waiheke1

That’s not really a valid analogy though is it. Firstly, the people posting on here are customers, current, past and potential future – therefore comments on the quality of the product provided by promoters is highly relevant. Secondly, I’m not a builder, but if I pay money to a builder who builds a shed that leaks and I hear that he is almost bankrupt, I may be able to deduce that he is not a very good builder and is not running a successful business. The fact that he may still be a better builder than me doesn’t invalidate that deduction. Thirdly, you are right, most people on here have never been promoters. But there are people who have followed speedway for long periods of time, so may well have a better understanding of the sport than many promoters. Similarly, there are people on here who are in senior roles in sales, marketing, accounting, IT, management, run their own businesses etc. These are all highly transferable skills, and while there will be certain nuances to being a speedway promoter, as there are with any industry, to suggest that none on here could do better than the current lot is simply a fallacy. That’s not to say that every person on here could do a better job than current promoters granted, but plenty could, and even those that couldn’t can contribute suggestions which could improve the promoter’s product and/or running of business. I’d suggest the main issue would be as an individual promoter ones power is largely limited to ones own operations, whereas a fundamental change is required to the mentality of the BSPA as a collective is speedway is really to progress. But I’m sure every single track could do better in some aspects of financial management, marketing, product quality etc. I certainly don't think the current promoters are stupid, and yes most have been able to make money in other ventures Hoever, there does seem to be something about sports (not just speedway), which seems to make otherwise astute businessmen make some quite poor business decisions. Surely this is the same in most professions, you could say why should a builder/plumber train an apprentice. It's called succession planning, and if you care about your employer and your industry its what you will do. It's also in your on self interest to ensure your company does well - in speedway surely you want your reservces to do well to maximise your chances of making the play offs and hence earn additional money.

The point is thst if the second strings get extra heats against reserves, then hest leaders will have less heats sgsinst reserves/second strings, which will kead to a compression of aversges (I.e. second string sverages will increase slightly, hest lesders will decreasr slightly). This msy not be massive, but what it may allow a team to do is redclare mid season, removing a second string with an artificially high average for a better rider on a similar 2013 average .Tbf, we already have a situation where riders who race regularly in nominsted hests have artificially low averages compared to other riders ( and vice versa for reserves). Compare the 87 and 88 bl averages (when they intorduced nominsted heat snd second reserve heat) to see how such a compression is very noticeable.

My thoughts: Not really much different to the rule introduced in 1986 that all teams must have one home grown junior, who came in on an assessed to point average. Most teams ended up fielding to, to be able to have a decent top 5 under the then 45 point (inc bonus point) limit. The same season a minimum three rider rule was brought in, meanings these juniors needed to take all the scheduled rides (or if replaced in one, come in as a replacement in another). On the downside, it has to be said that that scheme produced only Sean Wilson and Andy Phillips who did anything of note, and tbf they probably would have done so without the rule. But we are now much more desperate for young British riders to come through, so i think its well worth a shot. In terms of heat format, I’d suggest a return to that introduced in the late 80s, which added an extra reserves heat and the nominated riders heat to the existing 13 heat format. So four scheduled riders, must take a minimum of three. In terms of elegibility, why not just say any rider who is either under 21 who (at the start of the season) has ridden no more than 10 EL meetings or is under 23 and has ridden no more than 20 PL meetings? Said rider must be British, elegible and available to ride for Team GB or however you want to phrase it. I don’t understand why they are being allocated, but it would seem to stop the richest clubs from “cherry picking” the top youngsters, which therefore makes me very surprised it’s been introduced. Perhaps there should be a “standard wage” for these riders, and a draft system along the lines of baseball’s? Personally, I would have allowed the riders to move up into the top5 if their averages demanded it, to try to reduce the artificiality of their averages. But the benefit of this way I guess, is that for team building next season (if averages are used) you could say apply a 50% multiplier to get a team building average. In case of injury during a meeting to a top 4 rider, I’d suggest that they should be allowed to be replaced in their remaining riders by any rider below them in the averages. Once so replaced, they could not ride again later in the meeting, and must have a doctor certify them unfit to reduce manipulation of this system. No rider could be used as such a replacement more than twice.

I'll bet a fiver they will finish higher than eighth.Loser to donate fiver to charity of winners choice?

a national manager who doesn't slag off fans on twitter has to be an improvement , and I'm confident that the next manager - whoever it is - will do no worse from a results perspective at the next swc. Would also be great to see test series reinstated - against Sweden would be an interesting match at the currentv time, so too Russia if visas could be sorted, and although a full strength Aussie side would likely win comfortably that would be a good series too. bspa needs to do what it can to implement this to give the manager - whoever it is - the chance to test different riders at international level.

Surely the issue for bsi is that if they have to pay him "x" and fIm only pay riderssay half of x. If sec onlyv have to pay fim a fraction of x, then they can potentially afford to pay the riders a lot more than what they get in the gp series because of the absence of "fim tax." the risk to bsi is if riders then start prioritising sec over gps. Ideally id like to see sec as an old style knockout championship, or as a gp qualifying series. Either I think would produce top racing, good fields and complement , rather than compete with, the gps .

Sam ermolenko won his title with 12, coming home last in his final ride. I think Hans lost a run off for the title after finishing on 12 also. Both in the 90s, possibly reflecting tougher fields after the swap to two semi finals instead of continental final qualifying route?

Hi Phil if u subscribe are u able to access it on multiple devices e.g. both laptop and android phone?

MP: OK, at the risk of boring others: (and I'm not going to quote your post here due to length): The 10% is a round figure used for simplicity here, in reality it varied beteen 9-11%. Average was done across majority of riders that rode in moiré than one of thios eleagues, if a rider asn’t in the top say 50 of a league’s riders it’s possible i didn’t include them in the calculation. Cacls were done based on 2013 meetings only, and averages including BP. The thread is here, gives more details on how calculation was done. http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=75014&page=2&do=findComment&comment=2368252 Re your last point. I’ve looked at doing similar rankings historically, planning to start with the 80s (my favourite decade in speedway). For that I was planning to use weightings of 25% each for world Final, world final qualifiers, internationals (tests, pairs, wtc) and BL (inc “bonus” for those in top 3 in BLRC). I don’t have a sufficient archive of information to include the other individual events (UK and in Europe) that would potentially have been a fifth factor for inclusion. There’s also a list somewhere on the forum of riders ho topped the league averages in the same year as winning the world final, not rare but not that common either, though I believe Hans (greatest league speedway rider ever?) did it four times (definitely 86,87,89, not certain on 95).

in answer to a question from MP on a different thread, an explanation on basic calculation method I used. For weightings of different events I used the following: GP weighted 40%, league speedway 20%, SWC/SEC/SGP qualifiers 10% each, junior world champ 7.5%, national champs 2.5%. Riders calculations based on only events they took part in (so someone not riding in the SC and world under 21 champs would have their weighted score divided by .925). However, riders also had a % deduction from overall score based on number of events not participated in. I did the calc for around the top 70 riders in the world, I’m pretty confident I didn’t miss anyone with a genuine claim to be in the top 30. Weighting between different events was the most problematic area, for this I used the scores of the top 15-20 riders in a given completion, which means the rankings are a more accurate reflection for comparison purposes of the top riders than the weaker riders (which is consistent ith my intention to establish and rank the top 20-30 riders in the world, not rank those 50-70th).

hen I did my analysis of top 30 riders in the world for 2013, I used a weighting which had the Swedish League being approximately 10% stronger than the Polish League, which in turn was 10% stronger than the EL, which in turn was 10% stronger than the Polish second flight.

Final list for the 2013 season, reflects the final EL meetings (inc ELRC), and also added the major national indivdual championships (Poland, England, Sweden, Australia, Denmark). No major changes to the above list, though NKI overtakes Emil and Janusz jumps a number of places due to his peformance in the Polish final. Andreas Jonsson ranked 35th, Chris Harris 36th. 1 Jaroslaw Hampel 10.73 2 Tai Woffinden 10.73 3 Niels K Iversen 10.43 4 Emil Sayfutdinon 10.36 5 Darcy Ward 10.09 6 Chris Holder 9.65 7 Nicki Pedersen 9.43 8 Greg Hancock 9.22 9 Grigorij Laguta 8.62 10 Adrian Miedzinski 8.33 11 Tomasz Gollob 8.31 12 Janusz KOŁODZIEJ 8.20 13 Matej Zagar 7.97 14 Patryk Dudek 7.95 15 Kenneth Bjerre 7.90 16 Piotr Protasiewicz 7.86 17 Maciej Janowski 7.63 18 Michael Jepsen Jepsen 7.56 19 Krzysztof Kasprzak 7.55 20 Grzegorz WALASEK 7.48 21 Artem Laguta 7.46 22 Troy Batchelor 7.44 23 Piotr PAWLICKI 7.28 24 Hans Andersen 7.20 25 Martin Smolinski 7.09 26 Peter Karlsson 6.89 27 Przemyslaw Pawlicki 6.81 28 Danny King 6.76 29 Fredrik Lindgren 6.65 30 Alexander LOKTAEV 6.51

No apology needed. I don't think in league speedway manipulation of the tac rules is more common than in the past, certainly the modest net maximum one point gain (in some exceptional circumstances it could two) makes it risky and rarely worthwhile. The swc is a different story all together, as the rules mean u can throw one point to potentially gain six. and of course tac subs were never allowed in thexold world team cup ( reserves could be used, but that wasn't dependent on being behind).

ok so there are 15 riders in the series - the halfcway mark is eighth. a rider who consistently finishes 9th or 10th is an average (or slightly below average) performer at that level. That's not saying he isn't a very good rider - but at gp level he is average at best ( you could havex said the same in the 80s for Jan andersson who I would rate ahead of Freddie).I'm not anti lindgren - I would have been fine with him being picked ahead of jonsson for the Swedish spot.. but there were plenty of other riders who outperformed lindgren in 2013 - I make him just inside the top 30 riders lastxyear - more deserving (imho) of a place.

Because you could replace two rubbish riders with two top riders turning a likely 1-5 into a 5-1. care to explain how u think the new double point rules can give a 7 point gain?

No in the old rule u could throw two to gain eight. now u could throw two to gain three. how many times does this need explaining?

apart from Harris, who can you name that has consistently been in the series with a worse record?surely that is the record of a rider who is "average" or actually "slightly below average" at gp level?

i see your point - though some paper based subscribers would have no use for an online sub, and vice versa. But rather than being "free", perhaps the online could be avilable at a significant discount to those with paper based subs. I'm sure all ill be revealed in the near future. i guess there's nothing to stop current subscribers sharing their paper copy with 9 other people, though appreciate with online subs this would be much easier to do. Possibly some sort of protection which means someone can only access their mag on "x" number of devices. Plenty of other mags are available online, so there must be ways of preventing large scale sharing. I'm sure this ould have been considered by the Speedway Star team before launching.

They've effectively already paid for the right to read the editorial content, therexwould be minimal additional cost to the publishers, so I don't see why they shouldn't have online access included. Obviously the star's call to make though.

i worked in the magazine industry for around 10 years, so am interrested in Phil's reply. My guess though is one or more of the following: There is no automated order processing, so manual admin is required for orders , which would roughly be the same for an annual sub or a one off purchase. If it takes ten minutes of admin for an order (downloading off the site, packagin up, charging the credit card, dealing with any follow up queries) then the profit margin on a single copy is gone tight there. The subscription database may not be able to handle “one off” orders (I saw many different subs processing systems used, and frankly they were all rubbish) – ties back to point 1 above. Possibly the company doing the IT work converting to electronic copy are charging per subscrivber rather than per issue sold? Anyway, this is great news, I’ll definitely be subscribing from NZ. I’d definitely see a market for back issues this way. Even if it was not every issue (initially) but "sets" such as “world final issues from the 80s” etc. I’m sure this could be done in a cost effective way, and if reasonably priced would need only a handful of purchasers to show a profit. i'd assume to appeal to those who would not purchase a conventional subscription, predominantly those who travel a lot or are based overseas. Also, I would guess that long term the margin has to be better on the online version by cutting out the cost of postage? More subscribers also potentially drives up advertising revenue as well as circulation revenue. certainly it seems a reasonable request that anyone paying to subscruibe to the paper version should at least have the option of free subscription to the online version.

agreed. and if not them, there are half a dozen poles (janowski, pawlickis, kolodscz,miedzinski etc) more deserving, not to mentionthe likes of batchelor and a laguta. really disappointed with the decision, one swede I agreed with, two no way. neither Jonnson or lindgren are out of place in the seriesBUT there are countless more deserving and exciting options.

I realised u did, but was clarifying in case it wasn't obvious for others

obviously was thinking of the year (80) when I meant to type his age (20).

I don't consider that unfair at all. there are others on here who would argue that as the gp winner they should actually get more points than any other rider. to reiterate, I think the current system is the best.

really? so why are they part of the group "I" of the European qualifying rounds? just forr fun? I believe 2006 was the last world cup where reigning champs were seeded.