Humphrey Appleby

Yes dear, we're going to get married at a speedway stadium...

Unfortunately, there are really only 4 or 5 countries where speedway is ridden professionally to any extent, and no more than 8 with a sizeable fan base. That basically restricts the number of countries that will be interested in hosting, and generally the GPs in the smaller countries are underwritten by fan promoters. You'll find that the reported GP attendances are often a work of fiction, and the real numbers (especially those who actually pay the full price) are likely somewhat lower. I seem to recall hearing a figure of around 11,000 for this year's NZ GP, and I'm not sure any of the GPs pulled anything like 20,000 in the end. As to how many fans are needed to make a GP viable, it depends entirely on the underlying costs. These include the staging fee payable to BSI which can be substantial, the cost of renting the venue (likely to be higher for a one-off big city venue compared to an existing club track), and any additional costs needed to transport the riders and officials (which is required for GPs outside of Europe). Didn't Bill Buckley say he needed something like 25K+ at each NZ GP to break even, and that might even have been with local government support (which apparently wasn't forthcoming)? Russia is an interesting one. Clearly Russia wouldn't pay the asking price to BSI otherwise they'd almost certainly have had one before now, especially as the SEC has disproved the argument about logistical problems. The bottom line is that if the Russians want you there, nothing is a problem. However, dealing with Russia is always dodgy, and the Ukrainian situation makes it even more difficult for do business with Russia at the moment.

Doubt it. Whilst grass track is reasonably popular in the North-Eastern Netherlands, speedway doesn't really have much presence these days. Road racing has a largely different set of fans. The Amsterdam World Final wasn't a great success either, despite being held in a decent enough stadium, and that was more than 25 years ago. The Danish speedway scene is one of the bigger ones in the world, and if their fans won't travel a couple of hours to Copenhagen (without even mentioning the Swedish fans who're close enough too), then I can't see the few Dutch fans are going to bother, far less the Germans or Poles.

One would have thought the series organisers would have sufficient expertise to advise new circuits on the best layout. Ole Olsen has never been one to hold back on how he thinks tracks should be prepared (and didn't he even suggest chicanes in the corners at one point?), and surely Tony Olsson knows/knew something about tracks? Almost entirely down to who coughs up the readies, or where BSI can hire a track cheaply enough to run one to fulfil their contractual obligations. There are umpteen GPs in Poland because their municipalities were until recently, daft enough to pay ridiculous money for the privilege, and no doubt this also explains some of the more esoteric GPs in non-major speedway countries. I don't think it can be said that Auckland was really a success. The promoter openly admitted to losing a lot of money, and attendances weren't really that good despite official claims. Would think expansion is down to finding sufficient mug.. erm.. promoters willing to host, and the fact that SGP is starting to encroach on the Polish Leagues where riders earn most of their money.

Is it a mate's rates job though...?

Profitable for whom? I doubt (m)any GPs turn a profit other than those run directly by BSI, and those are effectively subsidised by local tourist boards. By the time the local promotion has coughed up the staging fee, it's difficult to see how the smaller GPS can be profitable.

And Riga did?

I thought the resident BSI scribe said 'why would the GP go to Belle Vue' or words to that effect? I'm not sure about 21st century facilities - I'd settle for 20th century facilities at a speedway track...

Why does everyone in the north have such hang-ups? It's nothing to do with whether something is in the north or not, but whether it's actually a national stadium for the sport concerned. It wouldn't be any different if it were at Poole or Peterborough (not sure if Peterborough is south of the Watford Gap though...) It's not the same thing as they're training facilities that are centrally funded by their sports' governing bodies as national facilities, and which I assume, don't stage events open to the public. Is Belle Vue being funded by the BSPA in any way, shape or form? Will it have any sort of preferential status with respect to hosting major meeting? If not, then 'national stadium' is a misnomer for a club track, even if I understand why it's being called that.

Well if creates misunderstandings, then it's the wrong name. I can erm.. understand why it was touted as national speedway stadium in order to get political support behind it, but it can't really be claimed that a stadium with a 5,000 capacity in the north of England is a national one. Yes, I'm aware Wembley is in the south, but at least it's the biggest stadium in the country and located in the capital city. Ideally there would be a couple of speedway centres to host prestige events and training camps - one in the north, and maybe one at Coventry, if Coventry doesn't end up as a housing estate.

Yes, but would you spend £20-100 quid to watch speedway each week? It's of course, not just the price of admission either, but what you potentially spend on a programme, food and dreadful beer. There's a whole number of factors why speedway has declined in popularity, but it's also clear that most of those can't be fixed in the short-term, which is why it likely has to be pushed as a very cheap form of entertainment.

I don't really disagree, but there's a need to attract more than the existing fan base if the sport is to survive, let alone flourish. It's the fans that the sport doesn't have that need to be courted, because once you've become addicted to speedway you'll generally tolerate anything.

The problem is like asking the question of whether you want lower taxes or better public services. The answer is normally both, but they're generally mutually exclusive. As with speedway - the average fan will say they want to see the best riders in the world in British speedway, but only want to pay a tenner (or less) for it. You only have to read all the diverse opinions on the BSF to see the wildly differing opinions on the way forward, yet this group of people will generally already be those who'll go regardless, or who've lost interest and will never go anyway. I do agree that some polling of likes and dislikes could help, but at the end of the day, I think it comes down to someone sitting down and working out what's the potential audience, what's an acceptable price point for that audience, and what sort of product can be offered at that price point. That ultimately will also determine some of the rules that need to be implemented to keep things competitive. The improving of facilities and the other things that put sane people and sponsors off, can only really happen when the sport stabilises, but ultimately there does need to be a programme of trying to develop speedway-specific facilities to encourage longer-term investment. Personally, I think the sport needs to pitch itself as cheap entertainment using lesser quality riders initially, but put in place a scheme to encourage tracks to develop their own riders and allow them to retain them to some extent. I think some sort of team equalisation is desirable, but there needs to be more continuity in teams in order for fans to build up some sort of rapport.

You only have to read the half-baked ramblings of some of the riders in the Spar to realise they'd be amongst the worst advisors. Supporters are generally not ideal either, and even if you could find some sensible ones, it's really the ex-supporters or potential supporter you need to be asking what it would take to get them to watch the sport. With respect to business and marketing experts, quite aside from the fact that those who're any good wouldn't really want to touch speedway and its demographic with a bargepole, I think speedway has a number of unique challenges that go even beyond other minority sports. You'd probably be better off bringing in an official who's been successful in other lesser sports, but ultimately I still think it needs to be someone with a deep understanding and love of speedway which is why it hasn't really happened before now. It possibly nearly happened with the characters involved in the SGP, but one was just looking for a vehicle to hang television and sponsorship contracts around and ultimately didn't really have sufficient backing, whilst the other seemed to be pursuing an egomaniacal dream that didn't really take a holistic view of the whole speedway business.

Don Valley is the reason why I have little time for those rabbiting on about an Olympic athletics legacy. The only sports that justify large stadiums are football and rugby, and they don't sit well in oval stadia. Even at the lower end of the scale, I see quite a few athletics facilities have been built at considerable expense by local councils, and yet only ever seem to be used by a handful of people. I've nothing against athletics and can see the benefit providing facilities to encourage people to take up the sport, but the economic argument seems pretty weak. If a council therefore finally shows some support for speedway that's historically far more popular than athletics, then that surely is to be commended rather than criticised. 6 million is really not a huge investment, especially when you consider that Don Valley Stadium apparently cost nearly 30 million 25 years ago, but it's really the allocation of land that's the most valuable aspect as getting inner city sites for motor sports is almost unheard of these days. If it ultimately doesn't work out then so be it - the land can still be re-developed for something else. That's basically what happened in Riga, isn't it...

Whilst I have to admit to a degree of cynicism about this over-hyped project, councils waste lots of money on lots of things with a limited economic outlook, including athletics stadiums which hardly anyone uses (e.g. Don Valley). Perhaps if speedway got more support from local government (as in Scandinavia) than it might help rejuvenate what used to be a popular sport at the heart of local communities. There's probably a reasonable case that if a half-respectable stadium can be constructed, then it might well draw larger speedway events that will help justify it. After all, there's not really much competition around nowadays, and if/when Coventry goes, there will really be no respectable stadium for major speedway events left in Britain.

If Cardiff wasn't available for some reason, or if it was decided to have two British GPs like Poland or Sweden.

There are actually still stadiums at Bradford and Oxford though, probably still with better facilities.. LOL Well, erm... a GP? It's a self-fulfilling prophesy that you'll never get a 10,000+ crowd if you can't actually get that many into the stadium in the first place. No-one is expecting Wembley, but surely a 'national stadium' should be aiming at 10-15K, even if it's only a theoretical capacity in the initial stages.

I think the issue is that a lot of common medicines contain elements that can be performance enhancing, even if rubbing Vicks on your chest wouldn't be the most effective way to improve your performance. It's therefore necessary to have a general prohibition on the substances, otherwise every competitor could claim they'd taken something by mistake. Some of the substances on the banned list are also not necessarily performance enhancing by themselves, but can be used to mask the effects of other substances. This said, some of the things on the WADA list do seem to be ridiculous (and criticised by pharmacists), not to mention totally inappropriate for some sports. For example, caffeine in certain quantities is banned because it's considered performance enhancing in endurance sports (although not power sports). However, it's generally impractical to consume enough of it, plus its effect is known to be significantly reduced if used regularly. Alcohol is an interesting one as it was known by Tour de France cyclists years ago that gin and brandy could improve endurance, although you wouldn't think that beer would make much difference other than having to get off the bike more frequently to relieve oneself. In speedway though, it's far more likely to make you a danger to your fellow competitors, although anything under half-a-unit is probably relatively negligible.

Which is why the margin for error is 10% + 2 mph, and even then handheld devices have been largely deprecated in favour of vehicle-based or static cameras.

How accurate is the equipment? When the police do roadside checks with handheld equipment, I think that's just to give an indication of the alcohol level and the actual legally admissible specimen has to be taken on a more complex machine back at the station. Ward's reading was fairly low wasn't it, and he gave a zero reading later (?) so maybe the argument is that the equipment used was insufficient accurate or not calibrated correctly. There will be some degree of error in any measuring equipment, and if you're close to a particular threshold then it might be argued the benefit of the doubt is given. Not defending him because it's not very professional to put yourself in that position, but there's degrees of difference between being slightly over a zero limit and actually turning up drunk.

How many World Finals did Havelock make, let alone do well in? Per Jonsson would arguably have challenged Nielsen, but Ermolenko and Jan O were too injury prone and frankly I don't think Nilsen and Knudsen were really up there amongst the absolute best despite having good finishes in World Finals. I wouldn't put Tatum and Wigg in the same league at all (at least not speedway-wise), and the Morans were too inconsistent for obvious reasons. I'm not even sure why Correy is even mentioned in the same breath as Nielsen.

And yet the journal of record makes no critical analysis beyond quoting the organisers blaming the weather, saying how Travel Plus managed to re-organise travel, and alluding to scurrilous discussions on 'social media'. How dare the fans ask questions as to the track preparation or whether the organisation of the GP (at a new venue) was sufficiently supervised...

Usual whitewash in the Spar I see, with no real criticism of the GP organisation and at least two mentions of Travel Plus. Lazy and embarrassing journalism.

Maybe you could take it up with BSI's lords and masters at IMG Global. Not IMG(UK) which is responsible for these fiascos.