HenryW

After his decent showing to take 7th place at Poole, Joe Haines has been rewarded with one of the wildcard slots for the second round of the series in Holsted. Rene Bach is the other wildcard.

Jerzy didn't have to qualify for the 1973 Final. He was given a place in the final alongside 4 other Poles simply because they were Polish, not because anyone thought they were the best riders in the World. Let's be clear, Jerzy wouldn't have had a sniff of the World title if it was a GP series. Is your earlier shout about the death of the World Championship actually about nominating a Brit for commercial reasons when they possibly aren't in the top 15 or with the GP series as a whole? Actually...There probably is no need to ask as you probably answered it with your next post... How many times did we see a one off World Final without one of the top riders in the World because they dropped out due to bad luck during the qualifiers? How many times did we see riders missing out on the title due to an engine failure or harsh exclusion? How many times did we see riders going through the motions because their chance had gone in their first couple of races and there was nothing left to race for? You suggest that Mark's title was "anti-climactic". Were you in the Polonia Stadium in Bydgoszcz the night he sealed his title? If you were, I doubt you would be saying that it was anticlimactic. As far as I can see, the GP series does a better job of determining the best rider in the World than the old system did, but you can obviously retort with, "I don't care if it does show the most consistant Rider as World Champion." Apparently this doesn't sit well with you because there might be a GP held where the title is already decided, or there might be a rider making up the numbers in the series who might actually be a bit worse than the next rider down. Correct me if I am wrong, but neither of those objections is about deciding the eventual champion in a "sporting" way, unless you can offer some evidence of a rider who was beating everyone around the tracks of Europe but missed out on his title because he was left out of the GP series. Your complaints actually seem to be more about making it entertaining and appealing to fans in a "one off shoot-out scenario"....Is it more "sporting" to throw things into the crap-shoot of a one off final on one track, or hold a series of events on multiple tracks with varying preparation and weather conditions?

That's a bit of an extreme reaction. There have been very few years since the inception of the speedway world championship when there was a qualification system that allowed the top 16 in the World to make it to the Final. There have always been restrictions on the numbers from each country that had places in the qualifying rounds, so maybe the World Championship was never alive in the first place I don't think it's right that a rider is given a place for Commercial reasons when there are potentially better riders out there, but I honestly don't think it's a problem for finding the World Champion. Once you get past the top 10 in the World, the standard of the next 10 to 20 riders down are all fairly similar. None of them is realistically going to win the GP series. If there was a genuine title contender that was being left out to appease the Commercial desires that would be a different story, but that hasn't happened yet. In fact, BSI showed great sense in reducing the number of Brits in the series this year to accommodate Janusz Kolodziej, who did look like a genuine contender and had missed out.

That would probably depend on who qualified from the Final in Vetlanda. If a couple of Danes or a couple of Poles get through then Kolodziej and Bjerre would surely see their chances of a pick disappear, and that isn't entirely inconceivable given the meeting has 4 Danes and 5 Poles in it. (edited for accuracy as I previously said 4 from each, forgetting about poor Mr Ulamek) Also, Lindback is in the GP Qualification Final, so he could seal his place there and not rely on one of the handouts...Something that Bomber and Freddie should have been doing this year as well!

Agree about the TV coverage as it should be a great meeting. There are some amzingly exciting and very young propects in this meeting. Bartosz Zmarzlik and Piotr Pawlicki are both still just 16 years old, while Alex Loktaev, Dino Kovacic and Oskar Fajfer are 17. Surely every British promoter will be there checking out how these kids handle a British track.

Has it been confirmed who will be taking Vadim Tarasenko's place in this meeting, assuming that Vadim has indeed suffered the same indignity as his uncles?

The Laguta's have never been Latvian so can't revert to being Latvian. Grigory applied for Latvian Citizenship a few years ago but was refused due to his inability to speak Latvian. I believe his wife is Latvian, so that may change things for him now. As far as I understand from other reports, neither of the Lagutas have applied for a UK visa this season. The Russian management team DID apply for their visas for the SWC but were refused their normal, faster processing, and they obviously weren't in possession of visas at the time of the SWC.

Good call..That should easily make Great Britain the Nation with the most Individual Wins

Thinking about it, I guess it is possible that in the eyes of the FIM they were actually just Great Britain and Great Britain II. There were often years where the Continental rounds had 2 teams from one Nation as other Countries struggled to provide a team. I guess it wasn't too much of a worry as Scotland were never going to get out of the British based qualifying round

Are you sure about that? In 1973 and before, Great Britain raced in the World Cup. From 1974 until 1977, England and Scotland entered separately before the Scottish place was taken by the USA in 1978. Surely both teams weren't officially listed as Great Britain by the FIM during those years, were they?

And what a ride it was by Grigory. What more could you ask for as home fan there...Down to 1 rider in a last heat decider against Nicki Pedersen and the previously unbeaten Tomek Gollob, and he goes around the pair of them coming out the 2nd bend There is a clip taken from the crowd on YouTube...You might want to check your sound levels before playing it as they do get a bit excited

That might be the case...He DID have a stinker in 86 That was the only time he finished outside the top 4 in his World Final appearances, if I remember right. I think that he was 4th in 81, 83 and 89 and a medalist the other years.

I know exactly what you are meaning with the general sentiment of this post and agree with it. However, as a big fan of Erik, I would suggest that comment was a bit rough. He finished 4th, only 1 point behind 2nd despite having suffered an engine failure during the meeting, so hardly "no-where" and not really comparable to the others you listed. Basically, I don't think he really belongs in that list.

Don't worry, Havvy was in the pits with the team at Kings Lynn, but obviously couldn't attend the Gorzow meeting due to Redcar commitments. I am sure Havvy will take a much more active role in Team GB when he gives up his racing career.

It would be nice to have a tournament like that, but there would be far too many completely one sided matches with the current standard of Nations. If you look at the top 8 from this year, can you really see anyone wanting to go and watch Denmark, Poland, Sweden or Australia racing against Germany or the Czech Republic? A round robin of the top 4 with the top 2 going head to head for the title might just about work, but even that might provide some one sided matches.

Actually, in 94 they binned the pairs and made the team cup run on the pairs format, but with a third rider available as a reserve. They did try running the team cup with pairings in each heat briefly. I think it might have been after they ditched the "pairs" format, so that would have started in 99. If I remember right, it wasn't really popular and they quickly went back to the format where each team has 1 rider in every race. I actually think the current format works really well. The SWC is always one of the highlights of the season for me, so I am happy if they stick with what they have just now.

I'm guessing that you don't watch much Polish speedway then. PePe is 4th in the Polish league averages with a 9.42 ave. The only non Pole above him is Crump. If that's struggling in the league then I think a lot of riders would soooo love to struggle at league level. LMAO...You think the Russian Federation put in big effort? Where were you on Monday when Russia were tracking 4 riders while Emil sat it out cos the Federation wouldn't pay him! Ward certainly did his SGP ambitions no favours with that dire showing, but Watt was clearly worse than him...Having said that, the weakest link in the Aussie team is really Boyce. If he had sucked up his pride and got down on his knees and begged Sully to race, Australia would almost certainly be World Champions now. THJ looks like a real fighter on every track I have seen him race on (OK, maybe with the exception of Armadale!) I am still surprised that no EL team has moved for him. With the right support he would be a complete steal on his current average.

Interestingly, at least two of the bright young Russians (Alexandr Loktaev and Kiril Tsukanov) currently race as Ukrainians, and who can blame them with the antics that went on this week! Despite the talent that is potentially coming through, the Russians actually fielded the oldest team tonight! Although, in fairness, if Artem had been available their average age would have been below the Aussies and just marginally above the Swedes. Whilst mentioning him, was anyone else frustrated that the commentary team regularly stated that the Russians were at full strength whilst also mentioning the absence of Nicholls and Richardson? Russia were missing one of their 2 SGP riders, the man who top scored for them at Gorzow in the SWC last season...If the Brits had been missing someone with that record we would surely have known all about it!

We shall wait and see if that is the case. The Russian media seem to be reporting that Emil, Grigory, Artem, Roman and Renat is still a possibility for Thursday after the intervention of the boss-man of the Russian Federation, Alexander Lunkin.

That depends...They maybe looked at the heats and decided that Gaffer could get something more out of his own race with double points than using the double points on him in 25 or on another rider. Having said that, given that it was some random Russian speedway fan from Milton Keynes acting as TM, cos the real TM didn't get a visa either, it was probably just a mistake

Yes, I believe that Roman is married to a Pole and holds a Polish passport.

It seems that the Russian authorities have begun an investigation into this whole farce. What is clear, though, is that a 5 man team would have appeared if this event was anywhere other than the UK. They have confirmed that the normal process of expedited visa approval (5 to 15 days) for sports teams was refused them by the British Authorities. It seems that the period to go through the full approval process was suggested as being up to 3 months and would require the submission of the original passports of those seeking visas (again something not normally required). If this IS the case then it's an absolute disgrace. There is no way that a football team would be treated in this fashion. Surely the FIM have to take some action and if they can't get the UK authorities to ease their restrictions on speedway riders, then Britain should not be receiving any further FIM events.

Currently their team is: 1. Roman Povazhny 2. Sergei Darkin 3. 4. Renat Gafurov 5. Ilya Bondarenko If they don't add a 5th man then the first race for number 3 will be a three rider race then after that they will be able to use tacticals to fill any gaps, as we can be pretty sure they will be 6+ down

I can accept that Batch was asked to end the race behind Max. I refuse to accept that he deliberately made the move he did. He got himself in a complete mess and was lucky to get out of it without dropping the bike or leaving the track. What constitutes performing to the best though? For the team, it was clear that the best that Batch could do was end third...He had Max Dilger, a sub 3 point Premier League rider up against him...He surely can only be congratulated for making the effort to end the race behind Max...especially in the fashion that he did It's just a shame for Australia that Holder isn't good enough As an aside, do you REALLY think that AJ couldn't have held off Bjarne? No doubt in my mind that AJ knew what he was doing there...Just a shame that the Swedish team manager didn't know what he was doing and left Lindgren in for the double points race. Arthur is a fantastic talent on a motorbike...I have seen him racing in the RBR series and also on a speedway track...A real shame that he couldn't be convinced to stick with the sliding. However, I think you missed someone in your run down of natural talents on a road racing bike BFD....*cough* The Doctor *cough*

As the SWC tournament ends next Saturday, would this not make Emil ineligible to race for Bydgoszcz in their league match next Sunday? I wonder what they make of the situation? And Emil is in Coventry is he? Are you sure he isn't at home in Saint Petersburg? Not sure 20 quid would get him very near Kings Lynn from there