Bavarian

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.

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Three riders withdrawn from the original line-up, Patrick Hougaard, Leon Madsen and Thomas Jonasson.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.

Well, now I am able to answer my own question. Info comes from a team manager and he tells me they will NOT race at Ullevi and he does not know where the story comes from. Lotsarna intend to race their home meetings at Västervik this year. But it would have made sense to have such a test run for the Ullevi track a week before the SGP.

Can someone please either confirm or deny the rumour that there will be spedway meeting held to test the new track in the Ullevi Stadium in Goteborg prior to the Grand Prix? I hear that local club Lotsarna are to ride there in a three team meeting originally planned to be held at Vastervik? True or false?

1960's New Zealand rider Rims Malskaitis was of Lithuanian origins, as is current Australian rider Karlis Ezergailis.

Look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fergana this is where Sergey Darkin comes from. They did have speedway in this town in Uzbekistan in the the days of the old USSR. By the way Latvian International Andrey Korolevs was born in Baku, Azerbajzan.

@Tomaz German clubs are afraid of the costs for such an air-fence. Can You say how much it cost the Slovenian clubs (in Euros) and how did they finance this?

The "Unknown, looks like a German" is Manfred Poschenrieder, decorated with the winner's laurels in a late 1960's (guess, or very early 70's) meeting at Kempten (the visible writing on the ribbon is "Kempten/Allgau").

It IS Christopher Fink! (Wrong Christian name in the results!)