iris123

Jozwik not done a lap yet!!!!

Pity our Slovenian member tomazpozrl doesn't post any more for a comment.I do remember him telling us how bad one or two tracks were back in the day with stones and rocks.Think one(and quite rightly from memory)was Wiener Neustadt with riders getting hit by big stones!!!!

Think it puts to bed the conspiracy theory that Warsaw was somehow a puppet on a string event organised by Onesport though

Quick check and like I thought,normally got 4-6 riders through,so to just get 2 riders into the finals is a bit of a shocker

Do you think I can type that all in 1 minute????? I actually edited it to take out the Italian qualificati

Done that on post #41

Qualifiers Max Fricke (Australia) Nikolaj B Jakobsen (Denmark) Mikkel Bech (Denmark) Victor Palovaara (Sweden) Stefan Nielsen Anders Thomsen (Denmark) Bartosz Zmarzlik (Poland) Aleksandr Łoktajew (Ukraine) Emil Grondal (Denmark) Pawel Przedpelski (Poland) Viktor Kulakov (Russia) Mikkel Michelsen (Denmark) Andrej Lebedev (Latvia) Brady Kurtz (Australia)

Not yet Qualificati Max Fricke Nikolaj Jakobsen Mikkel b jensen Victor palovaara Not a great year for the Poles.Must be the lowest number of qualifiers for some time?

It was tongue in cheek

You gotta admire guys like Hayden Sims,paying out all that money for a trip to Europe with little hope of success.A few open meetings in Germany a trip to Denmark and then the long trip down to Italy

As I have mentioned before there was at least one German club that were complaining that is was cheaper to host a Euro meeting than a German national meeting because of the fees etc that had to be payed.And glad yu confirmed my thought about the "no show"

Sure f-s-p has a better idea,but like scb say's on previous success.ask for 4 spots and maybe get 3.If you ask for 3 you might be lucky or you'd more than likely get 2,unless you are The Netherlands and you will get laughed out......and I think there might be a penalty for not sending anyone the previous year or they didn't turn up,sort of thing

Pretty good showing from Bates,even though it didn't look a strong line-up

I don't understand why they hold important meetings in such countries.It is like holding the football world cup in Qatar!!!!

Boo hiss spoilsport But you have been here long enough to remember the Bjerre family member who was telling us how Lasse was better than Kenneth at every stage of his career........ or the new wonder kid from Croatia Dino Kovacick and all those polish guys who were going to be great.....I actually loved to watch Hlib when he was younger.We even had Phil on here some years ago telling us how Erik had a great batch of Danish kids who would be better than the Liglad,Mikkel B + Mikkel M group,but we still await their arrival on the speedway scene

A couple of specific details in my case Firstly,like Humph say's work and private life have made it more difficult to attend speedway.5 years ago I worked north of Hamburg.It was relatively easy after work to jump in the car and head off to Denmark for a meeting.Then we moved south of Hamburg.That meant at least another hour on the journey and that made it very tight to get to meetings on time.But they are doing lots of work on the Autobahn,so a lot of time I would have little chance of making it.Add to that the changes which made the DSL less attractive for me.Before I could see Nicki and Puk in a team against two other good heatleaders and the whole thing was less predictable,but obviously for the promoter more expensive.Now Nicki comes u against the other top rider more and generally one rider is better than the other and wins his head to heads 9 times out of 10.So even if I have the chance I am less likely to take it. Then my girlfriend is no speedway fan.I have taken her to a few meetings and she just doesn't like the experience of boring racing and dirty toilets etc.So a lot of the time I chose something that we can both enjoy Then as recently at my local track the line-up is just poor.Norden have come back into the Bundesliga,but straight away go for a cheap team.They lined up against Brokstedt with two riders who have hardly done a decent lap in the past 5 years or so.Henning Loof and Marcel Limburger!!!! I could understand giving one a chance in a Bundesliga meeting,but not 2 at the same time.I straight away thought it would be a weak team and so it turned out.No way would I spend time and money watching such teams You could add to that some of the rules as I don't like seeing a team take advantage of jokers and I loved it when Nicki took the piss in the SWC and of course booed like hell when the authorities tr to stop such things.Imo they are out of touch,not Nicki

Lendava meeting will be shown live on youtube http://bit.ly/SECchallengeLIVE

Saw Holub last season at Wittstock/which is the German Pardubice)and he looked good,but doesn't seem t have that extra something.And we have to wait and see with the Polish guys.How often have we heard how some youngster is going to be fantastic and then they end up being only average to good?Bridger is a case for GB.Zabik,Hlib,Dennis Andersson and even Mikka Loppi

http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/wydarzenie/35223 Not so good for Finland so far

All the time promoters think some novelty rule or teams full of guests are going to bring the fans in then there is no helping the sport.The lunatics are running this asylum

Sadly German rider Enrico Sonnenberg died earlier today from internal injuries received after a crash at the Teterow Bergring last Saturday. http://www.speedweek.com/grasbahn/news/75909/Enrico-Sonnenberg-erliegt-inneren-Verletzungen.html RIP

I guess it is partly(mainly?) to do with Morians WW2 RAF exploits,but there are an awful lot of Danish links for him including quite rightly on a website for "Great Danes".Strangely for Arne most things are on English sites rather than Danish,but as your excellent article seems to suggest he maybe had his best years in England rather than in his homeland.There are also lots of articles on one of the other early Great Danes,Svend Aage Engström.This is not meant to take anything away from a very good rider. RIP

Very sad to hear,but I would say Morian Hansen was the original.

Just out of interest here whilst discussing all this Swedish/Danish stuff etc what is Loktaev this year?Russian or Ukranian?Thought he was going to be Russian for a change......

Don't think it was/is a BMW engine.It was built by someone who worked for BMW,but was a private project