True-grit slide show a wheel success
It was a Cinderella sport. Now it's turned the corner
Jeremy Alexander
Thursday May 1, 2003
The Guardian
The parallels are clear, the differences marked, the irony stark. Speedway's world champion is going for his sixth title, starting on May 17. As formula one struggles not to recede into the back of boring beyond, speedway is on a sharp rise. And the man behind its expanding championship, modelled on motor racing's grand prix series, was formerly commercial director of Benetton's formula one operation.
John Postlethwaite left Benetton in 1997, not because he wanted to be Bernie Ecclestone but to run his own show. He had no idea then it would be Benfield Sports International which, in January 2000, bought the rights to speedway's grand prix series. As chief executive he is responsible for commercial, television and promoter agreements.
Since then the series, trundling along since 1995 with six grands prix, has taken off. Attendance in 2000 averaged 6,300. Last year, over 10 races, it was 22,000. In 2000 the British grand prix drew 7,000 to Coventry, three-quarters of capacity. A year later Benfield got more than 31,000 to Cardiff. On June 14, with ticket sales 16% up on last year, they should top 40,000 at the Millennium Stadium.
It is not quite Wembley in the 70s, when 100,000 saw Ole Olsen win three world titles and speedway was second to football as a spectator sport. But after a generation in which its image dropped below the parapets of public consciousness - and England secretly had three world champions in Michael Lee (1980), Gary Havelock (1992) and Mark Loram (2000) - the sport has reinvented itself at the top.
Postlethwaite readily respects where he has come from. "Formula one sets the benchmark," he says, generously using the present tense. "We may be reaming about getting to that level but at present we are concentrating on giving good value to sponsors and TV."
Riders are decorated with logos at all angles like a child's scrapbook. Tear-off bannering gives sponsors clear visibility however much the dust flies. And television coverage grows apace - from 27 countries in 2000 to more than100 this year. Since 1999 live coverage has increased fourfold, highlights fivefold.
Sky Sports will show each of this year's races live on Saturday evenings, with Channel 4 doing a one-hour highlights programme with interviews and insights the following Saturday morning. Showjumping and squash have waxed on the back of TV and waned for want of significance or personalities. Speedway means to stay.
Essentially Benfield has devised a package which is delivered first-class, and practically the same, for each grand prix - unlike formula one which gets lost in the countryside where no one can see, or under the bonnet where nobody cares.
The bikes are simple, of one make or the other, skeletal and possessed of a silencer, somewhat pointlessly considering the din the crowd makes with klaxons throughout the three-hour sequence of 25 races that tapers 24 riders, four at a time over four laps, into a precise order of points-scoring. Because the event is self-contained in a stadium, every moment of every race is seen. The champagne moment, copied from formula one, is as wretched as, presumably, the champagne; and the spectacle ends in cannon-fired confetti and fireworks.
It is a presentation to wow children and embrace the family, with air-horns making everyone a participant. There are limits, though, and Postlethwaite believes they have been reached. "We are going to ease the music down," he says, "and try to restrict the sale of canisters on air-horns." If sounds are to be down, sights remain up. "We want to grow in conjunction with the leagues," he says. The top riders, regardless of nationality, compete for clubs in Sweden and Poland, strongholds of the sport, besides here. And Postlethwaite sees a series of "perhaps 16 races in five years' time".
Television is taking speedway to all Europe, and Germany and Italy are prime targets. "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears . . . and don't expect to get them back in working order."
There are only nine races this year, all in Europe, after Sydney's race ran into problems with the local promoter. It will surely return. Australia has five of the 24 riders, including Jason Crump (the world No2), Ryan Sullivan (No3) and Leigh Adams (No4), and 32,000 attended the first international event there for 20 years. Wellington, too, is interested. New Zealand has the stronger pedigree with Ivan Mauger, a record six times world champion, Barry Briggs (four) and Ronnie Moore (two). The United States has a world champion still competing, Greg Hancock.
But Europe is speedway's heartland and Tony Rickardsson of Sweden its current champion. Like Michael Schumacher he won his first title in 1994, the last year of the condensed format. Olsen, now race director, says: "Everyone heard of speedway for three weeks and then there was a vacuum for 49." It sounds like Wimbledon and tennis. Now, he says, "the flagship is there to attract more interest. We are getting back into the big stadiums. It's an entertainment package and we have to make sure it runs snappy." His son Jacob runs Team Denmark. They have micro speedway there, starting at 50cc, graduating to 80cc at 10 and the full 500cc at 16. Under-age opportunities exist here too and grass roots mean what they say. Many come into the sport through grass speedway or motocross.
If there is nothing to choose between the machines, what makes Rickardsson consistently come out on top? Olsen Snr says: "He's a bit tough. He knows what he wants at a particular track according to the surface. The top riders are skilful at setting up their bikes."
The champion plays that down with candour. "A speedway bike is not very technical. I tell my mechanics how I want it. It's not often I get my hands dirty now." But he does admit he weighs the set-up for the start against racing thereafter according to conditions and opponents. In a word, at 32, it is probably experience, which runs on into consistency.
Lee Richardson, 24 and entering his first series as an automatic qualifier (No17) in the wake of Loram (No8) and the other Briton Scott Nicholls (No13), confirms as much. "Tony always gets the set-up right. He's tactically clever and his mental attitude is so good. He wouldn't dive in if he was second and he didn't have to. He's the man of his era."
And the era may go on. "If I can keep fit and focused and enjoy it, I will keep going," he says. "I hope I don't peak yet. Why not bounce around for a few more years?" Thus speaks a man who is a big fish in the big pool and happy to be a small fish in the small Poole, his British club.
I don't like the sound of that. :-( The music and air horns greatly add to the atmosphere at Cardiff, even if I do always go deaf for a few days afterwards. There were a few people who thought the noise level was too much. I personally agree it was getting a little loud. To restrict them the obvious solutions would be to ban people from bring them into the stadium and just sell them inside. The only problem if they are going to take this approach it should have been printed on the back of the tickets which I assume it has not. They could try and stop the unofficial traders outside the stadium but that will not be easy. At least they are not banning them, they are not allowed at the vast majority of other sporting events and stadiums. The newspaper report was a great advert to the sport and it sounds like Channel 4 are doing the highlights show which I thought was very good.