moomin man 76

As with other posters, I would concur that the meeting was entertaining with good racing on a well prepared courtesy of Steve Lawson. Comets just about edged it, with Edinburgh's two Swedes and Will Lawson contributing almost nothing - at least Lawson was making some starts. Ben Barker really is an enigma - the first out of the pits with a bike to help Nikolai Klindt in Heat One and someone who was clearly wanting to contribute all he could to help the Comets team; in complete contrast to Thursday night and him doing his level best to finish off Tero Aarnio's season at Redcar.

The same Tero Aarnio who ended up the qualifying heats one point behind Craig Cook and was only eliminated from the semi-finals on count back? No bad for a guy whose season appeared to be over on Thursday night courtesy of Ben Barker...

I'm not sure who the Finnish team will be fielding at Nagyhalasz, as Jesse Mustonen was hospitalised after his crash at Bielefeld in the World Longtrack Challenge. Sportowefakty still has him listed to ride though - news must travel slowly to them!

The competition has a future, but there clearly need to be tweaks made to the format. The qualifiers allow more nations to compete, but they need to be held in venues that do not resemble gate and go tracks in a field (Teterow), or on a midweek evening with inevitable travel complications (Belle Vue). Under 21 riders have to be mandatory, or not at all, rather than optional. If they are to be mandatory, the format has to be altered so that Under 21 riders have to compete. There is no point in having an optional Under 21 rider, when most nominated Under 21 riders will only ride in the event of injury to a senior rider. As it is the format leaves almost all Under 21 riders seriously out of pocket, as no travel expenses are paid and the prize money on offer is poor. If there is a necessity to stage a two event final to meet television obligations, at least stage the event on the same day. Run one event in the morning/early afternoon, re-grade the track and run the second event in the evening. Sell separate or dual admission tickets. The biggest tweak needs to be made to the end of the competition. To run forty two heats to eliminate four teams is excessive. Points won in the qualification phase should also be rewarded in the elimination race, as well as the final. A pair who achieved less points in the qualification phase should not be allowed to win the elimination race, or the final simply by finishing in second and third place. To an outsider (and most speedway fans), it is ridiculous that a lower scoring team over the course of the first forty two heats can win the competition by finishing in second and third place in the final. At least make the lower scoring team who qualify for the final win a heat advantage to emerge victorious. Unfortunately, most of these flaws were pointed out by speedway fans a long time before race off 1 was held. The attendances for each event was poor, as the public voted with their feet. Either the creators of the competition, Armando Castagna and Torben Olsen are not interested in the opinions of fans, or they are simply deluded in what they think speedway fans will put up with. If either of them had any dignity they should resign for creating such an ill-conceived competition.

Definitely true, which begs the question as to why the organisers decided to stage the event on a Tuesday evening... There would have been plenty of fans myself included, who could have attended, but couldn't attend for a whole host of reasons. For instance, it would have been relatively easy for me to get sponsors passes to enter the pits area prior to the meeting, but it is nigh on impossible to finish work at 4.30pm in rural Cumbria and get to central Manchester for a 7pm start let alone any earlier. More worryingly, I think the appeal of the competition is such that even if the meeting had been staged on a Saturday evening, there would have been very little likelihood of there being a full house.

On reflection, the Speedway of Nations has been a mixed week. The meeting at Teterow was entirely forgettable. In contrast, the meeting at Belle Vue got better as the meeting progressed. A personal highlight was Heat Nineteen, in which Tero Aarnio was able to show his backwheel to both Jason Doyle and Max Fricke. I never expected that sponsoring a rider could be so enjoyable! A lot of criticism has been made of the decision by the likes of Finland, the United States etc..to not field an under 21 rider, which I feel is a little harsh, when the rules did not make it mandatory and more importantly the organisers were not prepared to pay any travel expenses, as well as poor prize money to any riders wishing to compete. For instance, any Finnish Under 21 rider would have ended up considerably out of pocket sitting in the pits waiting for a ride in the unlikely event that either Tero Aarnio or Timo Lahti were injured. Unlike others, I wasn't necessarily so surprised or so impressed by Robert Lambert's performance over the course of the week. Good race wins at Belle Vue over the 'weaker' nations interspersed with the odd point against the stronger nations. Once GB reached the final, we were over-reliant on Tai Woffinden's efforts. It has been a long time since I have seen any rider give such a dominant performance on the world stage. To effectively score 38/39 points over the course of two days was a stunning effort. The two day format for the final may have allowed the organisers to meet televisual requirements for four events over the course of a week, but it didn't lend itself well to the event. Effectively we ended up with forty two qualifying heats to eliminate four nations. The final two heats were nothing more than a lottery. Poland scraped into the elimination heat finishing nine and ten points respectively behind Russia and GB, but could have gone on to win the meeting with two second-third places. As it was the Russians got through to the final and won the championship after scoring one less point than GB in qualifying. There is far too little gained for obtaining the most points over the course of the first forty two heats. The only gain is the need to avoid one elimination race. Once the final is reached, both pairs start afresh. The final itself showed the flaw in the system; the team that won the final race and obtained the most points over the course of two days finished second. This may the rules in 'speedway' as Nigel Pearson explained to the viewing audience, but it isn't credible when trying to win over a wider audience for the sport. The speedway public voted with their feet. The attendances for each event were poor, which in itself was revealing of how the speedway viewing public viewed the competition.

When I started the thread, I hoped that the thread would allow all who wanted to contribute the opportunity to discuss the merits of Finnish riders over the years. From the comments posted so far, it is interesting to see the range of names mentioned, from the earlier Pajari and Laine era, to the likes of Teromaa, and Niemi, as well as the most recent period of Laukkanen and Kylmakorpi. I was also intending the conversation to include consideration of both speedway and longtrack achievements, so it is good to see both aspects of the sport taken into consideration. Due to age, I never had the opportunity to see the earliest generation of Finnish riders and Ila Teromaa only just fits into my radar with his season at Cradley Heath in my early childhood. So from those that I have had the pleasure to see Kai Niemi must rank highest on speedway, even if some would believe that he could have achieved more if fully committed, followed by Kaj Laukkanen and Joonas Kylmakorpi (who would clearly rank the highest on longtrack). Perhaps I have been a little surprised to see that no one has referred to Kalevi Lahtinen, who must have been a decent rider to have scored 6pts in the Nordic-British Final at Sheffield in 1966 (on a track he had presumably never seen before).

That was pretty much my own thoughts on having a mandatory Under 21 rider. They are hoping to create a system that gives more countries a chance of competing and winning at the highest level in one breadth, yet in another, they are handing Poland a significant advantage over the rest.

In an ideal world, I would simply scrap the 'doubling up' rule except for British riders under 21, but to do so it needs a larger rider pool than exists at the moment. To avoid the Kennett and Nicholls scenario, it would make more sense in the short-term to allow British riders to double up, but riders from other countries to be barred from doing so.

On that basis, the following countries applied for places in the qualifiers for the World Under 21 Championship in 2017; 5 Poland; 5 Sweden; 4 Denmark; 4 Czech Republic; 4 Germany; 3 GB; 3 France; 2 Latvia; 2 Russia; 2 Norway; 2 Finland; 2 Australia; 2 Italy; 1 Ukraine; 1 Slovenia; 1 Argentina; 1 Slovakia; 1 New Zealand; 1 USA; 1 Austria. The numbers indicate the number of places respectively allocated to each country.

If Castagna is proposing a mixture of junior riders, to be included alongside senior riders, I cannot see how it will lead to a big jump in participation levels, as there are relatively few countries that have a proper junior development programme.

As I couldn't see an existing thread, I thought I would begin one, to allow anyone to discuss the merits of Finnish riders over the years. Due consideration can be given to achievements not only in speedway but also long-track racing.

Joonas Kylmakorpi rarely rode in the Finnish Championship. I think his best placing may have been third - no doubt FSP could correct me on that. Perhaps it is worthy of a separate thread on best Finnish rider seen?

I never had the chance due to age to see the likes of Reidar Eide, Sverre Harrfeldt etc. To be honest, in the time I have been watching speedway, there have been few Norwegian riders of any real ability, which means that both Rune Holta and Lars Gunnestad stand out. Gunnestad in his prime was at least of heat leader standard. Sadly, Norwegian speedway has slipped to be comfortably the weakest of the four Scandinavian nations. Whether the likes of Glenn Moi and Lasse Fredriksen can regain some of the lost ground remains to be seen.

On reputation, Leif 'Basse' Hveem, but on the basis of riders I have actually seen, Rune Holta and Lars Gunnestad.

A perfectly sensible and well reasoned post - however, as the last sentence indicates this is speedway, so expect little of it to come to fruition.

I think you are either being too positive or exaggerating the quality of what riders we have in this country. For instance, if you can name a dozen British riders better than either Zagar (Slovenia) or Lebedevs (Latvia) you are doing well.

To be fair the allocations are largely in line with what you might expect them to be. The odd FMN's have more places than perhaps they deserve such as the Swedes with six, the Czechs with five, Italy with four and Slovenia with three. As other posters have pointed out on similar threads, you are more likely to get a greater allocation if you are prepared to host qualifiers (GPs, World Under 21's etc). With the current standing of British Speedway, I don't think we can really expect more than four, so three places is slightly below expectations. I was wondering if Slovenia now have more than three active riders, as rider numbers dropped off considerably there? No doubt Castagna also helps the Italians get their extra places, even though they have no riders of their own of any conceivable standard (not counting Covatti who is really Argentinian).

Kaj Laukkanen rode in the GPs in 2004 after riding Premier League in the Premier League for the likes of Long Eaton and Glasgow.

At the moment, all I can see arising is a modified version of the early One Sport pairs competition, where the teams rode as national pairs before it became the trade teams of the past couple of years. Philip Rising might be an advocate of Castagna having passion for speedway and influence in the FIM, but his track record is pretty poor; World Under 21's in Argentina, the World League etc...I hope his ''Speedway of Nations' proves better. It may result in a few extra FMN's entering teams, such as Finland and Norway, but I guess proof will be in the pudding when the nominations close.

I guess it is a sign of the times that there are not sufficient venues prepared to meet the costs of staging semi-final qualifiers, which leaves us with qualifiers straight through to the GP Challenge. At best it will be three-four riders from each qualifier to the GP Challenge. Hopefully there will be no more than one wildcard in the GP Challenge, although I would personally prefer none; especially if it allows a rider who has been already eliminated a back door route to the Challenge.

Greater use of social media is to be welcomed; in fact, the BPA have used Twitter far more readily this year than in previous years. After all, if used successfully it is a virtually cost free way of advertising your business. However for social media to be used effectively, it has to look slick and professional, especially media clips on YouTube. There have been some clips of great races for meetings across the country this year, which have been uploaded onto YouTube and then embedded onto the BSPA's Twitter feed. Unfortunately, Nigel Pearson's summary video didn't fall into the category of either slick or professional. All they needed to do was alter the camera angle, to remove the pub/bar backdrop; hardly the most mentally taxing thing to do! The video might inform the converted, but the converted are getting fewer by the year! The BSPA needs to attract corporate sponsorship, to help put the sport on an even keel, but no corporate backer would consider spending part of their marketing budget on a sport, which appears to be organised/run as an after thought by men down the pub.

Yes - it does look amateurish. All they needed to do was alter the camera angle, so that the speedway backdrop was prominent, rather than a television set in a pub/bar. I spent as much time trying to figure out what action was showing on the television set, as I was listening to what Nigel Pearson had to say. In my opinion, the content of the video was also questionable. There has been justifiable criticism on here and elsewhere about the conference in Tenerife being a 'jolly.' To present a professional image, you don't directly address such criticisms, you should just stick to the message that the conference started on Friday and ended on Sunday, as well as the decisions reached

I guess I like many locally based speedway fans need to answer the question of how much we want to see Workington continue. Unfortunately, too many fans have dwindled away over the course of this season and seasons past. In comparison to many other tracks, the promotion have been pro-active in trying to promote the sport but the Comets have consistently fielded (in my opinion) unattractive teams. On paper, the side assembled at the start of this season was always going to be mid-table at best, as the likes of Jorgensen, Proctor and Roynon were unlikely to improve much beyond their starting average leaving Workington over-reliant on Craig Cook to score a maximum (or close to) week in week out. Since then, Roynon has been replaced by Sargeant, which has proved to be a pretty disastrous signing and with Rob Shuttleworth deciding that reserve pay rates did make ends meet the Comets have been left fielding an unattached reserve week in week out. Both moves have taken further scoring power out of the team leading to poor results and a further diminishment of interest. With Craig Cook being absent on occasions, the Comets have been left without a big hitter further reducing the likelihood of victory and dare I say it interest. The weather has equally been pretty disastrous with rain-off upon rain-off leaving big gaps on occasions between home meetings with further diminishment of interest.

As it is the national championship, I believe that the British Masters is the only domestic grasstrack meeting, for which a facility is permitted for riders who would have domestic speedway fixtures on the same day. Chris Harris is not the first, nor I would imagine be the last rider to be absent for this reason.