conveniently not mentioned at all, and neither was the near disaster at Cardiff not so long ago (as you might expect).

What an absolute load of guff...

How many times have they said that, and how many times had it happened now? It very nearly happened at Cardiff last year when the original track turned out to be unfit.

Yes, but the FIM control the SGP rights so I'd doubt BSI would want to sue, whilst the PZM are reliant on the FIM for sanctioning and awarding them other world championship events. I'd also not be surprised if national federations undertake not to take legal action against the FIM as a condition of membership. The three jury members can be made scapegoats, and no-one will shed any tears for them.