iris123

Going to be a short notice thing,in that i hope i have done enough(too much)work and they say i have to have a couple of weeks off before the start of the new work year.i.e April.Could be Berlin as my girlfriends niece has just moved back or Heerenveen as i could persuade her to have a trip to Cheese and pushbike land,but won't be Inzell

On a slightly,but only very slightly different take on this.I stumbled upon a bit of film from the BBC archive yesterday(probably doing the rounds)of Reg Luckhursts 'last' meeting.Well it was for the Dons in 1975 he went on to ride for Canterbury the next season.But in one race he is excluded and gets onto the phone to the ref to ask him to put a word in so he gets payed his 2 pound whatever start money for the heat!!!He was saying he didn't fall and layed the bike down.But it got me wondering why the hell wouldn't he get payed his money when he did actually start the heat?

Surely they haven't taken part in the meeting if they haven't even lined up at the tapes?It is like a player was injured warming up before a football match i was at yesterday and was replaced before the kick off....does that count as a match played?I would say,no,as he wasn't on the pitch at any time after kick off

Eating dust was a speedway film being filmed some years ago and the producers were on here looking for donations.Just have to do a search as it was all in this section.....think they took the money and ran as the film wasn't heard of since

It will be interesting to see how Doyle goes next year.Always thought it was a chink in Crumps armour that he looked brilliant at times when winning his titles,but when it came to defending it,he looked a completely different rider Always seemed to me that winning a title is difficult,but retaining it,even harder

Yes,for me greatness means winning those heats those meetings that really count.It is a bit skewed to look and say Gollob or maybe even Leigh Adams were more consistent,but when it counted they didn't do the business.Gollob,ok on one ocassion when it looked like he might have won had bad luck and got injured.But it is winning the titles that count as great. And to say Nielsen was far better than any of his rivals is nonsense again......

Thanks.Knew it was Ivor Brown,but thought he was Barrys dad

Didn't Barry Thomas' father help set up Iwade?Been fairly successful over the years and now one of the younger members of my family is riding quite regularly there having started at a beginners course at IoW.Just got his first bike last week and after 6 sessions looks fairly good from the videos i have seen.Doesn't seem to have any fear of the bends!!!

How is that?I thought Jepsen Jensen,Piotr Pawlicki and Kildemand are next in line from the Challenge

This might be food for thought......compare 1964 and 1965 for riders with an average at or above 9.00.Hope the figures i found are correct,but must be way out to make much difference to the findings 1964 O.Fundin 10.71 G.Nordin 10.66 B.Briggs 10.51 N.Boocock 10.44 K.McKinlay 9.92 R.How 9.84 M.Broadbank 9.80 S.Sjösten 9.62 B.Knutson 9.16 and that was it...... 1965 N.Boocock 11.12 B.Briggs 10.93 K.McKinlay 10.83 M.Broadbank 10.48 S.Harrfeldt 10.46 C.Monk 10.28 O.Nygren 10.22 R.How 10.16 A.Pander 10.03 J.Gooch 9.90 C.Maidment 9.65 R.Genz 9.45 E.Boocock 9.43 N.Hunter 9.43 G.Hunter 9.35 I.Brown 9.27 C.Goody 9.24 R.Luckhurst 9.14 B.Andrew 9.07 D.Younghusband 9.06 J.Biggs 9.00 amazing how many more riders over 9 there were in just a year!!!!And you see also that those fron 1964 who rode in 1965 all upped their average and most apart from How quite significantly

Remember reading maybe a decade ago that there was some problem.Not sure if he wasn't that liked in Russia.Long time ago,so can't remember the details now and the problem might have been Franky's rather than the Russians,but he always seems to go to Sweden to train rather than Russia

Don't think so.Probably not interested.He doesn't over the years seem overly keen on trips to Russia unless necessary

Seems like the Austria team is now a Europe team!! Looks like they never asked Manny Seifter or he at least never said yes.So he is now replaced by German Hans Weber alongside Austrians Harald Simon,Josef Kreuzberger and Charly Ebner.Not sure if that is Ebner jr or snr,but imagine junior

Is he the Donald Trump of the energy drinks world?You don't always want to believe what people say on Twitter!!!

Would hope so too.Or another covered stand would be even better.Güstrow have just built a new one,but they have backing from the local government As i mentioned before the problem is Vojens now lies in the Haderslev Commune and they are trying to push their new super sports club SonderjyskeE.They have pumped money into Haderslev stadium in 2013 to get it up to Danish Superliga standards.The sports area also has another 5 football pitches with Athletics facilities and 6 tennis courts.Trouble is more money is needed it seems as the stadium still has too few seats to meet danish standards.That is the prestige sports project and part of this sports club is also the Ice Hockey team whose stadium,built in 2011 is situated in Vojens.The speedway has to fight against this new super sports club for funds!!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haderslev_Football_Stadium https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SE_Arena

I agree with you Imo the Danish Superleague with 5 man teams is much poorer in terms of suspense and build up.The top rider in each team face each other 3 times,it might be more and most of the time it isn't a ding dong battle with riders swapping places every race.Generally i have seen Nicki have the better of Bjerre or Walasek or whoever else,and that in each heat.Same mostly goes for the second best riders when they meet up or the reserves.One in each position normally has the advantage over his opposite number. In the 70s it was great to see those heats when the no.1s or no.3s met up.You did tend to get meetings where riders would only drop a point or two to the oppo and like you say it created a feel as if most teams had 2 maybe 3 and sometimes 4 'real' stars

Trevor Charley(Vincent) and Mitch were a couple i was thinking of.

There were one or two under age riders back in the 60s or 70s i think.They couldn't have had much experience before riding for a team Also could we use Knutson to point out the poor quality of riders back in those days?I mean he got his first team place in 1957 and in 1959 just missed out on a world final spot by the skin of his teeth.Is that likely to happen now?Think even wonder kids like Emil,Darcy and some of the recent Polish riders have taken far longer because of the quality I'll have to take your word about Briggo.Tbh he didn't seem, looking at him, to be someone who took fitness too seriously.And i know from a couple of my family who would hang around Plough Lane watching Ronnie and Briggo training,that they often had a break in between sessions to go down the pub and then came back and rode around in their hob nail boots and shorts. Phil Rising might know better?

Addio hit on an important element of modern speedway.Fitness.Probably Mauger was the first to consider fitness important.Most riders before and a lot after could have extended their reign at the top if they weren't smoking and drinking like troopers.

But most of the time they never even for a world title have to ride in one foreign country!!!! Not the 'British' riders i.e Brits,NZ and Oz riders.They rode a couple of meetings on tracks they rode year in year out and as we get into the 50s the number of tracks in the top league were few anyway.It might have been a far different story if they actually had to ride in meetings around Europe.maybe Plechanov would have won a title or two?.... Take 1959 for instance and Ove Fundin had to ride in one meeting(Sweden) before the world final.Similar things happened in other years or sometime a rider was directly seeded to the final.Briggo?

Trouble is with the scenario imo is... 1.The vast majority of world finals in that era were held at the same track,so quite probably the riders who rode well at that track would always tend to finish up at the top. 2.To help prove the problem,the one season Peter Craven rode at a world final in another country he finished a poor 10th!!!! In the modern era it is impossible for track specialists to win world titles because we have 11 or 12 rounds

Of course.As i pointed out Nicki won 3 titles against those you named.He must rate better than Gollob and most probably behind Crump.But he isn't that far behind Crump not to be mentioned at all.Then we have Greg,who has more titles than both Crump and Nicki......so that is 2 Just look at the facts rather than judge with prejudice because you don't like a rider

Disagree and it seems the BV management do too.Collins should as they have offered.Morton and Andy Smith,Joe Screen,that type have done enough to earn one,but i'd guess most of the 100 PC thinks should get one are not in that category.And it is also not up to any rider who is in the category to dictate to any promotion

I agree.Big factor as well.Phil touched on it.BSI want too much perhaps and then the lack of sponsors they bring and certainly local promoters can attract

That seems to be utopia.Maybe you missed the bit Phil posted about nobody other than Poland wanting to host the SWC final rounds?At least not on the terms offered.And you can bet that one of the terms the host promoter will want is that the home team is given a wild card or they run the risk of getting into big financial trouble.Probably a big part of the problem in running it elsewhere is most think Poland are odds on,the fans think so too,and so it is a competition for the lesser places.Agreeing to host the finals and then not even having the home team in just isn't going to happen.......