SteveEvans

Another rider to join the three confirmed so far (Castro, Burmeister, John Marquez) is 23 year old Tyson Talkington. Talkington has been riding speedway for only 12 months and has rapidly risen to a very good First Division rider. He is very ambitious and I am glad to welcome hium to the team. He has much racing experience in moto cross and Stock Cars and got his first taste of team riding in a Pairs meeting at Victorville last week and made a fine accounting of himself. Here is his profile from the speedwaybikes website, especially for Sandie and the other drooling females - you know who you are! http://www.speedwaybikes.com/rw/utysontalkington.htm

Great work Kelvin and Sarah - I know what it takes to get this stuff planned and my hope is you do end up one day soon having your own track.

We will race the Heathens anywhere, as many times as they want. We will still beat them every time!

I've been trying to get this set up but not much communication coming back from the Heathens camp. Running scared comes to mind!!!

I'm pushing for that one! Wanna get the double

Sandie - have we ever disappointed? Here is John's Profile http://www.speedwaybikes.com/rw/ujohnmarquez.htm Workyfan - Great to hear that Kenny is a hit up in Cumbria. We are really thrilled he is doing so well and his story this year is inspirational to a lot of riders on this side of the pond. SuperG - We wanna ride Sheffield to see Fast Eddie hit it there!

24 year old John Marquez is named as the next rider to the team. John has been racing for 4 years and for a long time brought a large number of fans to Victorville where he was very popular. He has been riding for 4 years and will hold down position 6 or 7 on the team. John has wanted to do this for a long time but now he is ready to come!

Pleased to announce that the proposed October tour is on! It's the 6th tour that has been done to the UK and we are having a little change in identity, rebadging our name as the AMERICAN TOURING TEAM. The Dream Team era has been fabulous and a total blast - I decided to rename it as whilst there is work to do I no longer feel we are 'dreaming' about getting riders to the UK. Kenny Ingalls has shown that with hard work US riders can make the grade in the Uk and there are two of our other riders who came in the Spring who are being approached to race in the PL in the not too distant future. It is also the first tour I have run solo since Gary Gomez decided to step down so I think it is fitting to modify our idendity. The plan is to race at 6 full meetings and I can reveal that we will be at Plymouth on Friday 8th October for what is now a traditional race against the Devils. There are several other dates in the works and I hope the full schedule can be published within a week or so. It is possible that we may take in a mix of PL and NL dates (the PL dates with some help from our current PL Yanks) but that is somewhat dependent on the 7 riders we bring over, as our top end would need to be strong to justify such. There are about a dozen riders who have expressed an interest and the next week or two should determine who is on board. It is possible we may have a very strong team and it is equally possible that we will have a team with 4-5 new faces and be weaker than recent times and we will gauage our opposition accordingly. There are a number of EL and PL tracks interested in having us though of course they won't necessarily have us race their full squads! I can reveal that Fast Eddie Castro and Tyson Burmeister are planning to return along with at least one other rider from the Spring Tour. I am also very very happy to announce a partnership with Andrew Hale and the 'Penhall Museum'. Penhall Museum will be the title sponsor of the team but the partnership goes well beyond that in so much as Andrew is going to be very active on the UK side of the tour and in fact already brings a lot to the table. If you want us at your track let us know, talk to your promoter, spread the good word. There is a lot of American talent that has not seen the light of say yet in the UK and some of these riders will be on show in October as we continue our quest to rebuild the USA and its presence in the UK leagues. We are also seeking sponsors to assist with tour overhead / riders race jackets etc so if you love American Speedway riders and want to help, get in touch! To help with logistics we are looking at renting bikes in the Midlands area preferably so if anyone can help with this send me a PM. We have about 4-5 bikes already so we are well on the way.

I wish to take this opportunity to publicly thank Gary for all he put into this project since we conceived it sometime in 2003. What is not known or appreciated is the amount of work he did for this and for American Speedway. He never wanted his name in lights but just wanted to get the job done. On the early tours, he did about 60% of the work on Tour #1 and about 80% on Tours 2 and 3. My own circumstances changed in the last two years so on the last two tours I was able to take on more and the magnificent results of those tours is the result of our combined efforts since 2003. Just to dispell rumors before someone starts one, there has been no falling out between us and we remain good friends and regularly communicate on speedway matters. After 7 years we both are capable of running this without the other and both have different approaches but each approach gets the job done at the end of the day. The results of the Dream Team are there for all to see - without it and the efforts not just in the tours but between them American Speedway riders would be pretty much unemployable in the UK. We personally worked with the British Promoters to give American riders a chance on a realistic average and have given riders the stage to perform on to persue a professional career. Right now British promoters are hot on American riders and the only way we will ever get another GP after Greg is to send our best talent overseas. It hurts to lose riders to the UK but it is a necessity in the growth of our sport. His resignation is not an end but a new start. I do know some of what he is working on though most likely he hasn't dealt all his poker cards but I can say that like the Dream Team and the Hagon Shocks Junior program, it will only benefit American Speedway. The Dream Team concept will continue and will continue to grow - experience and knowledge of these tours makes the next one better each team and tour #6, whether it was an Evans or Gomez or joint production will surpass the others as they always do. I'm not sure about whether the Dream Team name will continue or whether I will rebadge it, but the concept is the same. I'm not looking to replace Gary as I'm able to manage things solo but I will, as ever, need a lot of help from our ever increasing group of supporters. An October tour is still a strong possibility and we have the tracks lined up, we just need enough riders to make it happen. It's down to money the riders have and after a long season in the US many budgets are already overspent. So, thanks again Gary. We had a blast and changed American Speedway. Priceless.

Would anyone like to guess who will be on the team? Requests??

Venues are being worked on as we speak. Want to get to as many new venues as possible.

You can keep guessing the mystery former British League rider if you like. Note no guarentee he will make it over but he is very keen to meet up with his old team mates and possibly even race at his former track.

Nice team there! The two guest riders by the way will be preferably Americans but need to hold positions one and five so we have some none American who also may stand in. Three of the nine are on the shortlist of 13 to fly in, 2 of the Uk based oned are preferred guests!

It's a great idea and Steve Mallett mentioned this to us last year. Main problem is we cannot leave until 2nd October at the soonest as the US Nationals are on October 1st so we will be in the air on Rider Cup weekend.

Work is progressing on a new race tour by American riders this autumn. It will not be under the Dream Team banner as there are some differences in the structure and the Dream Team name is for tours that are exclusively for young riders. The working title for the team is the 'American Touring Team.' So far 13 riders have expressed interest and the next week or two should see which riders are seriously aboard. It is hoped that the touring 7 riders will race at two levels - ideally there are three meetings at Premier League level and three at Natioanl. For the PL level meetings 2 guest heatleaders will be added and the teams will possibly be expanded to 9 riders with the 8 and 9 of eacch team racing each other three times, giving an 18 heat show. Eight tracks have expressed interest in staging matches and they are from all levels of current competition. The team will fly in around October 3 and stay for just over two weeks. Whilst there are young riders on the shortlist, the objective will be building a strong team that can do justice in the higher level meetings. One of the riders who is on the shortlist is a former British League rider who has not raced in the UK in over a decade but is still a very accomplished racer. More details soon.

Cardiff was a tremendous speedway meeting, though the Speedway GP series has had many dull processions over the years. I have been to the F1 GP on 6 occasions, often staying the whole weekend. I have seen some great races and some boring ones. An F1 race, however, is the ultimate in soaking up the atmosphere and occasion, something that Cardiff, as special as it is, will never reach. Part of the f1 appeal is that its a one time a year deal (versus speedway that you can see, albeit at a lesser level, 7 nights a week from March to October). They are genuine superstars and celebrities. Steve, if you went to Cardiff but only saw Silverstone on the telly, you can't compare. You would have to be at bot to form an accurate opinion.

Nice ideas in an ideal world, but weather and stadium availability makes it impossible to have everyone on 18 matches at the same time. The problem it seems this is trying to solve is teams being able to strengthen ahead of others. Maybe simply have a tranfer window in the month of July or have riders retain their value all season long.

I missed off Stoke and also Northside Workington runs training schools. This is just to say that non league riding opportunities exist more than ever and if q rider is on the pace he should then be doing second halves at NL tracks to put his name in the window, Besides, even riders having to travel a few hundred miles to these meetings is nothing compaed to the 12,000 miles an Aussie flies to race.

If British kids want to learn speedway there is a huge increase in amateur events on the weekends these days - Scunthorpe, Southern Track riders, Dragons, Lydd, Sittingbourne, etc. Yes, you pay to ride but thats how you learn. Other motorsports like Grass Track and Moto-Cross charge entry fees to race. In the US, the majority of riders, even the top ones pay $30 entry fee each meerting to race and I wouldn't be surprised if the same applied in Australia as they have lots of grass roots vcnues. On the Aussies - I would change the rules that they can only come in on a British average (3) if they will ride for Great Britain, otherwise they are a 5.

Aussies are allowed in the league as the majority of the teams are 2nd teams for PL or EL tracks and they are using the league to feed talent. It's an unfortunate fact that there is more chance of getting a new Aussie on a false average than there is a new Brit, so in long term planning to win the league this is a strategy. Rather than bleating on about Australians, the better thing is that British Speedway creates a real youth speedway program, something that Australia has hence the current numbes in the UK and the huge amount on the wings. I think USA, a third world speedway nation unfortunately right now, has more Under 15's than the UK does.

Let's keep it real here - The Heathens team is a joint project created by CVS and Patchett which is basically a feeder team for Wolves, Birmingham and Swindon. Now, due to the overwhelming number of speedway starved Heathens fans, this project has been a roaring success and it's been fabulous for these people to finally have a team. But one aspect here is that the team will to some extent be used to blood riders that can be used in the future by the senior clubs. The move for Dyer is obviously within the rules and you can't bitch at the promotion for making a legal league change. You can bitch at the league for the rules if you like. The NL and the CL before it has always been torn between the standalone clubs and the clubs who run a 2nd team, often at a loss - it's almost two leagues within one. If you had 8 standalone clubs and 8 teams who wanted to run a 2nd team, you could have a National League and a Conference / Academy League seperately, though I doubt that would happen. Mr Vasey - A second half league that paid 5 pounds / point would cost a whopping 30 quid per heat or 180 quid per match to run, plus travel. My point was if there was some bonus to a senior team for running a 2nd team (even at NL level) it would somehow become magically affordable!!!

The National League is designed to prepare British riders for the Premier and this is what has happened here - it's got sarge ready and prepared for when his future PL ditches him for an Aussie. Joking apart, didn't I read Dyer had been flown in by the Brummies? With the Heathens currently being the Wolves & Birmingham feeder club, this move under the league rules is no surprise. The NL standard continues to grow and I think the solution for British riders needs to be re-esttbalishing a 2nd half league like what we had back between 1986 and 1992. It gave good racing and added 6 heats giving you a two and half hour show versus a spread out 100 minutes. Reward the clubs who participate with an extra point for their big team for team building and you'll find its magically affordable!

Might remind you of Dudley Wood mate! Seriously though, speedway needs grass roots venues and view it that way and you will have a good time.

Looks to me like AJ was caught napping and was surprised Gollob got by at such speedway and had nowhere to put his foot.

Dave has retired so you'd just get Chas I think.