Bavarian

Some enterprising promoter could stage an ultimate match race challenge between the world champ tai and the euro champ Emil. Would be a cracker of a contest (best-of.-three) with the right build up in the media.

Fascinating history. That stadium in Wroclaw (Breslau) was really never used as an Olympic venue. Built as the "Schlesierkampfbahn" (Silesian Arena) in the then German (Silesian) town of Breslau, between 1926 and 1928 by a then famous Silesian architect Richard Konwiarz, It was re-named "Olympiastadion" (Olympic Stadium) after 1932, when this building had won the architect Herr Konwiarz an Olympic bronze medal for Architecture in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Yes, they had medals for non-sporting (cultural) events at the Olympic Games in those days! The Stadium was further up-graded to host a national "Deutsches Turn- und Sportfest" in 1938, and was then re-named as the "Herman-Göring-Stadium". Between 1930 and 1941, the German national foootball team played a few international home games at this Stadium in Breslau, including a 1-0 win over Poland in 1935, and a famous 8-0 win over Denmark in 1937. The Stadium was never used as a home ground for a Club Football team, though, neither in the German pre-war years, nor in Poland afterwards. Under Polish occupation in 1945 the name of the town was changed from Breslau to Wroclaw, and the now again re-named "Stadion Olympijskij we Wroclawiu" became the home ground of the WTS Wroclaw speedway Club. The stadium is currently getting up-graded again to host the 2017 World Games. This is the reason why WTS Sparta Wroclaw must race their Estraliga play-off semi-final against Unia Tarnow next week away from home on neutral ground at Czestochowa.

It sure was a nasty one - let us all pray he recovers from it. [media=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tIkcCN8E7s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tIkcCN8E7s[/media]

i find this strange and hard to believe, really. Gollob has a back injury today, but no back injury tomorrow? Come on, what's the true reason for his non start tonight in Kumla?

... which means Nicki has to pay a fine of 30,000 zl, but Mr. Gajewski has to pay nothing at all, with his 8,000 zl being suspended. Come on, this is a totally unfair verdict against Nicki - he does not seem to have any friends in Poland, they are on a whitch hunt for him. I am very disappointed and don't agree at all with this verdict. Even the Red Card for Nicki after the collision with Doyle and Przedpelski seemed like a bad joke against him. Now this disgraceful verdict against him - is there no justice in Poland, I ask?

The rules should be changed then, to give the ref the option to re-run a race after a crash without having to exclude one rider, if he can't decide who was to blame for the crash. 50/50 situations happen very often, and according to current rules one rider has to go, the other can re-start, which is often unfair. Therefore, F.I.M., please change the rules, so that a referee does not have to break the rules (which really is a no go) as Jim Larence has done by allowing all riders back for the re-run.

No, definitely no money there. Teterow has the money from their traditional 2-days grass track event, so they are able to finance a SGP at their track in the woods. BSI(IMG seems to be happy to accept, and perhaps it will be quite good, who knows? Perhaps they can create something like a Woodstock Happening feeling about this SGP at Teterow? This would appeal to some, not me, though.

But in those days (1960s) Mauger (and all of his fellow Antipodeans) had to ride with a British ACU license, representing Great Britain, wearing the Union Jack race jacket. He was therefore eligible to ride in the European final, which then was not a stand alone competition, but only one of several stages of the world championship qualifying rounds (which nearly all took place in Europe) on the road leading up to the world final.

Not in any case, f-s-p. A rider has to have the nationally / passport of the country that he wants to ride for in team events. Only a rider with dual nationality can chose to ride for one or other. But there are not many riders, who have dual nationality - Kylmäkorpi is one, he can chose to represent either Finland or Sweden. Then there is Holta (Norway/Poland), and Loktaev (Russia/Ukraine). It certainly does not apply in Lambert's case. He is British, so he has to ride for Britain or not at all. Even if he wanted to, he can not ride for the German national team, unless he becomes a German.

I really enjoyed watching the Horsens SGP last night. Very exciting meeting, highly unpredictable (except for gate 1 heat wins) and what an amosphere with a sell out crowd really enjoying the occasion. Horsens seems a nice town, and the Stadium is not out of town, has a perfect capacity, size and shape for speedway. The track has a perfect length and shape, short straights and sweeping bends, admittedly thoug a little bit narrow, and definitely not so very easy to ride, which made it all very interesting. This was the most exciting SGP so far this season.

Yes, You are right. Norden now has installed some modern seating, which they got from Werder Bremen when the Football Club renovated the Weser Stadium a few years ago. Anyway, I posted these two pictures just to indicate that we do have quite impressive speedway stadia here in Germany (yet even Norden was criticised by many for being a poor venue for a world final), and now BSI/IMG chose a place like Teterow to host a SGP.

No, unless the national championship is run as an "open" championship, as in some minor speedway nations such as Latvia, Slovakia, Argentina, etc The British Championship has never been run as an international open event, it has always been exclusively for ACU license holders only. Remember Simon Wigg, in the early 1990s, when riding with a Dutch KNMV license, or Marvyn Cox when holdign a German DMSB license, they could not compete in the British Championship in those years. They would have to (and did) ride in the Dutch or respectively the German Championships. I also remember the American John Cook riding in, an once even winning the Swedish Championship, when he held a SVEMO license. As Robert Lambert currently has a German DMSB license, he would have to ride in the German Champiosnhip, instead of the British Championship. The only exception is in regard of representing You national team, where the license does not have an influence. This is decided by Your nationality (passport), regardless of the racing license. That's why Lambert can only ride for Team GB, and can not ride for Team Germany, even with a German DMSB license. The Lambert case is certainly worth a further Investigation.

Teterow is worse than Norden, or Pocking, since those were decent stadia, while Teterow is just a race track with some grass banking around. See for Yourself and compare these two Pictures of Norden and Teterow The first is a picture of the quite impressive Halbemond Stadium, NORDEN, venue of the 1983 World Final Now compare this with Teterow's Arena Am Kellerholz, see here (the picture shows the track and the club's chairman Adolf Schlaak) In my opinion Teterow is a very poor choice as a SGP venue, since this track is not known for producing very good racing either.

Did Lambert ride in the British final with a foreign (German DMSB) license? How is this possible?

Similar unclear situation with Robert Lambert riding in Germany with a German DMSB License, but at the same time he rides as a Brit in the UK National League. How is this possible?

Watching tonight's Latvian SGP on the official SGP live stream was a nightmare. Rememebr, in g ermany teh SGp is NOT shown on TV. The extremely poor picture quality of the interent stream was embarassing for BSI/IMG or whoever is responsible for it. The broadcast was constantly making time jumps, sometimes forward and more often backwards, creating delayed covereage instead of live, and often repeatedly showing the same scenes and heats again and again. I did not enjoy it at all. This has totally spoilt watching this Grand Prix. and next time might rather give the SGP a total miss, rather than watch this crap.

A one-hour highlights show on Eurosport would do. The live broadbcasts of the Swedisch league meetings with the awfully long breaks between the heats are rather boring to watch, even for a dedicated fan of the sport. This does speedway more harm than good for its future tv presence.

I have just read about it on speedway-sa.com Sad news, even though speedway was no longer part of the Wembely Raceway meetings in recent years. After tarmacing the main track some ten years ago they initially had built a smaller dirt oval on the infield for speedway, but that wasn't used very often. Anyway, as long as the Wembely Raceway with its oval track for motorsports was still there, there was always the possibility for a revival of speedway there at some time, but once it is gone, are there any other potential speedway (or stock car) ovals to be found in Johannesburg? Walkerville, south of Jo'burg, has been operating as a bikes only track so far, but I fear that this my tempt the promoters to open their doors for the cars there as well (and push the speedway bikes further into oblivion) if the Wembley track is sold for redevelopment?

really? I was at Landshut last night, and though the meeting was not bad, I thought it pretty average. There was some close action, but not much overtaking. Riders such as Kildemand or Grigory Laguta, who usually win their races coming from the back, had not much Chance to do so. The Landshut track is notorious for being prepared to hard and slick, and yesterday the dust was really bad in the early heats. I wasn't overly impressed with this meeting.

Jack Parker finished fourth in that 1932 World Championship in Paris. Parker had made his Paris Buffalo Stadium debut in April of 1932. He was invited back to Paris for several more meetings and he did ride in the 2nd annual staging of the World Championship, which was held on Sunday, August 28, 1932. Eight riders contested the 1932 world title in Paris. They were drawn into four semi-final match races. Parker defeated Australia's Harry Bray in the first semi-final, and thus qualified for a series of six match races between each of the four semi-final winners. Others through to the final four were Bluey Wilkinson of Australia, Charles Bellissent of France, and Leopold Killmeyer of Austria. Parker did not win one of his three match races and finished fourth overall. As Wilkinson, Bellissent and Killmeyer each had two wins and one loss, these three riders met in a race-off to decide the world champion. This was won by Wilkinson. The results of the six match races and the run-off in this final series were as follows: Premier match : 1. Wilkinson; 2. Parker. Deuxième match : 1. Killmeyer; 2. Bellisent. Troisième match : 1. Wilkinson; 2. Killmeyer. Quatrième match : 1. Bellisent; 2. Parker. Cinquième match : 1. Killmeyer; 2. Parker. Sixième match : 1. Bellisent; 2. Wilkinson. Run-Off: 1. Wilkinson, 2. Bellisent, 3. Killmeyer. 1. Bluey Wilkinson (Australia) 2-1 2. Charles Bellisent (France) 2-1 3. Leopold Killmeyer (Austria) 2-1 4. Jack Parker (England) 0-3

As Britmet already wrote, this ten years ago published list of the French staged world championships in Paris has long since been corrected. All the correct and up-to-date info about the "Championnat du Monde de Dirt-Track" can be found on the excellent speedwaychampions website, here http://www.speedwaychampions.com/world-champions.php These annual world championships in Paris were not officially sanctioned by the FICM. The Promoters each year invited a number of international riders for their world championship meetings, there were no qualifiers. The five world championships (championnats du monde) held annually from 1931 to 1935 at the "Stade-Velodrome Buffalo" in Paris-Montrouge, were won by the following riders: 1931: Billy LAMONT (Australia) 1932: Arthur 'Bluey' WILKINSON (Australia) 1933: Fernand MEYNIER (France) 1934: Claude RYE (England) 1935: Claude RYE (England) No more world championships were staged in France after 1935. However, in July of 1936, the American Charles "PeeWee" Cullum won a big international meeting at the Buffalo Stadium in Paris, which replaced the former "championnat du monde". This was the "Grand Prix de Paris" and on this occasion, the only time this meeting was staged, the winner was awarded with the original world championship trophy. The previous winners of the world championship were not allowed to keep the trophy, unless they won the championship three times, which no rider ever achieved. So, in 1936, the promoters put the by now obsolete trophy up for grabs for the winner of the 1936 Grand Prix de Paris. The winner (Cullum) was allowed to keep it for good, since the world title was no longer contested in Paris. Thus Cullum became the legitime owner of the world championship trophy, and took it home with him to the USA, even so he had never won this world championship. For the record, the first three of the 1936 Grand Prix de Paris were: Winner: Charles Cullum (USA) Runner-up: Leon Boulard (France) Third: Dicky Case (Australia)

Certainly no Argentinean rider has ever before won a speedway meeting of such caliber. Covatti is born and raised in Argentina, speaks Spanish as his first language, an only has some Italian forefathers, which gives him dual nationality. I know he rides in the Italian SWC team, and holds an international FMI license, but actually he is more Argentinean than Italian, which makes his victory last night even more remarkable.

Get rid of it, the sooner teh better. Even if 20 points behind, it spoils wgat should be a fair sporting contest.

Last year we were told that BSI / IMG are working on a SGP in Berlin again. Is this off the table now, or not?

this is nothing new. It was done this way ever since the 1950s in all of the old communist block countries. It is the same system in Russia still. The kids need not have the money to own bikes and equipment. No need to, it is provided by the clubs. And most of the senior riders in Russia to this day still only ever use Club owwned machinery. All the bikes are bought by their clubs and maintained by the club mechanics.