AD1974

If Sheffield could get him to screw his head on straight for a full season Tresarrieu would be my favourite I think. I guess commitment might be the issue? Not sure if I've missed something but surprised there haven't been any mentions for Kalle Katajisto? Notice he stopped riding for Plymouth around June last season so not sure if he had an injury or some other issue which is the reason why he's not over here this year but his average fits perfectly? On average Todd Kurtz is definitely the other obvious choice - would he get a visa OK, and sorted in time now? I guess there are question marks over all the options about fitness, commitment or even wanting to ride or they'd be fixed up with a side already. From last season Franc, Thomsen, Aarnio, Compton and Lemon are the other options. Got to be a rider over 5 points to give Sissis a start at reserve but even beyond that issue we'd be starting well below the points limit with someone like Ben Wilson - would make more sense to be looking at changing another rider if they were going to go down that route.

OK - quick meta-analysis (I warned you I was a statto geek!) gives our definitive answer to the question for all votes! 1. Tony Rickardsson 2. Ivan Mauger 3. Barry Briggs 4. Hans Nielsen 5. Ove Fundin 6. Ronnie Moore 7. Jason Crump 8. Ole Olsen 7 of those agree with the top 8 I found based on world final performances at a rider's peak - the only other one, Ole Olsen, was placed 10th on my list. Poor Nicki Pedersen is the one to miss out - down at the bottom of the second tier list... 9. Erik Gundersen 10. Peter Craven 11. Michael Lee 12. Bruce Penhall 13. Peter Collins 14. Vic Duggan 15. Tomasz Gollob 16. Nicki Pedersen All pretty impressive names in this sort of topic - all in my top 50 based on world final performances alone. The highest rider on my list to not get any vote here was poor Bill Kitchen who did all his best work during the war years sadly. Hope that makes interesting reading for you all :-) Andy.

Have to agree - there are so many unknowns really it's almost impossible to not have some level of subjectivity involved but who can give an honest opinion on nearly 100 years of the sport?! The only way you can make any comparison is on the pure stats but it will only ever be one measure and different measures will give slightly different answers. I chose around 3 years as demonstrating how good a rider was at his peak but the results have to be given with the explanation that this is the way it is done and there is NO definitive answer. I wouldn't say it's far fetched to say I could name something like 50 riders who would be capable of winning a competition with them all in at their absolute peak - hardly anybody has mentioned Michanek, Jan O Pedersen or Egon Muller on here but their final wins were amongst the most dominant performances of all time and you have to doubt if anybody from the history of the sport would have stopped them on those days. Even comparing riders from the same period is tough - who was better Nielsen or Gundersen for example? I've seen people arguing on the forum who was the best rider in the world from just this year - Woffinden, Ward, Sajfutdinov and a few other names too. I'm a statistician so I love an answer based on numbers but taking a different definition for the rankings will give some slightly different answers. The questions are endless - and importantly for lovers of the history of the sport like us are fascinating to debate :-)... It is impossible to include league performance or results from other qualifiers and internationals but in the Gundersen/Nielsen debate they surely suggest that Nielsen was a better rider don't they?! Did Ivan Mauger dominate as he did because the competition was weaker than a period with Fundin/Briggs/Craven/Moore or was he simply just so much better than anyone else? I've gone with the assumption that you can only beat what is in front of you but how much would comparitive strengths of the sport at any one time play a part? Were Nielsen and Gundersen fortunate that their period of dominance came when Penhall, Carter, Lee and Sanders had all been lost to the sport? What would have happened had they all ridden through the 1980s? With a GP format would Mauger have won more or less? I suspect Nielsen would have won more under a GP format but that can only ever be a guess. Would Tony Rickardsson have been as good in one off finals or would we be saying Gollob was just as good - I find it interesting to look at the winner of the first GP of the season as replacing a one off final which gives a very different set of results. Gollob would be a 4 times champion and Jason Crump only once along with Knudsen, Adams, Sayfutdinov and Hampel. Also can you compare performance over 10 GPs to 5 rides in a one-off final - trust me it's not easy :-) Really any discussion should include performance over a whole season - we all know Muller and Szczakiel weren't the best riders in the world the year they won it and some better riders never made a rostrum in a final - Carter, Kelly Moran and Bobby Schwartz, who never even made a final, from my time alone! My rankings say that Armando Castagna was better than Shawn Moran and Andreas Jonsson better than Kelly Moran but having seen those riders I can't say I agree with the stats on those! For all my ramblings I think I'd conclude the question is impossible to answer but brilliant to discuss :-)

I did but these were at a slightly reduced amount compared due to decreased level of competition. Eric Chitty comes out in 67th place on my list - obviously was one of the greats through that time but it's nearly impossible to say how good he would have been if all the other riders who had their peak years robbed by the war had been competing too. As you well know Vic Duggan is another classic example - in 48th on my list - of a rider who probably would have been ranked higher in different circumstances. Then you have riders like Tom Farndon who was robbed of his peak years through injury - for the record Tom ranks a lowly 166th but was clearly better at his peak than riders such as Viktor Kuznetsov, Morian Hansen and Josef Hofmeister who are above him on the list. Anything like this based solely on statistics needs a massive caveat around it explaining what is and isn't included - a little bit more to it but the superficial explanation for what I've done is look at the peak 'consecutive 15 rides', i.e. 3 years, that a rider produced at 'world final' level.

Actually Jack Parker comes out as the top Brit in the rankings I did based on world final (or nearest equivalent at the time) stats! Bill Kitchen comes out as 2nd Brit and Peter Collins then Peter Craven the highest who won an official world title. Possibly a little biased in favour of the former pair as they recorded their peak when the competition was a little less global than the latter but, as they say, you can only beat what is in front of you :-)

Freddie is ranked 32 on the list - so would just sneak in to an all-time Semi Final by my reckoning :-)

As a proper statto type with an interest in history I love this sort of discussion. No real answer to it - hard to disagree with pretty much every name that's been mentioned so far. I have done a bit of analysis based on world final appearances which gives a top 8 as below - I can explain how I've done it should anybody be interested but it's a bit boring to be honest! Suffice to say it's a solid enough way of looking at it (in my opinion) but if you look at things a different way you tend to get different answers when you boil it all down to pure numbers so I would never claim this answer is better than any other! 1. Ivan Mauger 2. Ove Fundin 3. Hans Nielsen 4. Tony Rickardsson 5. Barry Briggs 6. Nicki Pedersen 7. Ronnie Moore 8. Jason Crump Should anybody be wondering where any other riders are on the list give me a shout and I'll put it on but don't forget it's based solely on world final performances and obviously there is much more to what really makes a rider the best in the world in any one season.

With 100% honesty my gut feeling says that on their very best day, with both totally free of all the problems that went on in their heads at various stages, Lee would come out on top. He certainly had the most natural talent and clearly was the better of the pair in their first 3 seasons of riding. To be fair I think you would struggle to name many who can claim to be ahead of Lee in their first 3 seasons - a 10+ average, senior & junior British titles, 9 points in a WTC win and 4th in a World Final which, with a tougher ref, he may even have won! Once Carter caught him up at the very top level though I would say there is next to nothing between them. It's certainly true that Lee won a World Final, had two 3rds and a 4th place while Carter never got higher than 5th. I don't like dealing in hypotheticals but Carter suffered bad luck(?) in 81 & 82 and was injured in 84 & 85 so that best finish of 5th is a little misleading for sure. You could definitely justify a perfectly sensible method which puts Lee ahead using just the numbers but the over '3 years' method I went for Carter ranks higher. Also, away from just world finals, if you compare the 2 all round in terms of any other bits of their careers it is hard to split them too - WARNING, another geek overload on its way! Going from the speedway database website - http://wwosbackup.proboards.com/index.cgi - you could barely get a piece of tissue paper between them. Looking at their best 5 seasons - Lee wins 4 of the 5 but Carter wins on average across them on account of having a higher 'best ever' so not sure how much that helps! Both won the British Junior title in their first full top flight season and both won two senior British titles. Lee was part of 2 World Cup winning sides whilst Carter won a World Pairs and if you look at their scores in these competitions it is hard to split them on that to be honest. Carter can throw in a pair of British League Riders wins too. I guess it depends excatly what question you are asking and how you judge what their very best was. If you are looking at them racing on their very best day I think I'd stick with my gut feeling that Lee would win more than he'd lose. If you are measuring them over a longer period at the very top of their game I think personally I would plump for Carter by a very small margin. For full disclosure I think it best to own up to the fact that I grew up near Halifax and got into speedway in the early 80s so no surprises for guessing where any subjectivity will obviously lead me although I've tried my best to not do this! :-)

I'd start by saying that personally/subjectively I'd place the 3 riders you mention in the order of Collins first, Lee second and Carter third if they could all meet at their very best. Whatever - I think we'd all like some Brits of their standard around today! I suppose the hardest question is - how do you define a rider's peak? Roughly my stuff is based primarily on the best '15 consecutive rides' for each rider. I've tried to remove things such as exclusions, falls, EFs and a few other bits and pieces as much as possible too to give a better reflection of their actual points scoring at their peak. (That said you've highlighted an interesting quirk with Collins where I've made a 50/50 call to leave a ride in but I guess many would have taken it out?) If you're interested in the geekery side for the 3 riders you mentioned then here it is - but it's probably a little boring to anybody not obsessed with numbers! For Peter Collins his best 'run of 15' was 3 3 0 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 3 2 - this gets a weighting to give more emphasis to his 'best run of 5' and 'best run of 10' and ends with an average final score of 13.16. Carter was tricky as he only had 13 completed rides but this has been extended to 15 using his average race score so his best run was 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 1 2 3 3 1 1 2.38 2.38 - average weighted score of 12.79. Michael Lee has a best run of 2 3 3 0 3 2 3 3 3 3 1 3 2 0 3 - average weighted score of 12.17. Basically consistency costs Lee a higher rating. The thing I mentioned above with Collins is that the 0 in his scores was the one in the '75 World Final when his chances were cocked up by some fans watering the track. I've tried to avoid getting involved in hypotheticals as much as possible but perhaps harsh that I've left this ride in. Would move his score up to 13.67 if I took it out. Yes, GPs were a bit of a stinker to compare! Very briefly I've converted each GP into a 'ride' (top 4=3, next 4=2 etc) and then averaged these into 5 rides. Not easy but the most sensible method I could come up with to equate one format to the other. The hardest for me was trying to include the best equivalent from the war years and how much to 'extrapolate' riders who had shortened careers. The balance between acknowledging the weaker fields outside official finals but not overly punishing riders like Bill Kitchen and Eric Chitty was a nightmare! As the old saying goes - you can only beat what is in front of you. Then there are also people like Tom Farndon, who just didn't get enough rides to try and extrapolate how good he was, and Vic Duggan who lost what would probably have been his peak years completely to WWII. It's hard to do anything other than hypothesize about just how the names I've mentioned would measure up against people like Collins, Carter & Lee. My aim was to attempt to compare actual results as objectively as possible but you don't have to look hard through riders you know well to find examples where the ranking doesn't tell the whole story. For example: Was Andy Smith really a better rider than John Cook, Ronnie Correy or Joe Screen? Was Armando Castgana better than Shawn Moran? Was Kelly really the better of the Moran brothers? Never going to be a perfect way of doing this - which is what makes this kind of conversation so great - but with so many riders people never saw racing and so many different eras it's hard to find any better way to try and look at the question objectively. Hope this wasn't all too boring - I did warn you I'm a statistician so really the clue was in my previous post! And apologies if the reply is late coming through but I'm still in my 'new to the forum' period where my posts need approving by a mod!

I didn't go to a meeting at all last season - looking forward to bringing the young 'un down to a few this year but have lost touch with it all a bit so would be good to know what you regulars think to this side? Stead looks like a good addition at the top end and I guess Albin is a bit of a wild card for everyone - good to see them taking a chance on someone though. I suspect Richard Hall is the same rider as he was when I was coming down before - i.e. great entertainment at home but not much away? On the others... You all saw Haines last year - he looks good value to me on that average. Would you mostly expect him to raise his figure if he can stay injury free? What did anybody see of Koppe last season as I believe he rode some second halves? Who was he racing against in those, and I guess more importantly who was he beating/losing to? Any predictions on how he can do? What do we know about Knight? On the numbers alone he looks one hell of a risk - lowest of all the 3 pointers. Does anybody believe he can make big strides forwards this year or would you generally have preferred someone else? Why is James Sarjeant not riding PL - wouldn't he have been a more obvious shout on NL form? I know they've had chances and not taken them but Branford & Bekker averaged more in the NL, and I think would be on 3s - safer options surely although not sure you'd expect improvement from them? Given it looks like there will be points to play with once the 7th rider is confirmed would it be harsh to change the side and use the extra to boost the number 7 spot? Might not set the world alight but Charles Wright, Chris Mills, Lee Smart, Jerran Hart, Nicki Glanz or James Holder would certainly give them a stronger tail? On the hot topic of the last place in the side Wells looks to have the potential to do the job but will he convert his EL form to the PL this time? Why was Franc that bad that people are so against him - he did average more than Wells and would have the pressure of being top man lifted this season? What has happened to Magnus Karlsson & Jordan Frampton as both have gone well around Owlerton and fit the bill from what I remember of them from a few years ago? What can anyone tell me about the other names I have seen mentioned - North, Nedermark or Poole? On the averages the latter would leave room to add Justin Sedgmen (again I know nowt about him!) at the bottom end and looks a more all round team to support Stead who will hopefully be able to score well in every match... 1. Simon Stead 2. Joe Haines 3. Taylor Poole 4. Damien Koppe 5. Richard Hall 6. Facundo Albin 7. Justin Sedgmen Would love to hear what people think about it all - although as a warning to the internet whiners you get on any forum I don't really want to hear anybody moaning and groaning before a wheel has even been turned without properly justifying any opinion!

I know a while ago there were a few people doing rankings for riders but recently looked for these and couldn't find any knocking about - so I've had a go at doing some! This is based on 2012 averages in the top 3 leagues from Sweden, Poland & UK, top 2 leagues from Denmark & main Czech and Russian divisions. I've used riders appearing in more than 1 league to try and rate the strength of the leagues - for the record Sweden comes out on top with Poland just behind (97% its strength). Our Elite League ranks well down - 83% - only marginally ahead of the Polish second tier. The Premier League came out at 52% and National League at 21%. Obvious problems are that riders can be somewhat handicapped by the leagues they appear in any anyone who didn't ride in these is not ranked at all but it was just a quick(ish) thing so I'll make no apologies for that! I'm sure there are plenty of oddities in how the results have come out but hope it makes interesting reading for a few of you. I don't follow the sport as closely as I used to but was surprised to see Niels Iversen in 2nd ahead of Chris Holder. As always, depending on how you set the rules for the final ordering you get a slightly different outcome but hope these mostly make sense. I took the averages from the http://www.aktuellspeedway.se/ website so if you don't like it take it up with them! :-) If anybody has any questions on this, wants to know where any other riders are or see the full list I came up with then let me know but here is the top 100... 1. Nicki Pedersen 2. Niels Kristian Iversen 3. Chris Holder 4. Jaroslaw Hampel 5. Darcy Ward 6. Greg Hancock 7. Krzysztof Kasprzak 8. Grigorij Laguta 9. Emil Sajfutdinov 10. Andreas Jonsson 11. Grzegorz Walasek 12. Leon Madsen 13. Ryan Sullivan 14. Janusz Kolodziej 15. Jason Crump 16. Robert Miskowiak 17. Tomasz Jedrzejak 18. David Ruud 19. Matej Zagar 20. Tai Woffinden 21. Daniel Nermark 22. Piotr Protasiewicz 23. Martin Vaculik 24. Fredrik Lindgren 25. Peter Karlsson 26. Patryk Dudek 27. Hans Andersen 28. Michael J. Jensen 29. Krzysztof Buczkowski 29. Przemyslaw Pawlicki 31. Tomasz Gapinski 32. Adrian Miedzinski 33. Dave Watt 34. Chris Harris 35. Kenneth Bjerre 36. Lee Richardson 37. Grzegorz Zengota 38. Peter Kildemand 39. Thomas H Jonasson 40. Troy Batchelor 41. Rafal Okoniewski 42. Antonio Lindbäck 43. Maciej Janowski 44. Scott Nicholls 45. Bjarne Pedersen 46. Artem Laguta 47. Tomasz Gollob 48. Sebastian Ulamek 49. Linus Sundström 50. Peter Ljung 51. Mads Korneliusen 52. Kenni Larsen 53. Bartosz Zmarzlik 54. Dawid Stachyra 55. Joonas Kylmäkorpi 56. Jurica Pavlic 57. Dennis Andersson 58. Kjastas Poudzuks 59. Daniel King 60. Damian Adamczak 61. Andriej Karpow 62. Charlie Gjedde 63. Mikael Max 64. Mikkel Bech 65. Jason Doyle 66. Roman Povazhny 67. Rory Schlein 68. Piotr Pawlicki 69. Daniel Jeleniewski 70. Michal Szczepaniak 71. Rune Holta 72. Damian Balinski 73. Craig Cook 74. Aleksandr Loktajew 75. Rafal Trojanowski 76. Robert Kosciecha 77. Timo Lahti 78. Norbert Kosciuch 79. Simon Gustafsson 80. Maksim Bogdanow 81. Ronnie Jamrozy 82. Cameron Woodward 83. Benjamin Barker 84. Magnus Zetterström 85. Artur Mroczka 86. Kim Nilsson 87. Edward Kennett 88. Adrian Gomolski 89. Mariusz Staszewski 90. Wladimir Borodulin 91. David Howe 92. Andrzej Lebiediew 93. Ricky Wells 94. Josef Franc 95. Mariusz Puszakowski 96. Renat Gafurov 97. Karol Baran 98. Tobiasz Musielak 99. Simon Stead 100. Jonas Davidsson

Very interesting topic this one: going back to the format at the start of the thread - picking the top 5 for each nation is like an all-time World Cup I guess. I have done something along these lines as an all-time individual World Final which appearaed on the Speedway Plus website a while back. I'm a statistician and have analysed all the World Finals - or nearest equivalents from each year - right back to 1929. I know the old chestnut that stats don't tell you everything but when trying to compare riders of different eras what else can you go on really. This is based on actual achievements in world finals only which goes some way to explain why Bobby Schwartz isn't even considered (how did he never make a final?!) and Chris Holder isn't even in the Aussie top 10 just yet! Also it is on form over a fairly consistent period of time so riders who shone briefly, albeit very brightly, at the top, such as Tom Farndon or Vic Duggan, are held back a little by that although I have tried to take special cases into account where possible. And believe me when I say some of the results surprised me too but I'm just reporting what comes out! I know at their very best you could say anybody who won a title (Ermolenko, Jonsson, Szczakiel & Holder all lose out to riders who never won) would beat anybody who didn't but I had to pick some rules and stick by them! (An extreme of this would be that Kenny Carter never made the top 3 but keeps out people like Michael Lee and 2-time champ Freddie Williams who you could very sensibly argue were better riders at their peak.) Anyway, seeing this thread gave me a gentle nudge to update the 2012 GP results and thought it may be of interest for people to see how it translates to this for each nation's top 5... In a WTC style the C Final would have: 3rd Czechs - Lukas Dryml, Roman Matousek, Jiri Stancl, Antonin Kasper & Martin Vaculik 2nd Germans - Egon Muller, Karl Maier, Gerd Riss, Josef Hofmeister & Georg Hack 1st Rest of the World - Eric Chitty (Canada), Rune Holta (Norway), Armando Castagna (Italy), Kai Niemi (Finland) & Sverre Harrfeldt (Norway) B FINAL: 4th Russia - Igor Plechanov, Emil Sajfutdinov, Boris Samorodov, Grigori Khlinovski & Vladimir Gordeev 3rd Poland - Tomasz Gollob, Pawel Waloszek, Jarek Hampel, Antoni Woryna & Zenon Plech 2nd New Zealand - Ivan Mauger, Barry Briggs, Ronnie Moore, Ron Johnston & Bob Andrews 1st Great Britain - Jack Parker, Bill Kitchen, Peter Collins, Peter Craven & Kenny Carter AND THE BIG FINAL - 4th USA - Jack Milne, Greg Hancock, Bruce Penhall, Wilbur Lamoreaux & Billy Hamill 3rd Australia - Jason Crump, Bluey Wilkinson, Jack Young, Leigh Adams & Vic Huxley 2nd Sweden - Ove Fundin, Tony Rickardsson, Anders Michanek, Bjorn Knutsson & Olle Nygren and the WORLD CHAMPIONS DENMARK - Hans Nielsen, Nicki Pedersen, Ole Olsen, Erik Gundersen & Jan O Pedersen