HenryW

Yeah, it's a bit of a shock seeing him miss out, but the kid IS still very young, so can be excused the odd blip. Let's not forget that in 2008, the year of his second U21 title win, and the year before being given a wild card to the SGP, Emil also finished 1 place outside the qualifiers in the first round

I guess that's a fair comment, but it DOES seem ridiculous that the Fjelsted round is so tough while, for example, the Terenzano round has so many complete "no hopers" in it. With all due respect to the Argentinians, they aren't in the same class just now yet all of their riders are in a round that also has all the Italians (again, no disrespect, but since Alfonso quit they have had nothing worthy) as well as the only Frenchman and Austrian in the qualifiers, not to mention 2 Brits, 2 Germans.... Terenzano has 3 riders from top level speedway nations, and 2 of them are Aussies who would be lucky to get into the Aussie SWC team and the other surely has no hope of getting into the Polish SWC team....it is a pathetically weak round....How do they decide which nation is represented in each round?

The ref's having a laugh...If Alex is excluded there, Gapinski should have been out of heat 5 too.

The great Piotr Protasiewicz, who is first reserve from the qualifiers last year.

You can get a train between Nottingham and Wolverhampton (via Birmingham). It takes just under 2 hrs. You can check times and book tickets on http://www.thetrainline.com Ticket prices are usually lower if bought in advance on the web...

Yep, it should be PePe...and I can't wait. I would never have wished for an injury to anyone in the series, but getting to see PePe back in the big show is a dream come true

Kevin Woelbert was racing for Grudziadz in Hungary on Sunday, so I guess he was missing as well!

Not sure about the numbering, guess it's just to uniquely identify every rider in the match. As for the race format, that was included in the links provided by Vicar. Top 5 in each team have 4 programmed races. 6th man has 5. 7th man has 1.

I am possibly in a minority, but for the Gollob/Jonsson incident I thought the ref made a call that was right. The nationality of the riders involved shouldn't come into it, and I would hope that they didn't for the ref involved. If you want Gollob excluded for that move, you are someone who wants to see a sport where no rider can ever make a pass up the inside of another rider ever again.... As for the suggestion of national bias from the ref, would you also say that he was biased towards Australians? Despite the fact that the Sky commentary team said nothing about any controversy over the exclusion for Tomicek when he went into the fence at the same place, he was just as much taken out by Holder as Jonsson was by Gollob...(and in case you aint already worked it out, I am saying that he wasn't!) The ref was consistent in his decisions in both incidents, and I would agree with him in both. I think the heralding of a "new dawn" was entirely justified. What Tony O did in Leszno was let the locals do the track as they usually do...I would guess he did the same in Prague. The difference is that Prague is always a crap track for any match, so no shock that they delivered the same for the GP... I would, however, agree that the commentary team make much more out of a race than there really is...I was watching the match with a bunch of friends who have never seen speedway before. I winced every time I heard Pearson claim that a race was as good as you will ever see in the sport...I had to make sure that the others knew that he was talking nonsense when he said that. It surely does nothing for the sport when he makes such claims and it's patently not true...Anyone watching for the first time will hear that and think, "Oh, that's as good as it gets...no point watching that again." Finally, I am pretty sure that Pearson and Louis WERE at the track...Nice imagination that they have if they weren't, given the comments about their commentary position and the people they spoke to earlier in the day

Rather strangely, it was the Danish Fixtures thread that contained the explanation of Loktaev's situation. Danish Fixtures thread

I can't add much, but I can say that he only turned 16 on Wednesday. He raced for Vladivostok in the Russian League last year, and did a challenge match earlier this year for Daugavpils.

Yeah, he did a great job to make sure the bike missed Zengi.

I realise that it's slightly pedantic, but Aleksandr Loktaev is actually a Russian kid. I assume he must still be racing on a Ukrainian license at the moment to be credited with being Ukrainian in FIM events. His scores haven't been overly impressive in the Polish Extraliga so far, but for a 16 year old he seems to be doing quite nicely everywhere else.

I didn't say that they should called the shots, I just said they were entitled to request that he focus on their matches. Ultimately the final choice would be with Greg himself, and he clearly felt that his priority should be Zielona Gora and not America or he would have been in Italy yesterday.

Not sure if you have found it now, but the Tarnow match is available here sop://SOPCAST2.SOCCER-LIVE.COM.PL:3912/56947 Rain seems to be winning at the moment, tho.

Unless I misunderstood some previous discussion, US riders get to come into the PL on a 5 average these days.... Back in the 80's, they had to come into the BL (i.e. the top league in the UK, when it had all of the World's best riders racing in it, so basically the top league in the World) on a 6 average, and if they didn't get a 6 in their first season, they weren't coming back the next year as they wouldn't get a work permit. All the great Americans from the years gone by met that requirement.... US speedway has fallen on hard times, but I'm not sure you can say that the current rules in the UK are harsh on the Americans....

If Greg had turned up they might have got through, yeah...but they would still have been completely outclassed in the next round, just as the Finnish team will be. Given Greg's recent history of not racing in the SWC, if I was one of the other 4, I would be more peed off that the US didn't expect this and get someone else over to race.

With all due respect, the USA are never gonna do anything in the SWC at the moment. Given the amount of money that Zielona Gora pay Greg, I think they are perfectly entitled to request that he focus on their matches. Having said that, it is pretty pathetic that the USA raced with only 4 riders.

Not sure about that comment. It's not exactly clear cut that teams use the top man at 5. Piraterna had Greg at 5...Is Antonio better than Greg? Vargarna had Scott at 5...Is Scott better than Adrian and Krzysztof? Lejonen had Leigh at 5...Is Leigh better than Nicki? Anyway....Rune was at 5 for Dackarna...he scored a maximum and was the only one in the team to do so....So didn't Dackarna use their best at 5?

To be fair, we don't really have any option other than to hope that a stream will be made available. None of the UK channels will pick up the Swedish or Polish leagues. If any of them did, you can be sure that I would have a subscription....I would have less sympathy if it was people here in the UK hunting for a stream of the Sky coverage

Polish listings are saying "No Channels" now

Germany, Denmark and Sweden are confirmed starters in the match at Gustrow. I'm not sure if the 4th team has been confirmed yet. Last year the other "nation" to enter the competition was a joint side representing Croatia and Slovenia after the Russians pulled out of the competition relatively late. As Russia are scheduled to host the Final in 2011, you would expect that they would be getting some pressure from the FIM to put a team in this year!

Can only agree with Vicar's shock and disappointment... You did a great job with that site, but I can understand that other things become a priority....it's definitely bad news for the speedway community tho!

Yes, I completely agree with what you say here. I wasn't suggesting that a German GP couldn't be a success, just highlighting how even in a relatively strong speedway nation, a GP can fail badly. As you say, the location chosen for the recent attempt was not a good one, and you would almost certainly get similar results from hosting in Amsterdam or Budapest, which was my original point. As for German GPs, I always thought it was a shame that they didn't give Berlin another try. They were very unlucky with the weather when they hosted the GP there, and it seemed like it deserved to get another shot. I would certainly have returned to Berlin for a GP, but wasn't overly interested in visiting Gelsenkirchen.

Yes, they both have large stadiums and they both have speedway in the Country.... No different from New York, then Germany has a MUCH bigger speedway fan-base and history of speedway than either of those Countries, and you saw what happened to them when they tried to run GPs....It takes a LOT more than just having the sport in the Country and a big stadium to make a speedway GP work.