moomin man 76

Good luck to the Latvians. Some talented young riders, who are making their way from riding in the Baltic League, to riding for Daugapvils in the Polish First Division e.g. Francis Gusts.

A horrendous crash...I sincerely hope Peter Ljung isn't as badly injured as it first appears.

Interesting - once Round Two begins, I can imagine that only Timo Lahti will have a comparable average to Andrei Karpov of the non-Swedes riding.

They were filming at Daugapvils for the Baltic League Round One, involving riders from Finland, Estonia and Latvia. They also filmed the day after the Latvian Championship. As noted above, they are all connected to VRT (main rider Jesse Mustonen), who are the main driving forces behind the Baltic League. It would be rather unlikely they would either be able to, or permitted to, film Polish Division One action at Daugapvils.

Yes indeed and outside of England, Cook is not at the level of Lahti; a brief comparison of their record in Poland would tell you as much.

Unless Kasprzak ups his game considerably from the SEC and Ekstraliga, he shouldn't be troubling the qualifiers. I honestly think Timo Lahti has a better chance than most; especially if he replicates his performance from the last two SEC rounds.

Who knows exactly - at least Adam Ellis is riding in Poland, whereas it would be asking a lot for Charles Wright to jump into such a meeting with no recent match experience. Personally, I'm surprised that Greg Laguta is giving it a go; with the standard of the line-up being weaker than recent years, it gives him and the likes of Timo Lahti their best ever chance of getting to the GPs. I don't think having Fricke and Zagar in the meeting is right; unlike every other GP rider they now have two bites of the cherry when it comes to qualifying for next year. Equally, I'm surprised that the Australians haven't offered anyone else the chance to take part, as they are not exactly short of active riders.

Swooping one Dane on the way down for another on the way down isn't likely to make much difference.

Apologies if it has been mentioned elsewhere, but both Tero Aarnio and Timo Lahti are due to ride for Rospiggarna once the Swedish season gets started.

The standard across Europe is better than most might expect; especially when comparing to a rider who is currently a Championship reserve. Without being disrespectful to Leon Flint, I can think of half a dozen riders in the Finnish SM-liiga match I saw at Kuusankoski on Thursday who have not ridden in England (admittedly not all Under 21), who are of a comparable or better standard.

That may well be the case too... It would be interesting to hear why exactly the Qualifiers in Daugavpils were cancelled, given that those likely to ride were going to find it far easier to get there than to Manchester...

Unless it is behind closed doors, or with a heavily restricted crowd, I simply cannot see this going ahead. There is no way under any form of social distancing laws that current tickets sold, as opposed to capacity will allow all current ticket holders to attend; for instance all grandstand seats are sold out. Then comes the small matter of the teams and how you get riders, equipment, mechanics, team managers etc to Manchester for the event. Personally, I think BSI are trying to create the impression that they have done all that they can to get the event on, in order to meet the criteria of their insurer's to get a pay off, and then in turn pay off what they owe for not holding an event they are contractually liable to hold.

So Opole took a hammering; no surprise really when they sign Tero Aarnio and don't bother to pick him, as well as signing and I believe sacking Sam Masters before he had the chance to ride in anything more than a practice!

Not ideal I know, but I have checked the Speedway Yearbook for 1991, which contains details of all the WCQR held in Australia and New Zealand until the end of 1990 and there is nothing on this meeting. It does list the South Island Final earlier in the month, but not the North Island final...

I can't comment on other European Leagues, but for Finnish coverage the website to go to is http://www.speedway.fi/etusivu.php There is also plenty of good content on Facebook too of the Finnish League 'Speedwayn SM-Liiga' and for the Baltic League (Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Russia), there is good coverage on 'Baltic Speedway League,' which includes links to live streams of their meetings. Over in Estonia, I have always found 'Speedway Estonia' on Facebook helpful. All of the Finnish clubs are on Facebook - the most regularly updated at present is 'Varkaus Racing Team Ry.'

I don't know if you are referring to Timo Lahti, but if you are, it might be related to the fact that here he is racing in the European Championship two days after his partner gave birth to hs first child.

Link to the You Tube Stream for the 1st Round of the Baltic League in Daugavpils, plus Under 15 125cc races, with riders from Finland (Varkaus), Estonia and Latvia.

This is not exclusive to British riders. There are plenty of other examples of clubs in the lower divisions in Poland, who appear to be run by real 'cowboys,' who promise riders different sums of money to then renege on the deals offered. A good example would be Krakow last last season, who paid no more than a quarter of the wages that they promised to their foreign riders.

Rybnik are out of their depth at Ekstraliga level.

Good to see Timo Lahti as 1st reserve, although after his appearance as a wild card last year, he should have been in the series as of right. But then I guess One Sport know they aren't going to sell many tv packages in Finland on the back of him being in the series. Like the GP Series, the European Championship is another series, where you are selected if your face fits and/or if we can make money of the back of you being in the series.

Looking forward to seeing some 'live' action later in the summer when we get over to Finland - hopefully Forssa will also be on too!

Many thanks for taking the time to investigate and if anything comes from Franz Boßlet, I would be most grateful to hear what he had to say.

I guess it all depends on the definition of 'under-rated.' Under-rated but still international standard riders, or under-rated clubmen? If I was to stick to under-rated international standard riders who I have seen ride, I would choose Simon Cross (very good career, but could have gone further with fewer injuries); Alan Grahame; Peter Karlsson (top league rider, World Cup Winner and GP competitor, but over shadowed by Tony Rickardsson); Kai Niemi (regularly mixed it with the best at club and world championship level) and Tommy Knudsen (over-shadowed by Olsen, Gundersen and Nielsen, plus injuries). At club level, there have been a whole host of riders over the years, so sticking to five is hard. Nonetheless, in no particular order, I would go for James Grieves; Garry Stead; Kauko Niemenen; Jonathan Forsgren and Leigh Lanham. Hopefully no-one has hijacked the thread earlier (I haven't checked) trumpeting the virtues of Buzz Burrows...

Oddly, I have now been on the international speedway website, which clearly shows a front cover from a programme in 1958 that a four way tournament was held between West Germany, England, Austria and Holland with England represented by Danny Dunton, Tommy Sweetman, George Bason and Jim Tebby. The cover has 'Internationales Speedway-Rennen' whereas others are marked as 'Sandbahnrennen.' Aside from that the covers appear identical - were the same promoters staging both sand racing (longtrack) and speedway??? I would gratefully appreciate if anyone could clear this one up....

Many thanks for such a detailed response - far more than I or my friend could have hoped for. From the information supplied, it appears that Homburg (Saar) was an established sand track for longer than I or my friend were aware. It also perhaps puts to bed the myth the feeling that I had, which was that if speedway had been held, it could only have been at 'Waldstadion,' which is the home ground of FC08 Homburg and has an athletics track around the pitch.