TwoMinuteWarning

ROUND 1 - Oreti Park, Invercargill, South Island - Thur 29 Dec 2005 1 Daniele Tessari Italy 14 2= Jason Bunyan England 13 2= Mattia Carpanese Italy 13 4 Filip Sitera Czech Rep 11 5= Andrew Bargh NZ 10 5= Andrew Aldridge NZ 10 5= Phil Morris Wales 10 ROUND 2 - Cromwell, South Island - Sat 31 Dec 2005 1 Jason Bunyan England 2= Filip Sitera Czech Rep 2= Phil Morris Wales 4 Daniele Tessari Italy 5 Andrew Bargh NZ 6= Mattia Carpanese Italy 6= John Tuffley NZ Both meetings were rain-affected.

What surface is this meeting raced on - shale? grass? concrete?

Howard Cole now lives in Sydney, Australia.

Hmmm.... James has also given some good up-to-date information for those who want to do the trip on their own.

Mildenhall result: 1 J Auty 2 S Lambert 3=S Waldron & K Hughes

Hector "Skid" Skinner was a big star of the dirt-track at White City Manchester, Sheffield, and indeed most of the northern tracks in the late 1920's and early 1930's. He also toured Europe with his wall of death show (including his wife), called "Skid Skinner's Death Circus". In 1929, he ran the Rotherham speedway for a while. Also a motorcycle stunt rider. Arrested in France for shooting at bottles. Had a pet monkey. Died 1944 in a shooting accident at the age of 39. Don't make 'em like that anymore!

I tend to agree, Backtrack and VSM (not forgetting Speedway Researcher!) seem to have the speedway history scene well-covered already. However, we shall see!

Looks like it's a Howard Jones magazine, but not out yet.

I've heard that there is a new magazine out, "Speedway History Magazine". Anyone seen it? Is it any good? Know where I can get a copy? Thanks!

Fact - the riders will ride for whichever organisation is offering the most money! FIM have played right into the hands of the UEM by not having qualification rounds for the GP's. So the "second-best" riders (no disrespect) will happily ride in a European Championship if it's worth their while, since they can't qualify for a GP.

TV audiences. Don't think it would be run without the TV money!

POLAND A 52 (Janusz Kolodziej 12, Pawel Hlib 12, Marcin Rempala 12, Krystian Klecha 10, Karol Zabik 6) POLAND B 36 (Kamil Brzozowski 11, Sebastian Brucheiser 8, Patryk Pawlaczyk 7, Adrain Gomolski 6, Marcin Jedrezewski 4) RUSSIA 25 (Daniel Ivanov 7, Maxim Karaychentsev 7, Alexei Kharchenko 6, Roman Ivanov 5) FINLAND 7 (Rene Lehtinen 4, Tero Aarnio 2, Joni Keskinen 1, Jani Eerikainen 0, Petri Koivunen 0) FRANCE withdrew FINAL is on Oct 1 at Pardubice: Czech Republic v Sweden v Denmark v Poland

No need to apologise, Peter, you are obviously a very proud Dad - and quite right too! So we can expect to see Simon riding in the UK around 2013 then ...

Sounds like a purely financial decision. With that sort of encouragement from the ruling body, I'm surprised you still have some young speedway riders! If they won't take part in competitions they are unlikely to win, how will they ever improve? A sad situation.

Blimey, too old for the World Cup at 32!! No, let's just say that Joe reached his peak earlier in his career than most riders. Still, congratulations to TRick, 35 yesterday, and still a World Champion!

Somebody is selling it on eBay, looks official

Can anyone tell me where I can get the official DVD set of this year's World Cup? Can't see it on the official SGP/SWC website.

There's a map here if it's any help

Pictures from the opening meeting are here And, at the top of that page, a short video clip of last night's racing. Nice big crowd!

Well, here's hoping for a big score from Jurica tonight, it would round off what must be a wonderful day for the whole Pavlic family.

The new track at Gorican stages a round of the Tri-Nations Championship tonight. The stadium looks excellent, judging by the photos posted on the Slovenian Forum here

Harold rode twice for England "C" against Sweden in 1952 Details are here: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/intspeedway/engcvswe.htm There is also a pic of him at the Hastings Saxons website at: http://hastingssaxons.doverathleticvideo.com/index.htm

1. To what extent were Poland motivated by the PZM's prize fund of £17,000 (100,000 zlotys) (as mentioned in this weeks' Speedway Star)? 2. Would GB have performed better if a similar prize fund had been made available to them if they had won?

Marcin's site was the very first that I accessed when I went on line in 1997, and I must have visited it a thousand times since then. If there is anyone out there that never saw it, take a quick look before it disappears completely: http://world.speedway.org/ It actually began in 1994(!) when hardly any of us had internet access. It never worried about appearance or graphics, it was all about information, and much the better for that. All the information that was regularly updated on Marcin's site will almost certainly still be available on the internet - but probably on 20 or more different web sites instead of just one. As usual, the problem will be locating the information. I can only imagine how many thousands of hours that Marcin must have spent working on the site over the last 11 years, and he provided a fantastic service to us all. Thanks, Marcin, and I know that your site will always be remembered as the mother of all of the thousands of speedway web sites that were to follow.

I think the GB star is Middlo. Every year, he is left with a depleted team. Every year, they ride above themselves and do us proud (I've never seen Bomber and Steady ride as well as they did last night) Dunno what he says to them, or puts in their coffee, but it certainly seems to work! I really do hope that, one year, we can put our strongest team on track, and win the World Cup - it would be a just reward for Middlo.