oldace

Correct, the lack of viewers, and the calibre of those viewers, is the reason SKY are ditching speedway. OK so the spend on football has gone up massively but as a business SKY would not ditch a profitable venture. SKY, by and large, need material to show between ad breaks, the value of those ads being determined by the number and calibre of viewers. Once those drop then it cant justify 3 hours of prime time TV It is a shame because speedways format lends itself perfectly to live TV with plenty of natural breaks to cram the ads into but its no good if no one is watching.

Indeed you have, and any of those Nationalities will have been shop fronted by yourself and maybe gained a ride in the UK on the strength of it, and no doubt under the flag of the country they are from. No problem with that at all. Thats different from helping what is in reality a going nowhere "Dutchman" (who will not offer anything to this country) beat the system to gain a ride as a Brit. You obviously dont agree but it doesn;t strike me as something Kevin should be encouraging

Not really, and i aint interested either. it simply pains me to see someone trying to help a no mark foreigner take rides off brits. When you have finished questioning what I have done for the young Brits do you think that is a good thing or not

And the relevence of that to the discussion is?

Is it any wonder when the powers that be are falling over themselves to develop Dutch and American riders at the expense of our own

It matters not one iota whether he has patriality or not, in reality he is a no mark foreigner trying to take rides off British Riders. No problem with him doing that, it shows a level of ambition, howwever misplaced. The point is that someone in Kevins position should not be helping him to that end and in doing so is making his position untenable

Sadly you seem incapable of seeing the damage your actions could cause. Perhaps you should consider your position within the sport.

Waste of time, most who say they will cancel will either have no intention of doing or will change their mind when it comes to it

And this is the obvious place for that plea because everyone on here runs their own speedway team.

My son has just told me the Titanic has sunk

You are, dont worry

Well that is your opinion but it is completely wrong. I presume you think the same of World Snooker, Wimbledon tennis, the Open Golf etc. All tournaments where previous form is a qualification criteria for the events

So you think consistently being in the top 11 of a series of qualyfiers against pretty poor riders is a good method but having to be in the top 8 of a competition involving the best 16 in the world isn't. You are simply hankering after a bygone era Ian because it was a time you enjoyed speedway the most, as it was for me but I am not so blinkered as to be unable to see that the old way was grossly unfair and that a GP series is far and away the best way of deciding a world championship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Speedway_Grand_Prix_Qualification

Correct. A meeting can be decided on meeting your main rival from the right gate. There is no way with a 16 rider 20 heat format to make it totally fair though, it would require a minimum of 40 heats, realistically a lot more. With having an SGP series though that advantage usually evens out over the course of the year Whilst I agree with you 100% the concept is used in many sports. The winner of race 1 in the BTCC carries more ballast next time out I believe. Even horse racing handicaps a horse for a previous good win

Now you are being silly. Then, as now, and as always in fact, you had a winner who had more points than anyone else under whatever format was in place at the time. Like I said you have applied the GP win crireria to someone being world champion, it never existed any more than race wins were a factor under the old system. You have got yourself into a hole and rather than admit you are totally wrong you keep on digging

Haven't you noticed yet Rob, Ian applies different criteria to suit his argument. It is OK for a rider to win a world final with 2 race wins to an opponents 4. Oh yes that is fine because he accumulates more race points over the meeting, Of course we move onto the GP and it is totally unacceptable for a rider to accumulate less wins than an opponent even if he accumulates more race points over the series. Ian has been tying himself in knots this last few weeks to the point that within a few posts he has been arguing with himself. We had the disgrace of Woffinden being seeded to the GP on the strength of nationality and within a few minutes we were hearing of how a seeded rider winning a world final is what the sport is all about

Go on then enlighten me, how is this so. The WINNER of the grand final is the WINNER of the GP, in what way is he the loser. In order to get to the grand final he will have accumulated anything from 9 to 18 points to be added to the 6 for WINNING the GP and these accumulate to give us an overall world champion. That has been my understanding but are you now telling me the WINNER is stripped of his GP win if he has scored less race points than another competitor.. Good job your'e not a boxing fan Ian, that would confuse you, imagine boxer winnning a title fight despite losing 11 rounds just by a KO in the last. Ah well thats boxing

Riders have won world finals with two race wins when a rider with 4 race wins was only third, is that fair. The idea of the GP is exactly the same as a world final, the winner is the one who scores the most points, winning rounds no more comes into it than winning races did in years gone by

Pretty accurate description although Ivan wasn't unconscious, he wasn't even hurt, other than his pride, and pocket. The whole thing was really set up for Zenon Plech but he blew it, in stepped the back up plan in Szackiel and the rest is history.

We all possibly look back through rose tinted glasses and things seem better than they actually were. The simple truth though Ian is that it is nigh on impossible to have any form of qualifying that is completely fair and gives the best 16 the possibility of making the final. It would require numerous qualyfying events then repercharges to do it. I honestly believe that, although by no means perfect, what we have now is better than anything that has gone before.

Indeed it has, but to be honest marketing is not what is needed. Anyone could get a crowd in the once, free admission attracts people. The thing is though that they must then be shown something that they want to pay to watch thereafter and speedway simply doesn't do it. The main flaw is in the way the sport is presented, it looks, sounds and is extremely dated. I know darts is not to everyones liking but it is a good example. Up to the early 90s the BDO world final was watched by a couple of thousand old folk, all sitting in almost silence, old women doing there knitting in the front row, and that was the pinnacle, no other events attracted either a crowd or TV interest. Now roll on 20 years and look what goes on at the Ally Pally or any Premier league venue. Not an old dear in sight, loud music flashing lights, 10,000 plus crowd and a good atmosphere. The actual darts though is still largely the same, just the way it is presented that has moved on

The seeding often compounded the unfairness in that despite gifting places to a nations riders it often denied a fair qualifying process Take 1972, GB were given 5 places at Wembley that year but back then the Aussies and Kiwi's were under the GB banner so we had Mauger, Briggs, Nigel and Eric Boocock, Terry Betts, John Louis, Ray Wilson, John Boulger, Jim Mcmillan, a young Collins and Jessup all vieing for those 5 places. Dam good riders simply had to not qualify and yet in the final we had the might of Anatolij Kuzmin, Alexander Pavlov, Gregorij Khlynovski, Viktor Trofimov, Viktor Kalmykov. And people (well only Ian and Derek) seem to think it was in some way fair.

It wasn't uncommon Craven, Moore, Briggo (twice) were all seeded to world finals. The Poles actually had 6 seeds in 1970. Even us brits had 4 in 1978 although we organised qualifying rounds rather than hand pick the four. There are dozens more examples