mikebv

A wee wee would be too much for it to hold..

Batch definitely not impressed. ...

"Adam Ellis going wider and wider chasing the dirt".... to quote Nigel... If he is really chasing the dirt he is going to finish his race in Bristol...

They are all riding it OK until they suddenly hit a nightmare spot on the track...

Good to see it seems to be getting better then?

Heat 10.... Last one out, switch the lights off please.... Be interesting to see what the Polish teams make of tonight... Might find a few lads getting a touch of 'Summer Flu' on Monday and Wednesdays between now and season end... (Oh, and on Thursdays too)... (And some still criticise Woofy for not riding in Britain?)..

Isn't there a duty of care for the riders on behalf of those who expect them to ride? I have said that I think Speedway has to lower it's ability level of rider to keep going and be affordable... However, I am slowly coming to the conclusion that having 'lesser' riders on some British Speedway tracks would be nothing but carnage... If Morris and Musielak cannot ride it then you cannot ever really comprehend running meetings with a much lower standard of rider making up the majority of team places.. Cricket Test Matches would get completed quicker than a Speedway Meeting...

When you get an 'advert' for the Sport like you had on Saturday it must have brought a few extra people to the Stadium or maybe tuned in to watch on BT... They possibly would have thought "I'll give this another go"..... Bet they regret it now... I do sometimes think that if those in charge of the Sport tried to shoot themselves in the foot they would miss... (Just watching heat 8 and the rider in the Brown helmet is leading the rider in the Brown helmet, from the rider in the Brown helmet who is well in front of the man bringing up the rear in the Brown helmet)..

Maybe those new houses have got some taps that work? Rosco should knock on and ask for a bucket or two...

Cannot blame Morris... I would be out of there sharpish first chance too...

A deceptively hot Sun..

They have just took Nick Morris' helmet away.... Presume to fill it with water and put it on the track. ..

Ask Alan where the water is?

From Cardiff on Saturday... To Swindon on Monday... Exactly the same Sport... Sublime to the Ridiculous.... British Speedway...

If the fans and riders feel this is taking the pee out of them... Maybe they could use it on the track?.

Nick Morris.... Fair comments by the way lad... (You need to come in here buddy)

Fair call then given Wright locked up a little... Not as if Morris fell completely by himself a big distance away from second..

That's what I thought.... Or is it refs discretion? The track isn't good is it? You would have thought it would have been completely soaked and a bit 'slippery' for a few races.. Going to be a dust bowl... Have they not got the water?

Wouldn't surprise me if Robert Lambert gets excluded for that...

Sadly I had the same misgivings. .. No point in having a state of the art facility and no one turns up to visit it... When you analyse it, it's quite incredible to be honest just how many 'regular customers' British Speedway has lost in such a very, very short space of time..... Usually a 'shrinking business' will lose a certain 'few' percentage of customers gradually year on year over a period of time before it becomes a threat to its existence. Giving the ailing business time to re-assess it's operating and business plans and re group... Speedway on the other hand seems to lose double digit percentages year on year, and seems to do seldom different to stem the tide (never mind turn it).... My track it is suggested has dropped from 1800 average in the first year it opened to around 1000 average in its third... An incredible (and frightening) drop... Almost half its customer base gone.... The whys and wherefores for this have been covered off at length ad infinitum, so I won't cover old ground.... It is truly staggering though the deluge of unsolicited feedback given by fans (and more importantly possibly ex fans), to those who run the Sport by its plethora of online media, and of course the World's Best Selling Speedway Magazine, the Speedway Star... Staggering too is there appears to always be an abject refusal to listen and act on the feedback given... It is truly a 'Great Sport' (as BT showed over weekend with their various programmes)... Just so sad to see it ran in a way that cannot deliver the crowds the Sport deserves..

The way the bike compressed the top of his head when it hit him I would imagine great care will be taken...

Good bit of publicity for Robert Lambert too...

I've said before, set a £10k max payroll for the home and away matches.. 1000 fans paying £15 will cover it ex vat and leave a couple of Grand to help pay for other costs.. No superstars probably but then again, paying the top riders £3k a night (£6k for the home and away match) means the first 480 fans (including the VAT) pay just for him!! (Madness! And more than £3k a night can be paid out to some riders if various rumours are correct!).. Re the racing quality.. When I got back into the Sport circa 1992 I often went watching a lot of National League racing (Today's Championship). The reason was I found it better racing than the 'Elite League' as there was less disparity between the best riders on show and the least capable.. Conversely, I never missed a '4 Team Tournament' in the EL as every race was contested by the three heat leaders and best second string from each team. Hence the racing was regularly top drawer.. In short. Any level of racing will deliver great Speedway as long as the four riders in the race are of a similar calibre.. Nowadays the name of the rider hardly effects the crowd level therefore it surely must be time to set a maximum payroll spend and develop a format that brings four lads of a reasonably similar talent level to the tapes in each race..? Without breaking the bank....

Spot on... Losing 400 regular fans from 3000 isn't really noticeable... Lose 400 from 1200 and their absence is obvious and stark. Giving an irrefutable barometer of a fading entity... And when any business has that reputation it really is a huge uphill struggle to turn this view around.. Each track has its own 'tipping point' I would suggest whereby the atmosphere drops to a level that then becomes sterile and mundane enough for those still attending to consider "is it is really worth coming again next week"? The vicious circle of low crowds/poor atmosphere, poor atmosphere/even lower crowds, kicks in... And not too many clubs it seems have managed to break this vicious cycle sadly, with it appears almost all currently going through it to varying degrees.. As we know. It doesn't matter how 'awesome' a Speedway meeting is if only 'one man and his dog' show up to watch it...

I actually think the racing is at least as good as I have ever seen in the 49 years I have watched it.. The difference between all the riders on show is a lot less than it used to be in the days of '2 point reserves v World Champions', (particularly given that in every one of those races pre fixed gates, the 'World Champions' invariably chose the best gate positions!).... Machinery too is more of a similar standard than ever with even the 'lesser' riders using the best equipment and tuners. With only maybe those lads who ride in the top division in Poland having 'special kit' they wheel out on Sundays or Saturday nights in FIM events.. The biggest difference between 'then and now' is simply the lack of crowd, which means a lack of atmosphere.. No one will be surprised to see the racing at Cardiff will probably be nowhere near as good as an 'average' meeting at the NSS. How could it be? The NSS is a fantastic race track... However a full night of entertainment, on and off track, in front of 40,000 fans rather than just 1,000, will have everyone on the edge of their seats regardless of the fans' subjective opinion of the racing...... Even the 'worst track', delivering the 'worst racing' can be successful if 5,000 a night are there and the 'event' delivers the overall entertainment level that they want from their 'night out'... To digress a moment Craig Cook has said in this weeks Speedway Star he has invested "well over £100,000" in this season's racing... Yes, you read it correct. That's ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND pounds.....!! And if Craig is doing this, to compete with him (and to keep those machinery standards similar that so assists close racing), many, many others (even non GP riders) must be spending incredible amounts too.... THAT I would suggest is a far, far bigger problem for British Speedway than the current state of some tracks...