Bavarian

hey iris, this is very strange to hear about the changing helmet colours at Brokstedt. Are they idiots or what? I know that some people want to keep the colours indicating the starting positions, but this is total nonsense in a team versus team match. All they do is confuse everyone who is watching. Can't they see that they are doing the sport no good at all with this stupid behaviour? I was at Landshut the other week for the Bundesliga match between the Devils and the Wolves, big crowd of nearly 3,000 and great atmosphere, and the helmet colour thing was done the right way there without any hickups as the home team riders wore red and blue and the visitors white and yellow/black for the whole meeting. No wonder that some clubs are more able than others to convince their paying public of the team versus team idea for the league. At Landshut the fans are all behind this, while it seems Brokstedt and Gustrow struggle to get the product across in a proper form. No wonder the people there are confused and don't like it, if the organisers keep making mistakes such as this helmet colours chaos.

No, BEL meetings this season are much better to watch than they were last year. Don't know why, but this season I enjoy the Elite League more then ever. Maybe it's just me or perhaps it's the presence of Charlie Webster????

The same mysterious bike problems that Tommy Stange had at Diedenbergen in the other semi-final round, which spares him a trip to Russia.

QUOTE (Robbie B @ Jul 19 2009, 04:31 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The joker could make for an interesting meeting, BUT ONLY if ALL teams are allowed to use one, when they want. To penalise a team (whoever they be) for leading the competition is COMPLETLY unfair, and for me made a joke of the result on the 2009 SWC final. I'm sure Australia would never had lost if they could had used a joker. Exactly right. I used to be very much against the joker, but have to admit it makes the meetings so much more unpredictable. BUT I fully agree that ALL teams should be able to play the joker. But there is a simple solution to this unfair rule. Let any team that had not played the joker in heats 1 to 24, automatically play the joker in the final heat 25. That would be regardless of whether they trail by six or more or are in the lead already. The meeting would still have been kept close right until the last heat, because those teams trailing by six or more will most probably already have played their jokers. But now in the last heat, the leaders (such as Australia in the SWC finals) or any other team that had not played the joker earlier, will get their fair chance to counter that and go for double points too in that one last race. In today's final in Leszno, Adams would have got four points instead of two for finishing second to Gollob in that heat 25 showdown. Fair enough, as each team would then have had one chance to double their scores during the meeting. This would be fair play for all teams involved and still keep the joker in it to spice up the game.

Absolutely, the mole is funny. It never fails to make me smile. Let me add that the SkySports presentation of the SWC tournament was truely excellent and the presenters crew did one hell of a good job. All of them!

You Brits just don't know how good You have it. Compare the Sky Sports Speedway crew with those employed in Polish TV or Swedish or Danish, and You will see how good Yours are. They are passionate, usually know what they are talking about, and often funny to listen to (Tatum and the mole) and Charlie Webster is my personal favorite. She is so cute and lovely. My kind of a girl, really! She makes my day!

Mention of the Philippines brings up a question. Did they stage speedway in Manila in June/July of 1975? I know that a toruing troupe of Australian riders, led by John Langfield, was supposed to go there, but I have never ever read a report of the racing or seen any race results. Does anybody know if it did go ahead?

What club does Jake Anderson ride for in the UK? And can anybody tell me where Andrew Bargh is this year? Probably still in NZ, but why didn't he retrun to UK this year. Thought he was NZ's best prospect of the current generation.

Just found this short video on youtube of "Speedway" in Brasil. It's an oval dirt track and they ride motorbikes, thats a start, but thats about all there is in similarity to what real speedway is. Someone got to tell them what speedway is and how they should do it. At least they show interest in our sport.

Australasia for sure does include Asia, so leaves room to track any Malaysians or Japanese etc who are good enough to make this team. They are welcome! Just like Great Britain (or Team GB as You seem to prefer to call it), leaves room to include any Welsh and Scots in the team. By the way, is it England under-21 or Great Britain under-21 riding this 5 test series against Australasia? I thought it was England, but on the bspa website fixture list it says GB under-21???

Roos + Kiwis = AUSTRALASIA !

But this may be the best and easiest way to spread the gospel to new territories. Let them race the bikes they have there on oval dirt tracks and under speedway rules in these countries, to get a local scene going. I know there are several countries in southern Africa who do exactly this, race on their MX bikes on oval tracks. This IS a kind of speedway, only the machinerey they use is not the true thing, but who cares, this is what they have. No other chance for the wanna be speedway riders there to try the sport, as they wouldn't want or be able to spend a hell lot of money first to buy real speedway bikes and stuff. Let them race what they have for a start. F.I.M. should help these emerging nations with a developement plan to start "grass roots speedway" all over the world. Isn't it similar to what they did in the pioneer days, or after the war with the Britsh Army speedway racing. Agreed, it isn't ture speedway, but it is a start. They should receive help from teh world governing body. Hello F.I.M., are You there !!!

not two but three riders dropped out (Hougaard, Madsen and Jonasson), that's why he is in.

Three riders withdrawn from the original line-up, Patrick Hougaard, Leon Madsen and Thomas Jonasson. There places are taken by the reserves ANdrey karpov, Tobias Kroner and the next in line James Wright. Does anybody know why the Danes and the Swede do not ride at Daugavpils?

No there is nothing. Diedenbergen runs a European Ch'ship semi on Sunday, July 5, but Diedenbergen is in the Frankfurt area in central Germany, that's a long way from Friedrichshafen. I wouldn't bother, rather stay at Lake Bodensee!

And never forget the greatest stadium of tehm all, Slaski Stadion in Chorzow. Is this stadium rebuilt for the Euro 2012 football?

but what happened to Vaculik???

There is a speedway track in Warsaw, but no club or team riding there at the moment.

Good post.

I'm a bit fed up with this qualifying system. The winners of the semis qualify, that's all right, and then the highest scoring runner-up also qualifies, and this is no good. With the Abensberg semi so strong there is no chance for the runner-up in that meeting to score anywhere near as many points as the runner-up in the other semi. This means with Sweden and Denmark qualifying as semi-final winners, the Czechs will also get through as the highest scoring runners-up while the potentially much stronger Aussies and Brits, who would easily beat the Czechs will not have a chance because they will take points away from each other, while the Czechs have no opposition with the weakened Finns and that make-shift Team Adria as opponents! What a farce! P.S.: I wonder why Jurica Pavlic bothers to ride in this???

Yes Abensberg is a big, flat and fast 400m oval. It is the best of our tracks here in the south and usually hosts the most prestigeous meetings. Abensberg is a former Grand Prix venue. But it does not stage more than a couple of meetings each year. This doesn't give the German riders much of an home advantage, though most of them have ridden the track at least once or twice before. Still I can't see them beating any of the othere three teams. The second qualifyer in Czecho seems an easier route.

But why can't they change that track at Wroclaw. They don't need to built a new stadium, teh one they have is great, but they should do something to the race track. I remeber Bydgoszcz used to have a much longer track in their stadium, then decided to change the shape and shorten it to a 300m track. Now it is one of the best race tracks in teh world. Can't they do this at Wroclaw, too? No wonder they don't have more fans, when the racing is usually not as exciting as elsewhere.

I may be wrong, but isn't Mauro Ferraccioli the lad who was badly injured and confined to a wheelchair sometime in the mid 1980's? Italy had some very good riders in those years, I remember Francesco Biginato, the one with the glasses. Other great little riders were Gianni Famari and who could ever forget that guy Ottaviano Righetto! Looking forward to visiting Your site!

How many qualify for the semi-finals?

Wroclaw has never been know to be a good race track, hence the low attendance figures there compared to other Ekstraliga tracks.