HenryW

All the excitement of being in Torun and planning my quarantine on return made me forget

As surprising as it may seem, he's a mere 43 years old

It's hard to know what would have happened if someone didn't exist... Don't get me wrong, TRICK WAS an absolute legend of the sport, but you seem to be forgetting another great that was there at the same time as Jason. Why didn't Jason win the World title in 2003? He finished 17 points ahead of Tony that year. Why didn't Jason win the World title in 2007? Tony had retired! Why didn't Jason win the World title in 2008? Tony was still retired! 6 times champ was there for Jason if there hadn't been someone better than him...Nicki Pedersen. Don't get me wrong...Absolute respect for Jason. Great rider. Great Champion...But he could have had that 6 world titles alongside Tony, but there was a Dane who was better in those years.

I'm wondering whether I am the only person that thinks that Lee wasted his own talent and all the excuses and claims of victimisation are just that....excuses. What would the British speedway authorities have to gain from victimising a British World champ? For me, the defining memory of him wasn't a world title win in 1980, it was his dummy spitting effort at Ipswich in the 1984 test match at Ipswich. The man couldn't accept the change to starting procedures and so spat the dummy and huffed off, got talked into coming back but did nothing other than pootle around acting like a victim...Pathetic. An absolute embarassment to his Nation that day and, if I remember rightly, on national live (or close to live) TV as well... Personally, I just have him down as another one of the riders that disappeared from the top level when drug testing came in properly around that time...

Yeah, back in the day when it was a one off World Final in "longtrack" and there were some proper top stars of shale sport competing, it was always on genuine long tracks, at least as far as I can recall. Once it moved to a GP style series all sorts of weirdness seemed to happen. Grass tracks, sand tracks, speedway tracks...I guess that there just weren't enough proper 1,000m tracks in enough Countries to run a GP style series, but the FIM wanted one anyway. Before the GP days, it was pretty much Germany and Czechia that held the finals with the odd appearance of Denmark and Yugoslavia (Slovenia). Still, the mention of a round at Rzeszow reminds me of the 2013 round there where Jonas Kylmakorpi did his best to turn a speedway track into a long track.... Gotta love his wide lines...and feel horrible for him when it all goes wrong on lap 4...

Madsen 100 More Janowski 100 More

I'm not sure about mobile devices, but if you have a laptop or PC and can do frame by frame on youtube - "." key (full stop) to move one frame forward and "," key (comma) to move one back, it really looks to me like he didn't move until the tapes were moving. Don't get me wrong....He clearly anticipated the start. That was NOT a reaction to the tapes being released. Apart from anything else, he was looking at the tapes in front of himself rather than the pole and when he moved the tapes in front of him hadn't moved...I'd love to hear any theory about why Leon does that when everyone else looks at the pole/magnet. However, as my understanding of the rules are, that was a perfect start. He didn't move until the tapes moved. It was impossible for him to have reacted that fast, but I don't think the rules say anything about reaction time...I could be wrong, though, as I haven't checked any rule changes in recent years.

For some reason the BARB website doesn't seem to have Premier Sports 2 included in the channel listings for data, and I'm not sure which of their channels live Polish speedway has been on, but the last time (what I assume was) live Polish speedway made it into the top 15 of Premier Sports 1 was was on the week beginning 3rd of August....The Friday meetings both made the top 15, with the 17:00 meeting getting 500 viewers and the 19:30 getting 3,100 viewers. I kinda hope that other live meetings have been on Premier Sports 2....Because, if they have been on Permier Sports 1 and not made the top 15, it's a pretty sad indictment on the popularity of the sport, as the top 15 in the week generally bottom out in the low hundreds of viewers. In the most recent week published (31 Aug to 6 Sep) Polish speedway on Monday at 19:30 and Swedish Speedway on Thursday at 21:00 both made it into the top 15 with 100 viewers Actually...now I think about it...Was that 19:30 Polish match actually a Live one? I kinda dismissed a Monday as a day that Poland didn't race, but that day actually had meetings....Jeez...100 viewers for a live meeting Freesports has some better numbers for Swedish speedway...although not exactly stellar numbers. 18,700 is the best I saw in the last month.

As I have said earlier, I think that Madsen DIDN'T jump the start in semi final, so he could possibly be going away feeling cheated out of points, although I accept that he was lucky to even be in the semi final as he definitely got away with one earlier... However, I feel like the warning system isn't right. Does it not seem more sensible that if you get excluded for a 2nd infringement that it clears the earlier warning? You were warned that if you did it again you'd be excluded. You've now been excluded...Why does the warning status stay with you? It feels like punishments are being doubled up. Or, alternatively, why do warnings get cleared at the end of a round? If they want to punish persistent offenders, why not roll them across rounds? Why should someone who moves at the start of a final get no further stress as there are no more races? Keep those warnings rolling and have Doyle, Madsen and Janowski (possibly some others too, but those are the ones that seem to be the most consistent offenders) regularly getting excluded from races during the series?

Yep. I totally understand your point and was just trying to add some extra "colour" to the argument that things have never been totally "fair". However, I do understand why so many are feeling a little grumpy or uneasy with the scoring this year, and that's because we have had a scoring system that actually worked really well for a good while now. It had its issues, but it's hard to argue against the concept that "every point counts" through a GP. To me, last year's scoring has been the closest to a "fair" system that the GP series has had ..and there doesn't really seem to be a particularly good reason for the change this year...but I think you probably agree with that anyway, you have just making the point that there has never been and never will be a "perfect" system, which I agree with.

I completely agree with you in the first part of that statement. I watch and enjoy many sports, but I can honestly say that none of them can get close to a great speedway meeting. When the sport is at its best there is nothing that can compare for me, and even some rubbish meetings can still beat what is offered by other sports. However, for me it isn't all about a team. I still have a "local" team, and I love seeing them have success, but what keeps me going to see meetings is the joy of watching riders take incredible risks and controlling those beasts of bikes around a dirt oval...and that anticipation that this next race MIGHT be a classic. It doesn't matter if it's my local team, a random league meeting elsewhere in the UK or in another Country, or if it's a GP, SWC SoN, random Individual meeting, even a random 80cc meeting...It's all good for me. I love watching the sport...I just wish it was run and promoted a bit better. I'm probably very much in a minority with the way I view the sport, though...

You might be horrified by a system that could allow a rider to win 5 races out of 6 (or 3 wins out of 4) and finish with 16 points, while a rider that had 2 lasts and 7 second places (or 1 last and 4 seconds) could get 20 points...But that was the SGP scoring system for 7 years. During those 7 years, the rider that never won a race would have been world champion 6 times. Only the exceptional performance of Tony Rickardsson in 2001 would have prevented that (if my drunken counting is right!) I'm not a fan of the scoring change this year, but there have been equally bad or worse systems in the past. The riders just have to adapt and make it work for them.

He got done in the semi, though. You could argue that he didn't deserve to be there but I'm not convinced by the exclusion in the semi. He clearly anticipated the start but the slo-mo seemed to prove he didn't move until the tapes had been released...and by the rules (from my understanding) that is a legal start...You just have to be stationary until the tapes are released

And didn't even have to beat anyone in one of those races.

Maybe he tried to anticipate so that he could clamp Zmarzlik. If he was just going for a final place he wouldn't have done that

Simples...Until there are only 2 finishers in a semi final and then I can understand why there could be confusion.

Happy to see I am back on form, going less on the winner.

Zmarzlik 50 less Fricke 50 more Dudek 50 more

in an interview earlier in the meeting their manager just said that he was being rested to save his health. Edit - Definitely not a ban yet. His hearing is October 7th.

Yeah, they look like a totally different team from the one that put on the horror show performance against Czestochowa.

It's a little like debating ancient history to talk about the 2000 title, but Mark had some huge slices of "luck" in 2000. The fact that he didn't win a GP isn't a big issue for me, but the two dodgy exclusions that TRick received in Linkoping and Vojens made a huge difference to the title that year. Having spoken to the ref who was in charge in the Swedish meeting, I know that he regretted the decision he made at the time once he had seen the replays, and it's not hard to see why when you watch it again. The points swing from that decision alone were ultimately the decider of the World title that year, and then you can consider the incident in Denmark...another where Tony seemed hard done by in my view, but that one was maybe more debateable, but also more costly points wise for Tony.

Doyle £50 More. Sayfutdinov £50 More.

All credit to Doyle for finding the setup as the night went on, but I still feel that the scoring system is....ermm....5hit. 12 race points, 1 race win during the night, but goes home with 18 GP series points.... I realise that the points system is known to all, but it just seems so inferior to recent seasons...I want to watch a meeting where every point counts and every rider is fighting for every point. Tonight we saw a perfect example of where that maybe isn't happening now...Zmarzlik v Woffinden in heat 19. In that race we saw 2 potential title contenders going head to head...Zmarzlik knew that the result was irrelevant to him. He made some effort to put pressure on Woffinden, but he certainly didn't take any risks. Would he have had the same attitude with the scoring system last year? Who knows...Maybe he would have taken more risks for that extra point or maybe he still would have raced safe for 2 points there. I don't know, but I know I watched that race with no excitement because I knew that it meant nothing to Zmarzlik or the World Championship, something that I couldn't have said last year....

I'm just happy I finally made a (small) profit for once

The series goes to Prague after this! Have you seen Zmarzlik's record there? It's far from impressive.