martinmauger

Mentioned this to a mate who reckoned Joe Owen also had his wrist slapped for such transgressions. But surely it reasonable for a rider to glance round to check what is happening during a race provided he doesn't endanger either himself or the opposition. Personally it annoys me when in a team event, unless it's say a Fast Track Rider v a GP rider, a rider makes an 'off like a scalded cat'-type start and promptly disappears into the distance without any curiosity as to what is ocurring behind him....

At Hull in 1980 I recall that Dennis Sigalos (almost certainly) and in 1981 the late Bily Sanders (defiinately) being warned for looking behind too often. Difficult to understand as they were both very good riders so very rarely crashed, were often leading or at least at the front and being heat leaders their job was to make the best out of each heat. Don't recall Mauger looking back that much, apart from team riding, having tremendous spacial awarenes he always somehow knew exactly where the opposition were on the track....

Same here in East Yorkshire where it's been a 'mere' 11 years without speedway but seems much, much longer. Sigh, ....

This ^^^. Monarchs v Belle Vue and Glasgow bringing Coventry up for their opener: now THAT's what I all promoting. Put on something way different for the fans and teams they woudn't normally see at PL level, hope it's a bumper night for both clubs. Good stuff....

Ain't it always the way. Annoying if the Star is late but on the rare occasional copy hasn't turned up at all, I've phoned Dave Fairbrother and a replacement has arrived the very next day. Though I no longer have team to follow (sob) I very much look forward to my 'Thursday lunchtimes away from the inane chatter of workmates' and i must say the mag is stonking value at just over 2 quid if one 'subs' it. No, I don't work for publishers Pinegen. Good issue this week; if only the Engalnd v USA test at Wimbledon in 1980 had been filmed....

Moving not really off topic but slight sideways (!), it has always baffled me why motorcycle road racing (MotoGP, Superbikes, etc) is so massively popular. And not just the big events, where 10,000's watch, but club meetings too. The viewing is often appalling, you pay the Earth to stand 1/4 mile away from one part of the track, the riders come round once every minute and a half and someone has passed someone else - maybe - or not even arrived at all on the next lap and the chances are you won't have seen what happened, a dozen races if you are lucky. Unless somoene like Rossi is going for it, the riders follow each other around the track waiting for a mistake, but as we know speedway riders often race side by side and around the outside. The big bike companies are involved of course but the bikes themselves hardly resemble bikes you can buy to ride on the road, and yes, I was a keen biker myself once but it does liitle for me. Yet I can watch the, apparent, borefest pit-stop to pit-stop race that is F1, from beginning to end. That said, road racing events do, and have alomst always, attract huge crowds....

Weren't the starts great all night, i.e. a joke, even Mauger struggled with them. Another surprising 'rule' in those days was that a race wasn't necessarily stopped after a rider had fallen and was still on the track. Not the last time this happened at least in a Wolrd Final; Olsen in 1974, Muller in 1976 and Mauger again in 1978. Strange meeting in '73 though, has to be said that Szczakiel was the right winner on the night due to scoring more points than anyone else due to not crashing or being exluded. But how sweet would it have been for Mauger to have passed Szczakiel around turns 1 & 2 as he originally planned. Still........

Yeah I remember Carl Stonehewer, heck of a rider, wish he'd ridden for Hull and he almost could have. I read somewhere that when Long Eaton closed end of 1997/eve of 1998 season finding himself without a club, Stoney phoned all the Premier League tracks for a team spot but only Sheffield got back to him. Then in 1999 Worky re-opened, signed Stoney and his career really took off doubling up with Belle Vue and riding in the GPs. He was never the same rider after a bad accident where he crashed and badly injured his arm or shoulder, I forget which, due to a bad tyre burn.....

All of the above - but every week. I let a wry smile cross my lips whenever read of a tracks' forthcoming appearence on Sky "we've done a tremendous amount of promotion, hope get get a big crowd", etc. Tracks should promte each and every week, not just the week they are on TV. Promoters mostly aren't (promoters) because the mostly don't (promote), they are the top bananas who run their particular track, though I'm not suggesting for a second it is an easy job where money is taken to the bank in a wheelbarow. At least not anymore. The sport CAN be sold to youngsters, however. I've said before my own non-scientific promotion when I've shown great races, tremendous passes and manuouvers and, yes, the odd crash has produced a positive reaction 99% of the time. And 99% of people I've taken to speedway left with a positive expreience and of, those at least 50% still attend today. But if they don't know, they won't come. And if they don't like it, for whatever reason, when they do come they probably won't go again. I could go on all day (it's ok i won't!) about the small things which make a difference. Allthough many speedway promoters do not own their stadia, they can at least make the best of what is a available. The speedway track is 'their bit' of the stadium so if it happens to be inside a greyhound track, for example, it is simply not acceptable for the public having to peer through 1ft of grass between the dog track and the speedway circuit, etc. I was once told at a sales seminar that you CAN, in fact, sell sand to the Arabs and snow to the Eskimos, the trick is convincing them that the sand or snow you are sllling is better than what they already have. To sum up: make the show as good as you can, then sell and promote it....

."Off-topic slightly, Sudden Sam has cropped up on here. Was it my imagination, or did he have a habit of inexplicably falling off on the 3rd/4th bends all by himself? I've seen him do it more than once at both Brandon & Monmore." Sam did that a few times at Hull, Craven Park in 1999 also. He was mostly brilliant though and performed some breath-taking passes too. Go figure....

I consider myself neither biased nor thick, at least I hope I'm not. But I don't understand the new regs for heat leaders becasue I don't have the interest to fully digest yet another rule change. But surely it isn't asking too much for supporters to made aware of them. I still enjoy speedway but like any sport, it defo matters more when you have a team of your own to support but means less when you haven't....

Some good & interesting posts, I also much prefer it when everyone 'plays nicely' and just discusses speedway. That way we all get more from the forum as we both learn stuff we never knew and / or consider a view or angle on the sport we probably never considered before. Back on topic: riders of any era perform better when they have someone they really (really) want to beat and cannot abide losing to: Briggs / Fundin, Mauger / Olsen / Collins, Penhall / Carter, Nielsen / Gundersen, Rickardsson / Crump / NickiP, etc, etc. Doesn't always follow that they aren't on at least speaking terms though. Nielsen defo appreared to lose some of his edge with Gundersen missing from the equation following his awful accident else their battles could have gone on and on....

it is always interesting how planning for ventures like, I don't know, a speedway track are refused on traffic grounds. Yet other applications like say, I don't know, housing or football stadium applications seem to be easily 'waved through'. This even appears to apply to already very busy and congested roads, thus turning them into long, thin car parks. Hmmm....

Kelv wasn't too experienced in such things at that time. World Finals v GPs: different eras and mind sets; bit like the play offs v pre play off days. A rider knew, in days or yore, he 'only' needed to make it into the last 16, the World Final (achieving a result for a favourable draw helped also !), then it was really who went good and handled the pressure best on the night who was to be World Champ. As teams today know the 'only' need to make the last 4. Back to the '82 Final, would Carter not have taken Penhall a bit wide had the positions been reversed, think he probably would have (!)....

I have to agree but I'm trying not to be biased. Mauger was 'ridiculously' good in the late 1960's & 1970's and would probably done even better under the GP system....

Looping back a bit, if you view clips of 1983 Longtrack Final in Moran's last, or next to last ride, Mauger does him a bit of a favour. No link as I can't find the blooming clips again but I'm sure they are still there. Gotta comment on who was better Mauger or Trick: we'll never know as they rode in different times. But the best in any era was / is the best in that era and could only beat whoever lined up against him, there is almost always as least 2 or 3 riders battling to win a World Championship. Don't think anyone was handed the Championship on a plate, not even Sczakiel in 1973. No doubt Mauger was well hacked of at the result in '73 as he was passing riders for fun that day but as he himself said "I fell off, he (Sczakiel) didn't".....

Adding my 2p's worth, but not stiring the Penhall pot, here are Egon Muller British League scores 1973 & 1976: Coatbridge record (1973), 1 at Coatbridge & 1 at Swindon: 2 matches; 1 point (from 7 rides). Hull record (1976): At Birmingham; 11 (from 4 rides) At Hull; 9 + 1 bonus (4 rides) At Hull; 8 + 1 (4) At Newport; 9 inc 1 fall (4) At Cradley Heath; 2 (2) At Hull; 7 + 2 (4) At Coventry; 13 (5) At Halifax; 12 (5) Ave 8.75, calculated 'old school' - rides divded by total points x 4. So not a bad speedway rider overall. 1976 World Final (Katowice, Poland) 8 inc 1 fall (5) It was known he rode for Hull to gain speedway experience for the 1976 World Final, for which he'd qualified, no doubt the fact Barry Briggs rode for the Vikings in that year (1976) helped. It was rumoured Muller was paid £50 per meeting, ony had an agreement up to the World Final of that year and rented a bike (fitted with is own 'cow horn' bars) from Taffy Owen and was so impressed with it he whipped out a thick wad of notes and bought it for cash for a cool (at the time) £1,400, probably equivelant to £6,000 or so in today's money. It was stated he wasn't really interested in speedway but was persuaded to ride it by the German authorities in order to gain permsission ride grasstrack, longtrack & sandtrack, his disciplines of choice. To stir the Penhall pot then: I've also the 'extra turn' Penahall made in THAT race by flicking his back wheel out but still can't work out whether he actually hit Carter or not, think he probably did. That said, it WAS a World Final and (almost) anything went, short of putting ones rivals 'by the hotdog stand' - no one ever won without being a bit ruthless when necessary, plus Carter and Penhall weren't exactly pals. (Really) hate to say it but the ref made the right decision; Penhall was in front at the time. And it has to be said Carter made the mistake of being in the wrong place at the very wrong time when if he'd been racing another rider he may well have knocked the throttle off a tad, turned back and given chase where he could caught Penhall up once more in 1/2 to 3/4 of a lap and then had another chance to pass him. One wonders what might have occured then (!) All congecture of course but the '82 Final, or that race at least, still gets talked about....

Indeed, though it must be very annoying. It's difficult to know what to advise unless libellous information or views are posted which is then a much more serious issue. I've had similar experiences myself when pictures and whiole chunks of text were lifted without pwemission or any reference to me from my own websites; 2 speedway, one on another subject. The way I look at it is: while less than ideal, my intelectual property (for that is what it is) was originally posted for people to look at it and read, and is still being looked at and read and the locations & sites where they are now displayed I don't believe are commercial businesses. Images and webpages can be 'locked & copy protected' but there is still such a thing as screen grabbing. Annoyingly, I've mislaid the passwords so as to update the sites and though i still have the files, I no longer have the time or interest to rebuild the sites from scratch in any case. A cheeky but funny incedent was one picture I cleaned up didn't really look great due to being slightly colour blind, though it looked ok-ish to me, it really wasn't but at the time no-one was available to check the colours and so it had be posted 'as is'. I bought a speedway DVD off a well-known internet auction site and the company concerned used 'my' badly-coloured image. Guess there are people with worse colour-vision issues than myself ....

As above. My only issue with coverage of Swedish matches, most of which I saw at mum mum's who has Sky & Eurosport, was when between heats it switched to the 'default view' of overlooking one of the bends which just showed fans milling about. Sky, Eurosport, & hopefully now BT, showed replays, comms opinions, interviews, etc between heats....

Whenever I've shown speedway to non-regulars, either live at a track or on TV, I've always got "speedway, never heard of it, when was it invented ?" (oh, 'only' in the 1920's) "no gears or brakes, you say - really ?!" & "they ride so close togther" & "I love the way they can pass around the outside" & "those bikes look great" & "it looks brilliant" & "when is the next race in Hull ?", the last comment is a bit tricky to answer (!). Think the worst reaction was the (sometimes) 'typical' teenage "tut" + roll eyes. The funniest comment recently was "it's just motorbikes going around a track". I resisted saying "oh there is a lot more to it than that, especially when you get into to it and try following the rules"....

In days of yore, the 1970's / 1980's at least, riders used to have tinted visors or tinted lenses for their goggles, seems few do these days. And many also had 'big' helmet peaks; the 'duck bill peak' anyone? Olsen, PC, John Louis & Simmo defo used them at times. Failing that, the late, great Kelly Moran had a novel way of making it around turns 1 & 2 at Hull (Boulevard) when the sun was strong: "When I go over the start / finsh line I count 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi then I turn". Not sure he was being entirely serious....

I've been asked to post the following on behalf of Nick Thorp: Wanted - Paul Thorp's old equipment; bike & fork covers, spoilers, seats, frames, etc. Looking to rebuild a bike with as many original parts as we can find. if anyone has or knows the wherabouts of any of Paul's old equipment, please get in touch. Conatact: Nick Thorp 0750 428 7394.

Indded. I post only rarely but still read the forum everyday.... Indeed. I post only rarely but still read the forum everyday. (probably explains why I can't spell or use editor)....

Been re-reading the book "Legend Who Died Young" about the unfortunate Tommy Jannson. It quotes for the 1973 British League (Div1) 154, or almost 50% of competing riders, claimed on their injury insurance at some point. And that Cradley Heath alone used 42 rides in the season due to injuries....

Replacement Speedway Star arrived, I've emailed my thanks. How do I know it's the replacmenet ? Sunscribers will understand that my name and address was printed on a lable as opposed to the usual way of printing direct onto the envelope, still no sign of the original. So, just one day to read the admittedly brilliant bumper issue. Gonna be a late night ....