Bavarian

You may ask him about his second home South Africa and his experiences with speedway in SA.

Reading it, I can hardly believe it. Surely You guys must have had some kind of agreement to got as far as announce and promote this opening meeting. Now when the authorities refuse permission at such a late stage, and with such an obscure reason given, they should be held reponsible to make a financial compensation to cover Your already spent money. Surely if they had originally given You the go-ahead, they should ! (Of course, this may cause bad blood and only harm any hopes that You can get Your track going in the future)

The Wroclaw GP was live on German Eurosport this evening ! First time ever that a speedway GP was shown live and in full on German free TV. Robert Barth was a co-commentator and did a very good job. Seems this was an attempt to promote the awareness of the speedway GP here in Germany with an aim to push ticket sales for the German GP auf Schalke. This live broadcast of the Wroclaw GP was certainly the best possible advertisement for the sport. Hope there will be some more to come this year.

That's business sense - a full house at both Bydgoszcz AND Ostrow - great for the traveling fans.

Bogdanovs was a revelation, Karpov was unlucky and Martinec is one to watch. Any news about Polyuhovich. Is he injured?

King lost out in a 3 rider runoff for 9th place, beaten by Karpov.

Singapore and/or Malaysia

To be honest - speedway is non existant in Germany's mainstream media coverage. The Tv-coverage iris123 mentions is barely worth watching - just a few glimpses of the bikes and a few shots of the racing in a 2 minute bulletin. When was the last time a speedway meeting has been covered live on any of the main TV stations here in Germany. Sometimes in the early or mid 80's. There was live coverage on a special sports channel (DSF) on satelite TV in the 90's, even some of the Superliga was shown (not live though) but then this station demanded money from the speedway to show the racing !!!! Weird, isn't it ? That was the end of it - ask anyone on the street here in Germany about speedway and I am sure 1 in a hundred, perhaps one in a 1000 does not have a clue ! It is that bad, really - and Gelsenkirchen happens to be in a part of Germany were there is no speedway racing at all - and has not been for decades. It will be just as hard for BSI to attract a decent crowd to the GP auf Schalke, as it would be f.e. in Paris or Dublin or Barcelona - places were there is no speedway in their regions. Of course, Gelsenkirchen is not that remote, so there will be a lot of travelling fans from other parts of Germany and neighbouring countries. If it is a success, BSI can really be proud of their act. I wish them well

Don't think there is any evidence of this. Only a myth. Galloway had his bike with him on board of an ocean liner on his way to America (or UK?), and he worked on board as a hairdresser ! During a stop in the Fiji Islands, Galloway "gave the locals a demonstration of broadsiding on his dirt track bike". That's all ! There is no prove that any dirt track or speedway racing was ever done in Fiji, but there was a touring party from NZ in 1970 in New Caledonia ! If I remember correctly Mike Fullerton was one of the touring riders there. Would be interesting to know more about this unusual venture. Also still a great mystery is the pre-war speedway history of Singapore - something to research for our speedway historians out there.

Good pictures, thanks. But has anyone noticed the concrete safety wall on the outisde of this track. Seems to be no problem for the riders - no air fence needed ! Amazing - this has really been a wonderful Aussie Championship series ! Seems for once everyone has pulled together without moaning - where there's a will there'S always a way !

It is interesting to compare the average attendance figures for some of the major Polish League clubs in the last three years from 2004 til 2006. Here are the actual figures (club/2004/2005/2006): Tarnow - 12,700 - 11,500 - 10,500 Bydgoszcz - 7,500 - 11,111 - 7,900 Leszno - 7,900 - 10,278 - 9,770 Zielona Gora - 8,200 - 9,438 - 7,778 Czestochowa - 11,600 - 9,150 - 8,900 Torun - 9,350 - 8,833 - 6,235 Gdansk - 8,111 - 8,625 - 4,750 Wroclaw - 6,750 - 4,778 - 7,450 Rzeszow - 6,166 - 6,600 - 7,350 Rybnik - 5,950 - 5,200 - 4,500

Do they know that as newcomers the Brits will proabably have to enter at the Preliminary round stage - which presents them with a trip to ROMANIA in April of 2007 ! Nice one for the yougsters ! If they are among the qualifiers, there are three semi-finals - they may choose from going to either Finland, Latvia or Hungary ! Who really wants to go there for a little bit of continental experience ?!

OH NOOOOOO !!!! Mateusz, tell us, this is not true, please ! Why oh why would the Polish League introduce this stupid, stupid rule ! Are they so much in financial trouble ? (Seems so, as they cut down from 8 to 7 rider teams) I guess this year crowds were dramatically down on previous years, but that is also entirely due to them allowing Wroclaw to have such a superior team. The change of the previous play-off system also backfired on them. Another big mistake, the Polish League made last winter. And they will suffer even more next season. It's going down, down, down ....

some comment here indicate that the German speedway scene is weak compared with the mighty British, but ... think about it, ... Germany's Under 21 team was in the World Team Final this year along with Poland, Sweden and Denmark and finished only a couple of points behind the silver medal winners. Where were the British ???

Unfortunately he does not ride for his Russian club Mega-Laga this year. There was some disagreement with the management during the winter and Emil left to concentrate on riding for Bydgoszcz in Poland only.

Sounds good, especially with the final round coming to Sydney Showgrounds ! Good luck to the promoters

That's what we already had for the World Team Cup in the late 90's. I can't remember why it was scraped, but when BSI took over and estalished the SWC, the new organisers wanted more of a spectacle and 5 Teams and 5 rider races. Thanks BSI !

How are the attendance figures in general for Danish Superliga ? For so long many people in Danish speedway wouldn't want to change from their old 4-Team League system to the team vs team system, but I seem to believe that the attendances at the tracks are on the up since the two-team version has been established. Is that correct ?

Unfortunately there are no speedway tracks in the Moscow area these days. The Russian tracks are all much more to the East.

Are there still replays of the E-league matches on the free (Polsat2) channel ?

Spot on - this is why I get more and more disillusioned with the sport, or rather with the people running the sport of speedway racing !

Yes, Iris, the ref at the infamous lottery World U21 Final at Wiener Neustadt last year was indeed Mr. GRODZKI from Poland !

@spanner47 meeting will most surely start at 2 pm as it is the traditional start time for speedway in Germany on Sundays and Bank Holidays (as is October 3). And You can expect the meeting to last 3 hours ! This is also (unfortunately) the usual length of a Sunday afternoon speedway meeting in Germany. And perhaps You may fly into Munich Airport (MUC) You would not even need a car to go to the Olching speedway track as You could take the S-Bahn from the airport to Munich and then change into another line to Olching (which is a suburb of Munich). Should take You no longer than 60 minutes from airport to stadium)

Mike Fullerton is 56 y/o and David Bargh only 44 y/o !

Where the hell was Kyle Legault ???? He was officially listed in the programme as No.18 and with the two British boys out, both of the reserves would have got their chance. But as only one of the two reserves (Hougaard) was there, the meeting went ahead with only 15 riders. Kyle would have had the chance to ride the complete meeting and possibly reach the world final ! But his place in the pits was empty. Sheffield's Reg Wilson was there, but no Kyle Legault ! Why ???