ghcooke

I've signed it and urged readers of the Blunsdon Blog to read it and sign it - link on the front page of the blog. Good luck to everyone concerned. http://blunsdonblog.co.uk/?p=11601

http://blunsdonblog.co.uk/?attachment_id=10827

Just in, from the King’s Lynn website: King’s Lynn Speedway is delighted to announce that Australian Troy Batchelor will return to the Stars next season as they challenge for Elite League honours. Batchelor, 28, a previous Australian Champion and ELRC winner, joins Robert Lambert in the Stars top five next season and will fill one of the heat leader positions when tapes go up next March. Team manager Rob Lyon admits that having Batchelor in the team will bring more than just points. Lyon said: “Troy is, of course, no stranger to me or the club. I am delighted he will be coming back to us next season. He is an accomplished rider that will bring a lot to the team, on and off the track. Troy is a character and I believe we need that, we missed a bit of personality in the team last year especially after Rory’s injury.”

This post carries a public health warning : here they are in all their dubious glory, in full colour: http://blunsdonblog.co.uk/?attachment_id=10650

Not for the faint of hearted, in next week's Blundson Blog, we have a full sized, full colour photograph of the ... "inside" of the infamous "back straight bogs"!

This is the comment on Facebook : I don't know if l can complete this post without loads of swearing but we have just arrived at the track to find that the new pits we have recently built have been demolished the building housing the change rooms and toilets have been burnt to the ground wiping out the electric supply and a tractor that had been lent to us. With their final act they have slit all the air fence panels which means the end of Northside Speedway for the foreseeable future and Sunday's meeting is off. To say we are totally pissed off is an understatement Dreadful news for the club. We, at Swindon, wish them all the best as they try to recover from this awful setback and hope that those responsible are caught and brought to justice quickly.

Yesterday's meeting against Lakeside at Blunsdon may have not been the most dramatic of race meetings but it was most certainly one, if not the most, dramatic day at Blunsdon since I’ve been coming up. The photographs below on the Blunsdon Blog (link below) show not only the latest phase of the building work behind the pits at the Abbey Stadium, they also capture the moment that the building work on the other side of the fence became work on our side of the fence. 19 months after we were first told to vacate the old away pits area at the bottom of pit lane, at last they were demolished yesterday morning in just minutes. http://blunsdonblog.co.uk/?page_id=10015

The sad tale of our soggy efforts at Blunsdon yesterday is available here: http://blunsdonblog.co.uk/?page_id=9000

I can understand why people who made the journey to Swindon for the match yesterday will have felt angry and frustrated that it was called off apparently quite late in the day. As a member of the track staff who had been there since 8.30am (two members of the staff had been there for most of Thursday as well getting as much done as possible), I can tell you that we tried out utmost to get the meeting on. The track was in good condition, one puddle on the main staright apart, throughout the morning. By the time that the greyhounds had finished the sky was brightening and it was warming up (slightly). The weather forecasts that we consulted were very contradictory - rain thoughout the afternoon - no rain until 5pm - no rain until 10pm. We watched the clouds and the wind direction and, by mid afternoon, as the riders began to arrive, I was sure we would be OK. Most of the riders seemed surprised by the state of the track and vans were unpacked. And then the drizzle started, a drizzle that steadily grew heavier and heavier. The track surface started to shine and after an hour's worth of rain it was clear that the meeting could not go ahead - it would have been a mudbath. I can tell you, that going around, unpinning the air fence, at 6pm in the pouring rain, just about finished it for me and the rest of the lads who'd battled all day to get the match on. Soaked to the skin, aching from a full day's work and frustrated by not a single wheel turning, it was a day that will not linger long in my memory. We could have called it off at 9am. It was raining then and the weather forecasters were saying that it would rain on until 4pm. If we had given in we could all have spent a day with our families, or even in work. You can't win! All I can say is that we tried - that's everyone involved with Swindon speedway. We tried to get a meeting on but were beaten by the weather - sorry!

A couple of weeks ago I posted a link to a government e-petition relating to the potential for anyone who buys or rents a property close to a motorsport venue to make an official complaint about noise and nuisance despite being perfectly aware of the locality of the venue and the potential for disruption when legal searches were made prior to purchase. At the time, my re-posting was dismissed rather bruskly by another correspendent on the forum, but this reponse from the “powers that be” perhaps should be aired further. To put this in context, let us remember that there were suggestions when the Blunsdon site development was first muted that the new stadium would have to be built before any new houses could be constructed on the surrounding land and that the new stadium would be shielded from housing stock by industrial buildings. Now, however, as we enter the last year of racing at the old Abbey Stadium, we have a number of houses nearing completion within 100 yards of the edge of the stadium complex. It seems inconceivable that these residences will not be occupied before the end of the season and the noise from the Abbey will certainly fill the air on a Thursday night when the bikes roar. So could anyone moving in to a new house adjacent to the stadium, or any other stadium, have a valid right to complain about the nuisance? Perhaps the government’s response below will shed some light on the situation! “The e-petition ‘introduce mandatory noise complaint waiver for anyone who buys or rents a property close to motorsport venue’ signed by you recently reached 37,927 signatures and a response has been made to it. To read the rest of the determination go to http://blunsdonblog.co.uk/?p=8721 The Italics in the response are my own. It makes for interesting reading, I think

Perhaps I can help here, being involved on a week to week basis at Swindon. 1). Track raking. We used to rake in between heats but you could never get the shale out evenly across the track and riders, notably Leigh Adams and the late Lee Richardson, actually asked us not to rake unless we could guarantee to be able to rake evenly right through a corner. The difference in feel between an area that had been raked and one that had not was sufficient to unsettle even the best riders in the world. 2). Using the tractor with a blade, perhaps a mesh or chain harrows. This does bring material back from the fence and spreads it evenly across the track. On a banked high speed circuit like Swindon, the forces exerted by the spinning back wheels on the track as bikes enter and then drive through corners is considerable. It would be nigh impossible to keep a top surface on the track for more than a couple of heats so, to prevent wearing on the hard base and perhaps the appearance of a "blue groove" we bring material back from the fence and then down towards the white line in mid corner and then out through the end of the corner, trying to keep the enties to the corners as smooth as possible. Re-grading, as opposed to resurfacing (which would take far too long during a meeting to be viable) is much more efficiently done with a tractor than traditional rakes. 3). Sadly, with changes to bikes (lay down engines giving lower centres of gravity and the very controversial exhaust systems) means that deep tracks prevent safe racing. The modern speedway bike is very powerful but the power curve is very small. Rico told me once that the skillful manipulation of the throttle was now a thing of the past - it was either open or shut. With this in mind, the bikes become more difficult to control and a deep track would inevitably be more incosistent than a slick one. If a modern bike hits deep shale it loses power quickly and takes some time to gather it back up again. This deacceleration allows the back wheel to grip the surface and actually accelerates the bike forward, out of control and almost certainly into the fence. We have to keep the track on the slick side to prevent disasters such as this happening. 4). If the loose material is not pulled back from the fence then there is a danger of everyone heading for the fence to get the extra grip, with little possibility of overtaking and the real danger of riders "face planting" themselves in the fence. Trying to get more than one racing line on a speedway track in these modern times is quite challenging. 5). It is difficulty in challenging and changing weather conditions, to really know how a track will respond to racing, hence the necessity to grade earlier than the usual heat 4. If a track degrades very quickly after the first heat then we need to get remedial work on it, if only to make it safe for heat two riders, who are the FTR in the Elite League without the experience to cope with a really difficult track. 6). Track staff at Swindon are employed throughout the meeting (they are all unpaid volunteers by the way), pulling material away from the kickboards on the straights, pulling it away from under the air fences so that the tractors can get at the shale with their blades, cleaning the air fences so that riders can actually see them and be able to position themselves accordingly on the track, looking out for and reporting back any problem areas to the Clerk of the Course and the track curator and maintaining the air fence to ensure that it is safe and secure throughout a meeting. They also put in hours before the meeting and are often still at the track an hour after a meeting has finished putting everything away (we, like so many other, are a shared facility and we do not have access to the track the following day to tidy up). For a fuller flavour of what goes on, try the Blunsdon Blog : http://blunsdonblog.co.uk for more.

First of all, let me state that I dislike the tactical rule, but it would seem that the powers that be like it and wish to retain it. I would much prefer a return to the bonus league point for an aggregate win (home and away). It is claimed that the tactical rule helps keep meetings going - the aggregate rule also used to keep them going! The home team in the first leg would go hell for leather to get as big an advantage as possible and then defend it, if they couldn't win, away from home. But if we must have a tactical rule, why not make it a bit more interesting, or tactical? How about, if a team is 10 points down at any time before heat 11, they can replace a rider with a rider wearing black and white who can score double points provided he finishes in front of an opponent. But if the manager of the losing team does nominate a tactical rider then he does so knowing that the other team manager can also nominate a double point rider in a subsequent race (if the first is in heat 11 then the other must be in heat 12 so no tacticals in the last 3 races). In this way a team manager will have to weigh up the pros and cons of using a "tactical" knowing that the other team could hit back straight away. In this way points scored on the race track count and successful teams aren't obviously penalised - the best team wins on the night. But obviously, any system that needs to resort to such complications would alienate new fans, so let's just scrap the tactical rule completely, and if we can't, then for God's sake, let's drop it from straight home and away challenges like the play offs - those enlightened folk in the Premier League don't have the tactical rule in two legged play off matches, so why do we? And while I'm on my soap box, how many of us are frustrated by "gardening" and other forms of time wasting at the tapes? Why not make it mandatory that the senior start marshall be in attendance alongside the referee and the clerk of the course at the riders' briefing before each meeting. In that way it could be pointed out that any delays will be penalised in the form of fines and we might find that riders take a bit more notice of the start marshall and sharpen up their work. Rant over; darkened room beckons.

We store the covers at Swindon and have used them once at Blunsdon this year as a try out. They fill a container and a box lorry is used to transport them to Sky meetings if the weather looks poor. The ones we have are very, very heavy and difficult to manage - one hint of a breeze and they turn into enormous sails, lifting us off our feet. It took 6 of us 4 hours to lay them out at Blunsdon and then another 3 to get them back in again when it became clear that the rain wouldn't stop and the referee called the meeting off. Then you have the problem of anchoring them down - at some tracks this is easier than at others. The material is not a breathable one so you can't lay the sheets on a damp or even a prepared track - the surface needs to be dry or else moisture is pulled up from the base of the track and will turn the top into a "mush". This means that when the covers are removed the track should be bone dry and not in the type of condition for a speedway meeting, where moisture is essential. This will give the track curator a small window before the meeting gets underway to try to prepare the track - not ideal by any manner. Then there is the question of adequate drainage - where will all the water from the covers go? Under normal conditions the track will absorb most of the moisture but the covers simply allow it to rush away to the lowest point in the circuit. If the drains can't handle the rush of water and some gets under the covers then all is lost. Is there a solution? Well, yes, but it would cost a great deal. All tracks would have to have more than adequate drainage on all corners - so that water doesn't rush to one end - and suitable fixing points on the inside and outside of the track, all the way round. You would need to usea breathable fabric to stop the track from sweating. This would allow the track curator to prepare the track well in advance and then have it covered in the knowledge that when it was uncovered just before heat 1 the surface would be in prime condition. Preferably each track would need its own bespoke set of covers - the ones we have are a classic compromise - they can cover everything from Lakeside's track to Swindon's much larger surface but that involves all manner of overlapping etc just make them fit. Factor in the man hours required to set them out and take them back in again and you've got a massive undertaking. My back goes into spasm just thinking back to the time we put them out and took them back in again. Must add that this is just my own view of the matter.

I thought he did really well. Slightly awkward studio setting (away from the sofa so they coould get the bike in) and with the odd camera getting caught in the frame, but the interviewer had obviously done some research and Tai acquitted himself very well. A good, albeit brief, advert for the sport. Let's hope we can use this very personable young man to push the sport forward in the UK.