E I Addio

Yep, 1972, when Ivan Mauger was World Champion. Every race he used to miss the gate every time and have to fight through from last to first. Makes us wonder how he ever got a reputation as a gater. Must be people fooling themselves about what it was really like.

What's interesting about it ? Apart from the fact that it reduces the league to a lottery rather than a serious competition, I can't see how a class act like Freddie Lindgren , for example, enhances a meeting by going off as a second string. There might be some sort of academic fascination to it but for the life of me I don't see how it's going to increase the numbers through the turnstiles, which is really what needs to happen.

Four years on I still can't accept the reality of it. I have blank it out and pretend it never happened. I still can't look at the No1 pit at Lakeside without a massive tinge of sadness. EDIT. There is a tribute on the Lakeside , with messages from some of his many fans

If you apply that logic I suppose you could also say Ronnie Moore when you consider what might have been achieved if he had continued to ride Speedwáy in years spent car racing and in his first spell of premature retirement. In more recent times we can speculate on what David Norris might have achieved had given up the beer and concentrated on fitness much earlier than he actually did. It seems we had only just started to see what he could really do when he had that head injury that basically finished his career. Briggo should have won more and was certainly capable of it but I think the measure of his greatness was in qualifying for a record 17 consecutive World Fiinals and 18 in all. Actually winning a World final can in someways come down to luck, I.e. gate positions , and who you ride against at what stage of the meeting but to get though all the qualifying rounds and reach th Final 17 times on the trot, and get on the podium in more than half of them is a fantastic acievement, and it's why in my opinion Briggo ranks alongside the very best the sport has ever seen.

I would go along with that. I can remember going to Hackney in my schooldays and there were some old boys there then telling me it wasn't as good as the 1930's when there was the interest of different bikes, before everyone rode JAPs. Like most other things in life our perspective changes as we get older.

I think Rosco was only talking about the EDR, not the whole thing. It seems unlikely that is the specific thing that caused Hemsley to resign.

That's a fair comment Steve , but at this stage we don't know how much of Hemsleys woes are self inflicted and how much are genuine BSPA problems. Hemsley, as you say has done himself no favours with the way he has run his own business. That is not the BSPA 's fault, although in part he has struggled with team building for some, not all reasons beyond his control. The thing I think everybody has missed so far is what exactly is Hemsleys gripe with the BSPA ?Anwser : we don't know , although Hemsley has said more information will be given in the fullness of time. At the moment we don't know whether Hemsleys complaint is basically that the BSPA won't bail him out from problems of his own making or whether he has some ideas that will genuinely modernise the sport (although if the latter he has been very quiet about them) Untill we get some more information about the actual reasons for Hemsleys resignation I think it would be futile to speculate much beyond the points Steve has made.

If we look back through your posts as you suggest, we find that the first post you made when you started digging this hole was that Lakeside was an appalling track and they should be ashamed to show it on Sky. That is a long way from the position you have now back-pedalled to in saying that if you started with blank canvas you woukd have a big track. The poster who made that comment, Orion,also said you can have great racing on all tracks, something that anyone with any common sense woukd agree with. SCB who is a pretty fair judge of things suggested that the important thing was not so much size as width between the straights that is important. Your judgement of Lakeside is based on a few TV meetings but never having been there. Those posters who have been there would I think all say it's never going to be a GP standard circuit but has improved massively under the present promotion and there have been some decent meetings and some poor ones, like most tracks , which is pretty much in the nature of the sport. You are entirely in the minority with your description of it being appalling and shouldn't be on Sky, although you are entitled to that opinion, based though it is on a few TV broadcasts, but as has been pointed out in post #122 your remedy is to not watch it next time it's on Sky. It's a free country and nobody forces you to watch something you don't enjoy. Then you won't have to come back on here moaning about it. Nevertheless it's part of the Sky deal, they call the shots and they will be doing at least one more broadcast this season, irrespective of what you think so get used to the idea.

Even nostalgia is not what it used to be.

I think most people would broadly agree with that, especially the first paragraph, but it's completely more reasoned and sensible than the simplistic "big is better " drivel that Stoke Potter was coming out with. Interesting that you think the feel at Lakeside is pretty good. I think that is one of the unquantifiable things that are important but which never come across on TV . For example I can't remember ever seeing a really good meeting when I've been to Coventry but I nearly always enjoy it because I like the stadium and always seem to finish up talking to local fans who are generally really nice people, and that's all part of the experience. Even more so at Rye House where there rarely seems to be much passing but I think its a great place to be when the weather is nice. Like a lot of things in life, if you go to a Speedwáy meeting with the intention of enjoying it, the chances are you probably will. I f you go with the intention of fault finding, then you"ll find plenty to complain about. I

Exactly. Kelvin said at the fans forum in Feb that he wanted the knew how he wanted the track prepared and wanted it the same way every week as far as possible because one of the keys to success is that the home riders know exactly how to ride it week in week out. We have had some good meetings this year in which some respected independent posters like Halifaxtiger have praised the track and the racing. Unfortunately Sky turn up and everything has to fit in with their schedule and everything changes . Then we get the keyboard warriors on the scene with the "my tracks better than your track " jibes. I still can't get my mind round the fact that some people moan about it even after two heats in one case, but still sit there watching it. Nobody forces them to watch if they don't like it. Maybe it just not as bad as they like to pretend.

Have another read of what you have written there. It says more about you than it says about Bwitcher. Over the years I have had plenty of arguments and disagreements with Bwitcher, sometimes very forceful, but we have never at any time resorted to name calling. Other times we get on fine and agree totally, sometimes pm each other on things. We just get over it and get on with it. Its called grown up discussion .

Thanks to you Swindon fans for giving us what seems to be some pretty fair and unbiased reports. We appreciate that. I wish more people woukd post like that instead of the usual rubbish we get from the likes of Shovlar and a few others that just want to praise their own side and knock the visitors all the time. Interesting to note orions comment about AJ struggling to get out the gate , it good for those of us that weren't there to get these sort of details. Sounds like AJ was struggling with set ups, yet Kim who often struggles with set ups on away tracks was doing well. Thanks also to those who mentioned Rob Mear battling well. He was well off the pace at the start of the season, especially away so it seems he might be starting to pull it together. It must be a good few years since the Hammers went to Swindon and kept the score as close as 10 so from a Lakeside perspective it almost feels like a moral victory. Glad most people seemed to enjoy the match which is the main thing.

It was said at the Lakeside fans forum in February that Ed has 5 fixture clashes in the early part of the season and Rich Lawson would be taking all the rides until then, after that it would be decided on form. Not sure when Ed's fixture clashes are out of the way but woukd think it must be sometime soon.

Good post, and one I would think most except the usual suspects woukd agree with. Admitedly Lakeside had the rub of the green and quite possibly the Aces could have got a point out of it if the cookie had crumbled the other way at times, but that's the way sport goes. Craig Cook was I thought excellent considering he has never seen the place before and it was tough on the Aces to lose him. Lakeside will breath a sigh of relief to get that one out of the way. Very well done to Steve Worrall but what on earth are the BSPA doing in allowing a rider of that calibre in the EDR while his Brither Richie is kept out of it ? Lakeside can take comfort from the fact that everyone chipped in with a few points and there were no seriously weak links but there is still room (and a need) for some to up their game a bit. With regard to the track I think we can make two observations . Firstly after almost every TV meeting we have almost the same people all the time moaning about the track, wherever it is and it makes you wonder why they bother watching, when plenty of others who said it was ok. Football, cricket , rugby, almost any sport you can think of has its good bad and middle of the road meetings. Ouch is spot on though in saying that these Sky meetings are never all that great. The first problem is that without without the noise , smell and sheer excitement of seeing it live it's never going to be quite the same but the bigger problem is that Sky's involvement invariably disrupts the flow of the meeting, not just with commercial breaks, but with more people milling around the pits, races being run to a schedule and a whole range of other factors not present in a normal meeting. But it's the price we pay for a major TV sponsor and it's the way the real world works.

If it was that bad why did you bother watching it ?

That's true, but sometimes in the past that have had people like Sam Ermolenko ans Chris Louis sitting in so it's possible they might tonight, but certainly it's been made clear that Kelvins media work comes first in the event of a fixture clash.

Please no. Don't even joke about it. We've seen what Russell can do with the Lakeside track. Not sure if Sky will want Kelvin commentating or whether they will get a guest commentator in and let Kelvin do his George Martin role in the pits. Lakeside will be wrong footed with no Gerald and no Kelvin. Jon Cook will be a reasonable TM if Kelvin is commentating but Big Ron overseeing the track prep doesn't bear thinking about.

Of course Swindon will win quite apart from how the top 5's do the EDR farce ensures that for the majority of meetings the home reserves will overwhelm their visiting counterparts. Swindon and Lakeside are both caught in that trap and there is nothing they can do about it. The position will probably be reversed when Swindon visit Lakeside. Both Rosco and Mick Horton have admitted in SS in the last couple of weeks that the BSPA have made a dogs breakfast of the EDR scheme this season. Can only see a substantial home win.

Rosco says in this weeks SS they didn't spend enough time on it at the AGM and got it all wrong.

Richard Weston is right. Modern bikes have a very narrow power band and therein lies the problem. Modern bikes are revving to something aproaching twice as much as th old two valve JAPs and Jawas. The more you increase power at the top end the more you compromise at the bottom end. Not the riders lack of ability it's the way modern engines develop their power.

There is nothing in that post that you haven't repeated several times already. Some, including myself , have a different opinion. However many times you repeat yourself it won't change the minds of those who disagree with you. As to throttle control all I can say is that I have been going to Speedwáy meetings most of my life and I have rarely seen the masterclass of throttle control and cut backs that Peter Karlsson used to demonstrate week in week out in his days at Lakeside, and no doubt Bwitcher will say he was the same at Wolves. That is my considered opinion from being there, not from DVD's. There are and always have been good and bad riders and good and bad meetings. For goodness sake leave it at that.

I'll give Matt Ford his due credit. Most ventriloquists have to have the dummy on their knee, Matt Ford can sit in the Speedwáy Office and still work the dummy when it isn't even in the stadium.

Unlike certain posters I don't claim to have the ability to accurately judge the size of the crowd by simply looking at them, especially when it is dark. However based on the fact that the Bank Holiday derbies with Eastbourne used to bring in upwards of 2500 when the weather was nice the Poole and KL meetings appeared to be slightly smaller that that so I would guesstimate around 2000 or perhaps a little more. Not exactly 1946 levels but better than most of the crowds last year when the club were having a tough time with home losses. I agree. There are clips on you tube of England v Australia test matches in the 1930's before massive crowds but the races seem pretty well strung out. There are also clips of World Finals in the 1950's where there is not a lot of overtaking going on but they are still in front of huge Wembly crowds. Presumably these would clips of some of the best races.

Lakeside had a big crowd v Kings Lynn on Good Friday. Not as big as the heyday off the local derbies with Eastbourne but pretty decent. It dropped for the unattractive fixture with Leicester on a freezing cold night but still seemed comparable to a lot we saw last year, then it was well up for Poole. Difficult to assess the Poole meeting because an accident in Dartford Tunnel meant a lot of fans arrived late, but as far as I could judge in the dark it seemed a pretty decent crowd by about heat 3 or 4.