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And by the time you saw him ride he already had a glittering moto- cross career behind him and didn’t take up speedway till he was about 29

By that befuddled logic football must be successful because many people involved with it are highly intelligent.

Being committed and being good for the sport are not necessarily the same thing. Certainly there are riders past and present that don’t like the management set up at. KL. Beggars can’t be choosers so we have to be grateful for whoever risks his money in promotion, but beyond that it is difficult to find much positive to say about Buster.

Like others I am both saddened and shocked. Together with Stuart Douglas they brought Lakeside back from the brink of closure for 12 years. Not everybody’s cup of tea and his outspokenness upset some but he undoubtedly had the sport at heart and I will always remember my years at Lakeside with great affection. Behind the scenes he was very much a riders man, and as team manager he had great rapport with them. Away from meetings, at club social functions he was very funny with a very dry wit. A great loss. Condolences to his family.

More recently he used to run the spares van at Lakeside and if I remember correctly , Rye House as well. I had the distinct impression that despite his talent he never made a lot of money from speedway and seemed to me to finish up not much better off than he started.

If my information and my arithmetic is correct he must have been about 97 or 98 years old. I hope he was in good health to the dead. I never saw Len Silver ride but from photographs I think Len started the white boot craze, and Pat was, of course at Exeter with him. I think Alan Cowland may also have been a white booter and Norman Hunter certainly was for a while. Sad to hear of his passing . Riders like him were the backbone of the sport.

Yes , it is Liverpool St. Parking could be bit of a hassle at Rye House the train was not a bad bet if you were coming from Central or North London, especially if you had a few beers at the track ! I liked Rye House. The racing was usually rubbish but it was a nice little stadium to be at on a summer evening. Such a shame it’s gone.

I knew Bryan quite well. Lakesides General Manager , Alan Sargeant used to drive him around most of the time, but occasionally he would need a lift to somewhere like Rye House, and living in Erith he would need to get a train into London then back out to Lakeside where someone would pick him up so it would mean travelling the best part of two hours to be picked up about a mile as the crow flies from his home, then still had another hour or so to get to Rye House. That’s what you call a speedway fan !

I was watching one of these Motorway Police programmes a couple of months ago. They stopped a 19/20 year old woman, two weeks after her driving test, doing 100 mph, while talking on her mobile phone. As with most areas of life you can’t educate the terminally stupid !

My Dad became a driving instructor to top up his pension after he retired at age 65. He was 66 when he passed his advanced driving test and carried on as a driving instructor until he was about 72 or 73. He had the patience that comes with age and built a terrific reputation for getting so called “hopeless cases “ through the Driving Test”. There were a number who had failed 4or 5 tests with other driving schools so the school he worked for gave them to him and as far as I recall he got them all through first time with him. It’s not that he was a better teacher than anyone else but he fifty years experience behind him and he got his pupils to relax behind the wheel and really passed on all the little hints and tips that come with a lifetimes driving. So I think when we talk about older drivers, if their eyesight is good and they have a reasonable degree of common sense, what they lack with reactions perhaps not being what they used to be they usually make for in experience. As you say, the highest insurance risk group is for men and women under 25, when really their eyesight and reactions should be at their peak.

It’s not some busybodies being silly . If you look at the reasons it appears that while accident ratios in most age groups have remained stable , their has been a sharp increase fatal accidents to over 70 age group drivers in recent years. If your health and nigh vision are ok you have nothing to worry about but it would be foolish not to bear in mind that our faculties deteriorate as we get older.

Its difficult to tell how far a rider can go. Rob was a useful reserve at Lakeside butfor some reason suffered a loss of form / confidence so gave speedway a miss for a while, and concentrated on continental grass tracks. Jon Cook then got him back to Lakeside as a British 3-pointer which seemed to be a steal because his average was down due to previous loss of form. However the comeback never really worked, he never really got back in the groove and retired for good. I think he could have dropped down to the lower league and done ok but last time I spoke to him he was doing happy enough doing continental grass tracks and apparently making it pay so had no real desire to return to speedway. The thing is Rob was never a full time speedway rider and always had another job laying gas pipes or something and its always hard to combine two jobs and still do well. I suppose on grass tracks he can do his day job then focus on his racing at weekends. If he was full time speedway I guess he could have been a useful top league second string or lower league heatleader but I wouldn't have thought international class, but who knows.

I don’t have the figures in front of me but I think Rob Mear went from reserve to No1 at Rye House in the course of a season. No doubt someone will correct me if I’m wrong.

They were both well into retirement and had probably forgotten more than most riders ever know when this race took place, but I hope you will enjoy its nostalgia value Ove Fundin v Olle Nygren - Bing video

There are two things that are constantly overlooked when considering so-called dirty riding. The first is speedway and thinking distance . Even on the slowest part of a small track the riders are exiting the bends at around 30 mph which has a thinking distance of around 9 metres per second. In other words a rider will travel something like 5-6 metres between thinking of something and starting to do it. If a rider wants to execute a dirty move he somehow has to work out where both he and the opponent will be on the track some distance ahead. Frankly I don’t think many so called instances of dirty riding really are. They are more often stupid, wild or over enthusiastic, often with Adrenalin taking over. It is after all , a very tough sport. The other thing is who decides where the border line is between hard riding and dirty riding. I remember Lee Richardson telling me years ago that at the top level, all of them , even Mr Nice Guy Greg Hancock are very, very hard men, and if they weren’t they wouldn’t be at the top. So once again we come back to the fact that it is a very tough sport, and at times the border between hard and dirty can easily and inadvertently be crossed.

In Paul Hurry’s entire career he has finished almost every season on the injured list except about twice. The chances are next season would be the same. He is already the bionic man, after the serious knocks he has had, and the wrong side of 40 now to be putting himself at more risk.

Difficulty to judge on one camera angle. Other cameras in different positions might show things differently. But :- 1. It was a slick track and Morris drifted wide on bend 4/lap 1 , as he did when the accident happened, and rode round the boards on lap two, so riding wide seems to be his chosen line. 2. Morris was in front at the time of the collision so should be able to pick his line. 3. It’s not clear whether Morris drifted wide because it was his chosen line or because he saw David out of the corner of his eye and drifted wide to block McAllans run round the outside, but there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. Possibly a harsh decision to exclude Morris , but the referee was there and I wasn’t so I can’t argue about that but was it dirty riding ? It didn’t look like to me but I suspect only Phil himself knows the answer to that one. A terribly tragic accident though, with dreadful life changing consequences for David ,and I really feel for him

Lewis only did about half a season on Jawas , and did at one point have a good GM. I forget who he bought it from but according to his mechanic it was a “ beastie” . When he was at Lakeside he had a manager that I got to know quite well and who was a moderating influence on him, but the old Lewis eventually came to the surface. I like Lewis, and always have done. Would like him to do well, but I kind of feel the way he rode at Lakeside was the upper limit of what he can realistically achieve, and coming back is not easy so he might not do so well. It depends what’s expected of him. In what is now a weak league he might do a decent job in a second string role but I wouldn’t expect too much. I hope I am wrong.

As I am sure Norbold will confirm Ronnie cams back virtually world class after a 6 year retirement , but as far as I recall he is very much the exception that proves the rule. Others have come back with varying degrees of success , but I struggle to think of any ( apart from arguably Todd Wiltshire) that really came back as a force to be reckoned with. Ian the context of Lewis , my mind continually goes back to his final comments when he last retired. He said the kneck injury he suffered in a fall a Berwick meant that he would wake up in pain every day for the rest of his life. That might have improved by now but one awkward fall is likely to knock a hole in his confidence, then it will,probably be all down hill. I actually like Lewis.He is a good rider and has been generally a good servant to the sport , but I can’t see any way a comeback is going to succeed , apart from beating juniors and reserves in a weakened league.

Lewis has always favoured small tracks . He couldn’t cut the mustard at Peterborough. It’s difficult to see him making a splash at Kings Lynn. He has the experience and talent to hold beat second strings and reserves in a weakened league, but I find it difficult to see him making much of an impact..

I think Bridger is well and truly retired by now. For one thing he retired with a nasty neck injury that will probably trouble him for the rest of his life and he knows another knock could be very serious, and secondly his heart was never really in the sport during his last 2/3 years when he was distracted by his turbulent personal life. As we all know speedway is dangerous enough as it is but even more so if you can’t commit 100%. I like Lewis, but he is his own worst enemy, and I hope for his sake he stays retired.

What has he lost ? How does he prove his loss ? How can he prove he wouldn’t have crashed on the first bend and been out for the season ? The three essential parts of a contract are offer acceptance and consideration (ie paymement). But whichever way you break it down the season ends on 31st October all contracts lapse. Speedway has been around long enough that even the thickest of promoters (ie Rob Godfrey) have all these things tied up in standard contracts.

An example. A few years ago Lakeside signed the ageing Bjarne Pedersen. A few weeks before the season started Lewis Bridger came out of retirement and was a much better prospect than the past-his- sell-by-date Pedersen, so before a wheel was turned Pedersen was sacked and replaced by Bridger. Nothing Pedersen could do about it. His only remedy was to sue for loss of earnings but as he hadn’t raced he hadn’t earned anything.. Tough on Bjarne but he cant claim loss of money he never had in the first place.

Contracts signed in 2020 lapsed when the season officially ended on 31 October. 2021 starts with a clean sheet. Whatever is in writing the contract does not legally exist until the rider rides his first races and qualifies for payment.

Yes. I should have thought about them , especially as I’ve read Kelly’s biography. I suppose that sort of answers my question. Who was the rider Kelly Shared a flat with, who was on the way down when Kelly was on the way up ? I think it was Chris Pusey. It seems he was off his head with booze all the time, and was supposed to have been a bad influence on Kelly. As if... Both Morans seem to have wasted both their talent and their lives with the stuff though. It seems Michael Lee was not exactly a stranger to it either.