HenryW

Be a bit more adventurous....New York, Rio, Tokyo, etc.... Sad fact is that Amsterdam and Budapest couldn't support a GP any more than New York could. Russia is probably a different proposition, but the logistics of getting the series in there (or maybe more importantly getting everything back out) would be very hard.

No worse than Al Capone?

The article linked to earlier gave the breakdown of his income as follows (converted at todays rate and roughly rounded) : Sponsors - £425,000 Gorzow - £385,000 Vastervik - £150,000 SGP - £45,000 PZM - £20,000

Well, as I said, the list that I saw had Gollob earning that much, but it definitely said it included his sponsorship income....and I think I would probably believe any source over the Daily Star BTW: I have had it pointed out that I missed the great Jarek Hampel off my list earlier....He earned 2.3million zloty according to se.pl, putting him at number 26 of the Polish sports earners...Full list of the top 100 can be found here: http://www.se.pl/sport/zlota-setka-2009/

I saw a link to the list of the top 100 earning Polish sports stars yesterday, and Gollob was 9th on that with 4,820,000 zloty, which I guess works out at just over a million quid. However, that sum included his sponsorship income, which they stated to be 2 million zloty. Other speedway riders I saw on the list were Rune Holta (2,560,000), Sebastian Ulamek (1,890,000), Grzegorz Walasek (1,770,000), Piotr Protasiewicz (1,560,000*), Krzysztof Kasprzak (1,500,000), Adrian Miedzinski (1,350,000), Rafal Dobrucki (1,300,000), Wieslaw Jagus (1,300,000), Janusz Kolodziej (1,000,000). * Although PePe is listed as having earned 1.56 million, the breakdown they give (1.1million from Falubaz, 0.35million from Indianerna and 0.2million from his sponsors) actually totals 1.65 so this figure may be wrong. If that's true, Rune Holta is earning more than both Jason and Nicki...Somehow, I doubt that

I'm not sure if I have missed something or not, but the video that I saw started just as the unfortunate Raniszewski was spearing towards the concrete stairs, and had the other rider already almost on the floor outside him. From what I have seen, it seems entirely possible that the other rider lost control and fell just in front and to the right of Raniszewski, clipping him and putting him off balance, which caused him to get sent into that fateful drive into those stairs... I have seen many crashes where one rider has fallen just in front of another, clipping them and causing them to be thrown off balance. That often leads the following rider to pull back on the throttle and spear him into the fence....Thankfully, when I have seen those incidents, there wasn't an unforgiving stairway waiting to collect the unfortunate rider... As I say, maybe you have seen some video footage that I didn't see, but nothing that I have seen necessarily contradicts what was written about that horrible crash...

As an Edinburgh fan, who would get to see these matches, I can only say that I would LOVE it. The earlier suggestion of getting the Germans over would also ensure my attendance at the match. Scottish speedway doesn't have a mass of talent at the moment, but getting some international matches going would surely help things....

Personally, I am really sorry to hear this news, and feel great sympathy for Andy. I send him big internet hugs and hope he gets his life sorted soon

Bomber surely should have been thinking of this season as his last chance to prove himself...As I said before, he missed out by 22 points in 2008, so he was lucky to be selected again....but he didn't take his chance and actually got worse, finishing 36 points outside of a qualifying spot. For all the abuse Nicholls got, he has at least qualified on merit a couple of times and been close to the qualification spots most other years...When he failed miserably this year, he had the decency to say he wasn't interested in being selected...Harris has never qualified and has been well out of touch for the last two years, but gets back in yet again.

I wouldn't argue that Tai is a dodgy pick, but he has youth on his side, and they are clearly wanting to get some youth into the series. As for Bomber...I think my earlier post made it clear what I think of his nomination. Without subscribing to "young is best", I would suggest the following riders were more deserving than Bomber...and I offer them in the order that I rate them: Piotr Protasiewicz, Leigh Adams (but he ruled himself out), Seb Ulamek, Ryan Sullivan, Lee Richardson and Adrian Miedzinski. EDIT - Actually, something just clicked in my head, and maybe the selection of Chris Harris actually makes sense.... Could Rune Holta have been the rider that ensured that Harris got another pick? Has he made a decision on whether he races or not yet? If he hasn't, and they gave Edward or Lee a place instead of Chris and then Rune decided NOT to race next year, Chris would also get in as the next highest in the GP Challenge. By giving Harris the place, they ensure that if Rune decides not to race, PePe replaces him.....Hmmmmmm.

Totally agree. Harris missed out on the top eight this year by 36 points. Last year he missed out by 22. Since moving back to the 16 man field, has any other rider even come close to failing by so much and being let back in? To put Chris' failure into perspective, In the last 3 years that Scotty received a nomination (2008, 2006 and 2005), he failed to make the cut by 3, 8 and 8 respectively....For all that we moaned about Scott getting those places, at least he was in contention for a top 8 slot....Harris has been a mile wide of the mark the last two years. Just to add shame to his nomination, he even had the GP Challenge at his home track and STILL failed to get through. It's utterly unbelievable that such serial failure can be rewarded with a place in the SGP again.

It doesn't really suggest he will be riding, it more asks the question of whether he might race after not being included in the Polish team this year.

Yes.

I think the spectacular success of Emil might have encouraged them to look to add more young riders...The problem with that is that Emil is a very special case. He was already delivering against the top guys before he was invited in, and he also had a fantastic back-up team thanks to his very generous benefactor in Bydgoszcz. I would love to see someone like Tai make a similar impact on the SGP stage, but I worry that he might suffer in the manner that Toninho did...

I presume that he means waiting until they have got to a level where they can regularly compete with/defeat the top riders in other competitions, rather than just chucking them into the SGP and hoping that they don't sink under the pressure...

I would probably agree in regards to the other 3, but I think Freddie has done enough to deserve his place. He finished 9th in the SGP series and 4th in the qualifier. If you want them to "qualify" then they would have to come from one of those lists surely, and so Freddie is next in line both times. Would you be happy with Lindgren, Harris, Protasiewicz and Watt being given the 4 places instead?

Please tell me that is a joke or a wild bit of speculation and not fact!

And I am sure he doesn't care at all....I sure wouldn't if I was him!

If you are using the desktop client you can start it recording with the red circle button at the top of the window. This saves the stream to local disk as an ASF file.

I think you will find that Nelson Piquet actually received no punishment at all. As for the comparison with a footballer refusing to leave the pitch after being red carded...I don't think it's anything like it. The speedway equivalent would be a rider coming back to the start line and refusing to leave the track after being excluded. Tomek hadn't suffered any punishment from the ref at the time he chucked his toys out the pram.

I am in no way condoning what Tomek did, but it still seems like an overreaction on here. I have seen countless races where riders have deliberately left their bikes on the track, and in much more dangerous positions than Tomek did, in order to get a race stopped. Would it have been more acceptable if Tomek had just laid his bike down at the next corner and walked away from it leaving it mid turn? Far more dangerous but also far more common!

Had a very good weekend. A real shame you couldn't make it. Yep. This Final looks like it has been made a real non-event by the weather. Falubaz success is based on their amazing home advantage, and today they have lost it all.

Yep. Sopcast on 56947. sop://s0pcast.soccer-live.com.pl:3912/56947 is what I used.

Looked like a shocking decision from the ref...Sullivan moved out further than in the first running, so how is one all 4 back and the other an exclusion for PePe?? It's not looking good for Falubaz even at this early stage. Clearly having to get rid of their normal track is going to hurt them!

It's still not finished yet. They have just completed the 20 heats and are preparing for semi finals. Scorers in the 20 heats (courtesy of http://forum.speedway.ru ): 15. Emil Sajfutdinov 15 (3,3,3,3,3) 7. Andreas Jonsson 12 (3,1,2,3,3) 1. Nicki Pedersen 11 (3,2,3,1,2) 10. Renat Gafurov 10 (3,3,0,3,1) 8. Rune Holta 10 (1,3,3,3,0) 4. Greg Hancock 9 (2,2,3,2,1) 14. Sergei Darkin 9 (2,2,1,2,2) 3. Roman Povazhny 8 (0,1,2,2,3) 5. Denis Gizatullin 7 (2,0,1,1,3) 11. Dave Watt 6 (2,2,0,2,X) 13. Martin Smolinski 6 (0,3,1,0,2) 2. Danil Ivanov 4 (1,0,0,1,2) 6. Leigh Adams 4 (0,1,2,1,0) 12. Magnus Zetterstrom 4 (X,1,2,0,1) 9. Semen Vlasov 3 (1,1,0,F,1) 16. Andrej Karpov 1 (1) 17. Oleg Beschatnov 1 (0,1,0,0) EDIT - Semi 1 : Hancock, Sajfutdinov, Gafurov, Darkin Semi 2 : Jonsson, Pedersen, Holta, Povazhny (X) Final : Jonsson, Sajfutdinov, Pedersen, Hancock