HenryW

There seems to be plenty of pride and motivation in the Swedish colors. For everyone grumbling that Britain don't have the quality of riders to choose from...Look at the Swedes. They are no better, but their boys are clearly motivated and right up for the meeting.

QUOTE (Rob B @ Jun 15 2008, 12:59 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Completely illegal, if the ref sees it they get maximum fine. If you are correct, then there must be a lot of blind referees or Nicki must pay an awful lot of "maximum" fines. He almost always removes his cut-out on the way back to the pits.

A fine result for the Brits, but what was up with Emil today? No way should he be dropping some of the points that he did today. As for ylinenhare5-1....I expect better of you! (see below)

Thanks for providing these....it's much appreciated by some of us, though surprisingly not all! Any chance of a few of the others who have successfully downloaded this doing some seeding as well?

According to SportoweFakty, Lawson finished 2nd in the run-off with Zengota and Vodyakov after Vodyakov retired, so William will actually qualify rather than be reserve. Edit - Beaten to it by Romualds

With all due respect to their opponents, you have to think that the Czech Republic would need to make a massive mess of things to fail to reach Coventry, and save you the worry of whether to support your team's boy or your nation's boys.

Do you mean riders or Nations? If you mean Nations, It's GB, Sweden and Denmark plus the winners of the round containing Italy, Finland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic being held in Ljubljana on 29th June. Coventry definitely looks the tougher of the two rounds, with the other Semi having Poland, Australia, Russia and the winner of Germany, USA, Hungary and Latvia. If you mean riders, that probably hasn't been decided yet.

It would be a real shame not to see you this weekend Lawrence... I hope you can get a ticket sorted out and join us inside the stadium!

The first match in the new season was completed a day late today, and "new" boys Chervonograd took a relatively easy win over Togliatti, 51-39. Togliatti only had one man able to win races, with Saijfutdinov grabbing 17 from 6 rides. His only defeat came at the hands of Shakter's top man, Magnus Zetterstrom, who bagged a 12 point max. Andrey Karpov also joined Zetters on 12, but took 5 rides to get that score.

I was indeed a Cradley fan back in the old days...Nothing worse than Wolves getting one over them.

The brain hasn't completely gone, Bryn, there was definately an Australian called Kerry Gray racing with Rye back then. Some Wolverhampton fans might remember him as well.......

Haha!! No surprise you saying that. I can't wait to see some speedway at ZG...

Yes. He was German...or at the very least, he represented Germany in International competitions.

Not for the first time, I'm impressed by Emil's score. That kid seems to have everything....wonder if he'd like to sign for a season of PL at Edinburgh

Can I put in a request that someone drags this thread up again in another 10 months time when it's even less relevant than now...

7 teams competed in the league this year. Those were Togliatti, Oktyabrsky, Vladivostok, Balakovo, Salavat, Rivne and (another) Balakovo. Each team races the others once home and once away, so 6 home matches each during the course of the league season. This season the first match took place on 19th of April, between Rivne and Oktyabrsky, and the final match took place on 10th of October between Rivne and Togliatti. The suggestion that there will be a foreign rider limit is rather interesting. I wonder what they will be classing as foreign? Will Rivne only be allowed to use one non Ukrainian rider? You have to think that they would be fairly screwed if that is the case, given the number of decent Ukrainians around at the moment.

There, tidied that up for you.

I don't think that 55 is so bad a number of GPs to have ridden in without a win. I'm sure there is a legendary Pole who has a similar record, and there is no way he should be described as a clown!

Looks like I should maybe leave the ZG scarf and the PePe cap at home when I travel to Bydgoszcz this week.... Looking forward to hearing how the Bydgoszcz fans reacted to the great man's performance today.

I saw on the Russian forum recently that money talks bigger than National pride for your little Emil....Seems the kid decided to go to Bydgoszcz tomorrow instead of being where he should be, Vladivostok for the Russian Championships! I hope that it's worth it for both Bydgoszcz and him....or maybe I don't, it depends on whether Tommy is reading this or not

A few details on the Russian team's riders, including club, Russian league average so far this year and birthdate. Kiril Fillinov (SK Turbina Balakovo - 8.57) 15-04-1986 Emil Sajfutdinov (Mega Lada Togliatti - 12.00) 26-10-1989 Aleksandr Kosolapkin (SK Turbina Balakovo - 6.67) 25-07-1987 Roman Katyukov (Salavat - 5.85) 14-04-1986 Aleksei Guzaev (Turbina Balakovo - 6.28) 28-02-1988

Just interested, was it actually GB or England that were racing in this? The results site suggests England, and William Lawson's non-appearance in the squad also gives that impression....

Who else was supposed to have been in the Togliatti round? I watched the video of this meeting yesterday and was surprised to see so many Russian's in the meeting...I guess from your comments it wasn't supposed to be this way! Of those that did race, no-one even came close to troubling Gizatullin on track...he was in a class of his own, coasting to most of his race victories.

I guess this means that Slawek must have been in a better state after this GP than the last one then

Firstly, I have to question where you come up with 40 points for the 6 riders that I mentioned. Do you really think that Jonsson, Hampel, Gollob, Lindback, Jagus and Holta would only come to 40 points in the UK EL? Secondly, how many points did you give to the "etc" that I put in there? I wasn't suggesting that these 6 guys were the only ones racing in the Swedish ES that could easily take a team place away from someone in the UK EL if they (1) wanted to, and (2) were able to fit in under the points limit used here. I would suggest that all of the following riders could push an EL rider out of a team place: Andreas Jonsson, Jaroslaw Hampel, Tomasz Gollob, Wieslaw Jagus, Rune Holta, Antonio Lindback, Mikael Karlsson, Matej Ferjan, Grzegorz Walasek, Henryk Gustafsson, Renat Gafurov, Gary Havelock, Andrej Karpov, Karol Zabik, Emil Sajfutdinov, Rafal Dobrucki, Tomasz Jedrzejak, Magnus Zetterstrom, Krzysztof Buczkowski, Tomasz Gapinski, Pawel Hlib, Chris Slabon and Andre Compton.