norbold

You can't take any notice of anything in his books! The strange thing about that photo is that only three of the riders have numbers on their shoulders. In 1929 the top riders were excluded from the new leagues and continued to ride for individual trophies. They were all given an individual number which they wore throughout the season. There was no no. 1 to avoid any jealousy. Art Pechar was no 2, Jack Parker, 3, Sprouts Elder, 4, Roger Frogley, 6, Frank Arthur, 8, Vic Huxley, 11, and so on.

There is a photograph of the 1933 Sheffield team in Robert Bamford's "Speedway - The Prewar Years", which shows the numbers on the front. One of the problems with investigating this is that most photographs of riders and teams are taken from the front or side! Photographs of the backs of riders are not very common.

Though, of course, Jack Parker did lose a couple of times. Tom Farndon was undefeated!

Apart from Tom Farndon of course...

Let's not get carried away here!

And let's not forget John Hyam.

Also - how could I have forgotten? - Don Johns, Albert 'Shrimp' Burns, Maldwyn Jones and Eddie Brinck - American pioneers from before the First World War and the early 1920s who invented the art of broadsiding.

Dick Case, the promoter who kept speedway going at Rye House - and thus Britain - throughout WW2...well, ok, he missed out on 1944, so I'll give you that one, Ron!

Don't forget to get your tickets for the Speedway Museum barbie this Saturday, 26 April at 1:00 p.m. Tickets are £15 which includes lunch and admission to Paradise Wildlife Park as well as the Museum. Tickets are available from Vic White, 90 Ruskin Avenue, Long Eaton, Notts, NG10 3HX. Tel: 0115 9736041. email: legend333@btinternet.com See you there!

So many people... A. J. Hunting - Established the first major promotion in Australia and then in Britain. Bill Cearns - For the cash he injected in to the sport in the early days and his support of tracks like High Beech and Wimbledon amongst others. Sydney Glanville and Lionel Wills for being instrumental in bringing the sport to Great Britain. Early promoters like Fred Mockford and Cecil Smith for taking a chance on the new sport. Jack Hill-Bailey for organising the first meeting at High Beech. J. A. Prestwich for inventing the J.A.P. speedway bike. Showmen promoters like Ronnie Greene, Alec Jackson, Len Silver. And that's without the pioneer riders like Frank Arthur, Vic Huxley, Ron Johnson, Sprouts Elder, etc. for helping to get the sport established. And lots lots more...

I was interested in speedway before I ever actually attended my first meeting. My family had gone just before and just after the War and I'd heard a lot about it from then. In the 1950s I used to follow the results in the newspaper and watch it on the rare occasion it was on television. When I was about 8 or 9 we used to have a cinder pitch near where I lived and I would ride my bicycle round this pitch pretending I was either Split Waterman or Aub Lawson, who were my two heroes. The first meeting I ever actually attended in the flesh was on 11 May 1960, New Cross v. Norwich. Amazingly, the first heat saw my two heroes up against each other as Split Waterman and Jimmy Gooch were out for New Cross and Aub Lawson and Harry Edwards for Norwich. The result was a 3-3. !st: Lawson 2nd: Gooch 3rd: Waterman 4th Edwards. I was hooked from then on!

No! Anything but that!!! Take all my books for nothing... They're yours!

Now if you'd invested in a book called "70 Years of Rye House Speedway" you would have found out all you wanted to know....

He was indeed a cooper.

According to Tom Morgan's 1949 Who's Who, Jack Unstead was born in 1926, but, as I have found in the past, the birth dates he gives are not always reliable. So I'd say he was 36 give or take a couple of years when he died.

Newcastle racked up five scores of over 70 in 1982, the best being 74-22 over Oxford. The highest score in 1982 was Crayford's 76-20 win over Milton Keynes . Newcastle didn't manage any 70 point scores in 1983. The best that year was again by Crayford who beat Stoke 73-23. Exeter matched the 76-20 scoreline in 1989 with a win over Arena Essex. Bristol beat Glasgow White City by a maximum 70-14 in 1949 under the 14 heat format.

Yes, all of those rode there as well as Tommy Price and George Wilks. Wally Green was a track raker there as a young boy. Actually, I made a mistake about them being in the 1938 Sunday Amateur Dirt Track league as they closed down in 1937. I was confusing Barnet with Smallford.

Barnet was another track that sort of promoted itself from grasstrack to speedway. This also ran in the late 1930s. At first it was pure grasstrack, then the organisers put down some cinders just at the corners to make broadsiding easier, then the grass just wore away round the track and was not replaced, so it was a real dirt track with cinders corners. They were reckoned as a real speedway track by 1938 and even enetered the doomed 1938 Sunday Amateur Dirt Track League.

Yes, it happened during a National League match with Southampton. Unstead was partnering Colin Gooddy and was up against Bjorn Knutson and Pater Vandenberg. Jack missed the gate and went for the inside line; as he did so he clipped Vandenberg's rear wheel, lost control and crashed in to a lamp standard. He died instantly from a ruptured aorta. A very sad day.

Homes of British Speedway is a book.

Very interesting, Paul. I used to live near Abridge and I can't imagine there being a speedway there, except, as you say, maybe a grass track. Have you got the exact date of the meeting? I'll see what I can find out, unless someone already knows....

This one's better because it doesn't have the errant apostrophe.

I miss Wimbledon, Hackney and Harringay.

Graham Miles the tallest rider in speedway? Why have you never mentioned that before, BOBBATH?

Graham Warren could have won many world finals. He shot in to prominence in 1949 and by 1950 was ranked no. 1 in the world by the authoratative Stenner's Annual. It was thought he would prove to be one of the greatest riders of all time with many World Championships ahead of him. Unfortunately his injury put paid to that and although he was still a good rider, he never regained the "greatness" that he had in 1950.