HenryW

But what about relative to Australians like Holder and Ward who are as fast as anybody at the moment? Surely someone in Harris' position has far more spare cash than young Darcy! When I was recently in Denmark, Chris was racing in a league meeting I attended. He and his "mechanic" were apparently completely inept and if it hadn't been for local man John Jorgensen going over and putting his bike together for him he wouldn't have had anything to race on that night!

My favourite is Roman Povazhny when coming from Russian Cyrillic. It seems to go to "more important than romance"

So it looks like Barker failed to even get the reserve berth if the Hungarian site is to be trusted...not that I am sure it can be. PK scorecard reads 2,3,0,1,3 with a total of 10....wtf?

From Nigel Pearson on Twitter: Smolinski 10, hans 10, lindback 10, madsen 9, magosi and zagar both on 8 after 16 heats.

Harris finishes in 11th place in a field that was far from the strongest. I trust that will ensure that we don't have to suffer watching him in the GP series in 2013.

A total collapse from Kylmakorpi sees him exit. He looked a certainty to be going through after 3 races but then failed to add another point. Dryml, Ljung, Kasprzak, Vaculik and Batchelor (and Pavlic, I guess) become the first lot into the Final.

He has an average of 4.60 in Poland (and has been dropped from the last few matches) while he is on 6.24 in Sweden. He may well score heavily in the weak Elite League over here, but his form in the major leagues is certainly not impressive.

It's a little bit off topic, but I didn't want to start a new thread for something rather random but still "Danish speedway" related.... Whilst I was over in Denmark recently, I attended the 2012 Fyn 80cc Championship meeting hosted by the Vissenbjerg-Bred Motor Klub and enjoyed it immensely. Then again, what true speedway fan wouldn't like to see 21 races of 16 kids battling each other on little bikes and delivering more passing than is usually seen in a season of Sky EL matches I recorded the final and thought I might share the video on here...The quality clearly isn't great as the autofocus lost track a little here and there (it really is the camera's fault, not where I was pointing it, honest), but there is no Nigel Pearson to listen to, so those that hate him will be OK to watch it Watching these kids slide around, it's easy to see where we have lost out....I can only dream of a time when we have this kind of racing in the UK to go and watch....

Yes, they did. The loss of Vissing hit the Fjelsted team quite hard. Palm Toft didn't deliver what Vissing would have. Went to a last heat decider, and Harris came past PK to clinch it for the visitors. No start girls at Fjelsted for Alan

No chance for me to watch the TV match today as I've been dragged along to see Fjelsted live. Hopefully your tv match and the one that I am at will both be entertaining.

Same as Peterboro last week. A lovely evening and a match rained off. The sport needs to get itself sorted to protect tracks from the weather between matches

I would think it almost certainly was the smallest Parken crowd, but the unfortunate clash with Denmark playing their first match in the Euro championships almost certainly explains that. I am sure on any other weekend the Parken crowd would have been nearer it's normal size, although maybe not quite the same as there seemed to be less Poles than usual, who have possibly stayed home and saved their money for the football. As for the other ones you mention. The problems with the recent years at Gothenburg will undoubtedly have taken their toll, and I would be surprised if the contract is renewed when it expires after next year. Prague has certainly seen it's crowd appear to shrink, which isn't a great surprise as it has gotten itself a reputation as one of the dullest tracks in the series. Despite what you say about Polish GP crowds, Leszno hasn't been even close to full in any of the recent years, and the changes to the stadium and related change in ticket pricing looked to shrink the crowd slightly further this year. Whether Cardiff can survive a drop this year will be interesting to see. As you say, the economic climate isn't great and there are a few other major sporting events for people to be splashing their cash on.

Much credit to Leszno for managing to grab a draw from this one. I really thought they stood no chance without Jarek, but Jurica and Damian really dug deep in the latter stages to get something out of this match. However, possibly more import was the fact that Ryan Sullivan dropped right off the pace in his last few races for some reason.

Obviously he wouldn't have been a popular choice with the local fans, but surely Patryk Dudek deserves a chance. He is the top young Pole in the leagues so far this year and seems to be getting ignored.

Is this focus on yellow especially for racers and royals

I am now lost as to who is being sarcastic and who is being genuine with their belief that a rider who ends last in a semi or final deserves points..... I will state categorically that I believe that last place in any race deserves no points, so the current system works for me... Why should a rider who makes a semi final on, let's say 7 points, get a further reward over and above others that also finished on 7 points who missed out on the semi final just because of a difference of race wins, second places, etc, etc.....They already got their reward by getting a semi final place and a chance to make more points by beating other riders.. If they can't make anything better than a last out of that, why should they be given an extra point? Similarly, anyone who made the final has already had the benefit of at least 2 extra points due to their semi final appearance....If they can't beat someone in the final, why should they get more??

I did have a chuckle at the claim that Buczkowski was a bit special. I couldn't disagree though, as "catch me if you can" has seen plenty of him, so is probably in a better place to judge than me... However, from the Poles that made it to the SGP qualifiers, I wonder how they would be rated.....Let's have a guess.... Adrian Miedzinski Przemysław Pawlicki Piotr Pawlicki Krzysztof Kasprzak Grzegorz Zengota Janusz Kołodziej Piotr Protasiewicz Patryk Dudek Maciej Janowski Krzysztof Buczkowski Hands up who thinks that Pan Buczkowski was rated lowest and ended at Berwick because he was the weakest link?

There was an article earlier in the week detailing the proposed pay grades based on averages and giving examples of what that would equate to for rider pay, including the breakdown of what least season's champions Zielona Gora would have paid out had this structure been in place. Basically they would have paid 3,928,300zl. The club with the lowest budget for 2012 is Czestochowa and they are at 6million zl for the season. Zielona Gora's budget for this season is 10million zl. So a massive reduction in rider pay if this actually comes off. http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/288721/ile-zarobia-zuzlowcy-w-sezonie-2013

Ouch. The bolded bit sounds like a suggestion that you think that Nicki's bikes aren't legal. Would you like to clarify whether that was your aim? The end of the Czech Gp and the start of this one were reminiscent of his dominant year in 2007. He wasn't necessarily dropping the clutch the fastest but was driving to the first turn amazingly well. As for his move on THJ. It was a GP semi final. Should he just sit back and settle for 3rd or actually try and make a pass? As it turned out, he picked up coming out of the corner and lifted which took him further out towards THJ than he probably planned to which caused the incident. I was initially surprised by his finger wagging reaction to the crash, but I actually thought that his interview kinda made some sense. After lifting and heading out towards THJ, he apparently thought that THJ would get out the way rather than holding his ground and accepting a crash...or at least, that's how I took his words. If that is how he meant it, I can say in all honesty, I think he is probably right with that statement. Plenty of riders would have moved over and just let him by, but THJ wasn't to be denied on home shale and just stuck around and took the fall....and well done to him for doing that. What tonight did prove was that Nicki IS back, and personally I love that he is....I was starting to worry that we had lost him after the last couple of GP seasons. Now all I need to make me really happy in my SGP viewing is for Emil to get back in gear

I was just going to say that I thought the other semi was scheduled for Ukraine. The Ukrainians don't have the same visa requirements as Russia and that track isn't too far from the Polish border, so there should hopefully be no problems.

I think you might have hit the nail on the head there. It wouldn't make sense to go head to head with Sky coverage of a UK speedway meeting, so they have taken the chance to show something else during the timeslot and then try to grab the speedway fans that are already in front of the TV after the Sky meet.

Indeed, but one of them is Erik Gundersen, so you can be sure that what's being said is probably far more insightful than what we normally get over here

Bucz seemed to have 3 riders up against him there. He was lucky to survive first time round, but Nermark finally got him.

Joined the meeting late, just started watching at heat 12 and I am confused over how Grigorij only got 1 from his first 3. He looked his usual, sensational self in his last 3.

Agreed, it was enjoyable. Nice to have a good quality, legal stream to watch Camerawork could have been a bit better, focusing on the runaway leader a few times while there were battles going on well behind them, but it's a new channel to speedway coverage, so hopefully they will get better. It's just a shame Fjelsted couldn't do a bit better as I want them to have a successful season.