HenryW

Is it possible that Holder didn't fancy the conditions for that last race?

As you noted yourself, the official Edinburgh website needs updating and one of the areas that is way out of date is the stats page. The averages quoted on there appear to be for the first half of the season, including Stevie's spell at reserve. Without wanting to sound harsh, after his big crash at the Dale he didn't look the same rider as before. I think his actual home average for meetings after that crash was 5.57, or 7.43 with bonus points, so a long way short of the 10.11 on the site and more in line with what he scored last night.

Postponed due to the weather.

To be fair, they may have got JK to reduce his demands by making it seem like they were willing to go into the season with a rookie Pole in the side...

Blown engine in his 5th race apparently. That was the reason for him being passed at the end of that heat.

I seem to recall reading that visa holders are now allowed to guest in the same league as their parent club but not across leagues. Doubling up would be OK, though, if a club wanted to sign him. He was in fantastic form in the 2nd half of last season and seems to have started this one not bad as well.

That probably says more about the poor scoring that Andersen and Harris delivered in Poland than Jakub's ability...Even Klindt averaged well above all 3 of them!

Agree 100%. It's not complicated. They have 2 minutes. If they aren't ready to race after the 2 minutes expire they are out. When the clock was first introduced to the SGP series there were a few exclusions and a bit of fuss. Now every rider knows exactly where he stands and they are always settled at the tapes when that clock hits zero.

If every rider is breath tested before every meeting there would be no need for all this fuss. The only reason they have harsh penalties for failing an alcohol test at the moment is because it needs to act as a deterrent as there is a slim chance that you will actually be tested. If everyone is tested before every meeting you don't need that deterrent, you simply exclude them from the meeting and move on... I honestly don't understand why this isn't normal practice. Unlike drug testing, alcohol testing is quick, cheap and easy. It should just be a standard for all meetings.

Hopefully if it looks like they are trying to game the system the v&i authorities will clamp down even more strictly.

It seems likely that they made the original proposal to gauge the reaction and have now listened to the riders and decided on this wording.

I'm not sure that the Wallyford one would ever have included speedway but where there is a dog track there is always hope

That was planned for Wallyford, just to the East of Edinburgh. There is still some talk that it might finally get built but after all this time it seems unlikely...

I really hope that the condition is that the stadium must be complete before they sell the houses. We had a similar deal for a stadium near Edinburgh 10 years ago which stated that the stadium had to be started before they could sell houses. 10 years later, all the houses are sold and we have this of the stadium: Instead of this:

The current Edinburgh track is like this although the difference between start line and finish line is much smaller than the old Wimbledon track had.

Isn't that pretty much where things started? EL teams had the option of using one or two positions in their team for "double up" riders...They "signed" 2 riders who were PL riders to cover a position and used the one that was available. In most cases there was one rider who was far better than the other so the EL team used them every meeting that they could and rarely used the other....so then they decided that they didn't need the two riders and they would just use a guest when the PL rider wasn't available...and then we drifted into the current situation. So really you are asking how we get back to where we started from...

Todd Wiltshire managed it and he had the extra complication of being away due to serious injury.

Dudek's ban is from the PZM as it was a domestic meeting in Poland that he was tested at. Their rules allow for this reduction of ban length under certain circumstances so he would be crazy not to apply for it. I have no idea whether WADA have any input into PZM sentencing decisions.

Stefan Danno only received an 8 month ban. He failed the test in late September and was free to be racing again in June 2001. Edit- got my dates wrong first time!

You have to wonder why the full list isn't on the BSPA site...

Being pedantic, I think that Dariusz raced in the British League Division 2 and SCB asked about Poles in the premier league

Any Australian (or anyone from Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan) aged 18-30 can get a UK visa to work in a call centre or bum around farm to farm picking fruits with absolutely no problem. The tier 5 youth mobility visa covers this type of work but doesn't cover professional sports. He entered Australia in 1996, so not exactly relevant to current immigration laws, but he also entered as political refugee from Iran which is slightly different to seeking a work visa. As it turned out, Australia didn't do a good job of checking his eligibility for refugee status as he seems to have been a common criminal rather than a genuine political refugee. None of those listed are man for man better than a rider under threat? I would suggest that Andre Compton, Ben Wilson, James Wright and Adam Ellis are all as good or better than Matt Wethers and Mason Campton, the only ones that have been confirmed as having problems so far...

It's surely not a coincidence that Greg's late career revival came with the introduction of the terrible silencers which changed so much in the way the bikes handled.

The OED site suggests that you should use "a hotel" but "an hotel" was the correct form in the 18th and 19th century....Are you much older than you are letting on?

His choice of location, a prominent statue on the town square, probably wasn't the most sensible if he didn't want seen