Humphrey Appleby

The IOC seems to be saying they can still compete as independent athletes, just not under any Russian banner. The Paralympics is coming up shortly, so the matter is pressing. The relevant text is... "Russian or Belarusian nationals, be it as individuals or teams, should be accepted only as neutral athletes or neutral teams. No national symbols, colours, flags or anthems should be displayed."

If they also have Polish citizenship then that would be academic anyway.

Well it's a difficult one as it would hardly be fair on other riders if there was an established qualification process that one rider could bypass. As it was, he still had to do a certain number of meetings in the Netherlands (one of which was a speedway meeting that I went to), although from memory they were on Saturdays so maybe he didn't need to miss an lucrative grasstrack/longtrack bookings as a result. I seem to remember though, that riders needed to finish in the top 20 of the British Masters to get a licence to race internationally, which strikes me as being nothing but restraint of trade and probably illegal.

I thought that was farcical appeasement given their 'ban' was because of state sponsorship of doping programmes. To then allow them back to compete as a Russian team, however it was dressed up, was no sanction at all. No particular problem with Russians continuing to compete as independent individuals (e.g. tennis players and speedway riders), but teams and individuals officially representing Russia should not be allowed. Life isn't fair. When the UK left the EU, British citizens immediately lost a lot of rights regardless of how they'd voted in the referendum, and that wasn't even about starting a war.

Is Dave Hammond still around?

Every time he opened his mouth he was annoying, especially when he forgot which track he was supposed to be at. I do actually think it's a difficult job, especially in speedway where you've got to fill a lot of dead time and there's only so many things you can say about four riders going around in circles. I didn't find him too bad as a deejay years ago, albeit a bit Smashie and Nicey, but it was better when he just read out the results at the speedway.

This reply is a bit late, but the story is quite well known in the Brisbane area at least, and there's a Bee Gees trail in Redcliffe which is a sort of outer coastal suburb of Brisbane. I cycle over to Redcliffe occasionally.

Well speedway really only has a sizeable following in about 3 or 4 countries, but the BSI didn't really seem to do much in the way of the promotion in the smaller markets. Only seemed to be interested in getting the staging fees from the local promoters and leaving it all to them, or where they promoted it themselves to fulfil some sort of contractual obligation, to do it as cheaply as possible. With Monaco, I'd imagine they were under the impression they could wrangle a sizeable staging fee out of the local organisers, but the Grimaldis didn't get where they are by giving their money away. Especially not on a sport with the sort of demographic that speedway has. There probably was some sort of reasonable attempt in the earlier years to take the SGP to better venues as well as extend the appeal to a wider range of countries, but I think in the end they realised they weren't going to grow it and largely decided to run things at a relatively modest level without pushing the boat out too much. Think a new promotion is long overdue and it'll be interesting to see whether they take things further than ING/BSI.

If I remember, it was to do with team race suit covers which were made of some sort of stretchy material to which you couldn't easily attach different numbers.

Didn't speedway briefly use squad numbers a few years ago? So riders had both a squad and riding number...

Under the 'old' 13-heat format, the order of 1, 3, 4, 5 probably didn't really matter so much provided a strong rider was paired with a weaker one in each heat. With the 'new' 15-heat format, putting your No.1 at 2 or 4 would unbalance what are intended to be heats for weaker riders, and then mean that Heat 13 wouldn't feature the strongest riders as intended. The issue of needing your best riders in the last heat doesn't really apply to the 15-heat format as the last 3 programmed heats are essentially the same riding positions pitted against each other, followed by the nominated which you can put your two preferred riders in anyway.

And even more ignored in practice, despite being supposedly stricter.

Would involve a lot of writing in the programme... For Heat 15, I'd also leave the choice to the losing team, or the away team if the scores are level. However, I think I'd have 6-rider teams with 5 & 6 as the reserves and 1-4 can be named in any order. I'd then pair 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 and have them all ride against each other, separated by a reserves race (5 races). Then pair 1 & 5, 3 & 6 and 2 & 4, and have them ride against each other (9 races). So Nos 1-4 would ride against each other twice, and against the opposition reserves once. Nos 5 & 6 would ride against the opposition reserves twice (including in the reserves races), and against the opposition 1-4 twice. Heat 15 could be nominated. I'd look at a handicap scoring system for replacing a No. 1 or even heat leader, so that guests would not be necessary.

Surely at some point, it would actually be easier to build a basic stadium and then either let it go bust naturally, or be forced out of business by the noise complaints from the neighbours. How much is the current charade costing...?

Sort of... 1 meets 1 twice, 2, 3, 4, 5 twice and 6 (missing 7) 2 meets 1, 2 twice, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 3 home meets 1, 2, 3 twice, 4, 5, 6 twice (missing 7) / 3 away meets 1, 2, 3 twice, 4, 5, 6, 7 4 meets 1, 2, 3, 4 twice, 5, 6, 7 / 4 away meets 1, 2, 3, 4 twice, 5, 6 twice (missing 7) 5 meets 1 twice, 2 3, 4, 5 twice, 6, 7 6 home meets 1, 2, 3, 4 twice, 6, 7 twice (missing 5) / 6 away meets 1, 2, 3 twice, 4, 6, 7 twice (missing 5) 7 home meets 2, 3, 5, 6 twice, 7 three times (missing 1 & 4) / 7 away meets 2, 4, 5, 6 twice, 7 three times (missing 1 & 3)

It's not really possible to give a well balanced format with 7 rider teams over 15 heats. The 13-heat format was a bit better, although the No.2 position was a bit of quirk. It can be done with 6 rider teams, but that causes issues with riders having too many rides too close together, especially if rider replacement and/or tactical substitutions are used. It can also be done with 7 rider teams over 18 heats, as with the old test match format, but that makes for too long a match and the format is a bit repetitive and boring.

As I remember, there was a similar rule before fixed gate positions were introduced around 1988 - albeit the choice was 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. A team 6 points behind could choose gate positions and/or bring in a tactical substitute.

Under the old 13-heat format, the line-ups for Heats 12 and 13 were naturally more balanced even if you arranged Nos 1, 3, 5 and 4 in different way, based on how things would need to be for the initial heats - 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11. With the 15-heat format, Heats 8 and 14 were designed to be weaker heats for the second strings and reserves, based on the fact that you'll usually want one of your strongest riders at No. 5 as that position is paired with a reserve three times. The 15-heat format is a bit of a kludge really, even though the traditional 13-heat format had its quirks.

The problem may be that the floppy is no longer readable if it's more than a few years old and depending on how it was stored.

The 13-heat format was more balanced than the current 15-heat format for the top 5 riders, except ironically the No. 2 position. But I suspect the idea may have been to ensure a stronger Heat 8 in the obvious place to make a tactical substitution.

Why would anyone want to continue to work for an employer that failed to pay them?

One could argue that it was always traditional in speedway to have the support event during the 'second half'...

Because he was an exceptionally good driver from a relatively middle class background who couldn't be ignored. I honestly don't think there's any particular racism in motorsport, but the fact remains there are very few ethnic minorities who participate for whatever reason. That is changing a bit - maybe because of Lewis Hamilton - but it can't simply be down to money.

The SCB is not really an independent body, nor is its role to be running the sport. It's there as a sort of regulatory and judicial body. An independent body would something that which oversees the day-to-day running of the sport in line with agreed principles, and whose members have no (longer any) affiliation with any track. Most major sports have moved in that direction, although some have mix of independent directors and club representatives. Ideally it would also make recommendations as towards the best way to run the sport, with some experienced financial and marketing people on board. However, a major issue is that speedway just doesn't have the money or cachet to attract such people.

We've discussed before, but the narrative has tended to be written from the John Berry perspective. We don't fully know what the demands and conditions were, and I don't think it's realistic to expect complete autonomy as has been alluded to. John Berry was undoubtedly a good promoter, certainly had good if not visionary ideas on how the wider sport should be run, and was familiar with US sports practices which he suggested should been the model for speedway. However, any multi-stakeholder organisation needs a leader who is patient and persuasive, not one that quickly gets frustrated and falls out with people at the drop of hat. He also appears to have been reactionary about developments in other sports (e.g. World Series Cricket) that arguably revolutionised them (even if his underlying point about the demise of existing competitions was correct), so how things like the advent of satellite/cable television and the SGP would have been handled would have been interesting. I do think much of his vision for the way forward was correct, but i don't think his tenure would have lasted that long in that sort of role though. Plus speedway had already started on its long road to decline at that point, so it would have been in an environment of long under-capitalisation and increasing financial pressures.