Bavarian

One more name - Wally Hill - a South African (born in England?) who rode in the National League in 1984 or 85? And does anyone remember the South African second halfer who had that unfortunate racing accident with the poor Paul Muchene? I think it was Nick Floyd and I believe he rode for Arena Juniors that year. By the way, Muchene, who was killled in that race, was himself half African - he had a Kenyan father (or mother?). The other half of his parents was English.

star ghost, can You be a bit more specific about Tom and Dick Sayer ? When did these twins ride for Norwich? Are You sure they are South African - I don't think I have ever heard of them before !

Did You know that he (Tiger Lewis) rode speedway in Singapore in 1930? Does anyone know anything about speedway in Singapore? Seems to be a pretty much fogotten chapter in the history of speedway! By the way, Jack Sharp was another Aussie advertised to race at the Singapore Speedway in June of 1930. Do You Aussie history experts have any details about Singapore Speedway?

By the way, Hazzman, Easter Monday is a traditional raceday for the Polish League since many, many years!

Does anyone know of a 1930 Australian rider by the name of Tiger Lewis?

Very good - that's him. What a great name! Surely, McDonald and Thistlewaite were the only Papuas ever to ride in Britain. Do You remember for which club McDonald rode? I seem to remember that he broke his leg in a crash on a British track, which ended his speedway career.

Wasn't there a guy from Papua New Guinea racing in the National League in the mid-1970's ? I think his name was McDonald - anyone remembers him ? And if I remember right there was a second rider from that exotic country over at the same time, but he rode in second halfs only. (Can't remember his name)

See the name of Josef Kamper. he had a fatal car accident on the road in the mid-1980's, long after he had finished his racing career. If You include his name, You may as well add that of another Austrian, Josef "Bubi" Boessner, who met with a similar fate in September of last year, at the age of 71. At the time, the former Austrian national speedway champion was still active as a speedway promoter. Russian Ice racer Nikolai Nischenko - a former world champion - was tragically killed in a demonstartion ride on the ice oval track at Heerenveen in the Netherlands in 1993, when he was doing some show laps for a photographer to take some promotional pictures. Very tragic and totally unneccessary. German veteran Josef Seidl should not be on the list. As far as I know he died a natural death at a high age (well into his 80's some ten years ago. (Not 100% sure, though) Hans Siegl died a few days after crashing at a meeting in Linz, Austria. That's true, but it was a speedway meeting, not long-track.

After taking a look at Your list, please take the name of Wack (real name: Josef) Hofmeister off it. Wack - this is only a nickname - was Germany's first world finalist in the late 50's is still alive and well today and let's hope he will be around for a lot more years.

Sergio Rojas is correct. Claudio Rojas is still alive.

@frigbo are You sure that GEERT COOLS ever rode for a British League team ? Where and when was that ? Has there really ever been a Belgian rider in the British League ?

As was the case all over Europe in the early 20's. Certainly Germany and Austria saw motorcycle races on horse trotting tracks form the early 1920's on. These were the origins of today's longtrack racing. Ice racing on motorcycles (and cars) had also been done in Bavaria around 1930. It will have been the same in many other countries at the same time.

Simone Terenzani Didn't Armando Dal Chiele ride for King's Lynn in the 80's?

And Roy Bester, ex-Edinburgh and Leicester, is SOUTH AFRICAN, not Rhodesian !

It is definitely Bevan Compton of South Africa, who rode for Berwick a few years ago, but not Benji, who is English. Pip Harris, never rode in the British League ! (And he is Rhodesian, not South African)

Alan Rivett, even though he was (is) living in Queensland, he is a Kiwi and rode for New Zealand in the WTC. Didn't Chris Penny (ex-leigh Adams mechanic) ride for a National League club in the 90's? And for Frigbo, I believe that Clayton Isbel is not a Kiwi, but a West Australian!

Maybe there should be some sort of promotion & relegation of riders rather than clubs. Say riders who don't reach a certain points average at the end of the EL season are relegated to the Pl next year and replaced by high scoring riders from the lower level league.

There is still one of those tracks operating here in Germany. That's the Bergring in Teterow - a track of 1800m length and up and down parts and jumps. Simon Wigg won several times here in the 1990's. Teterow may possibly be the very last one of these track surviving until the present time. I don't know of any other one anywhere in the world.

Quick result of Finnish Ice Champ'ship on Feb 11 1 Pekka Karttunen 2 Jussi Hytönen 3 Mika Kastren 4 Kai Lehtinen

How much of their coverage will be on Free TV ? POLSAT SPORT is of course a pay-TV channel, but last year there was a re-play (after midnight) of all the Ekstra Liga matches on the main POLSAT channel, which was Free-To-View last year. However, as far as I know, this channel is now also encrypted Pay-TV ! PULS should be o.k. as a free-to-view, but they did only show Div 1 matches (1 hour on the next day). What can we expect to see Free via Satelite in 2006?

Could very well be so, since there have not been many non-European ice racers, except for some Mongolians, one Canadian and a couple os U.S.Americans. Pity Cribb rode under the British flag (ACU) in his ice racing days. Why is it that there are no other Kiwis, or perhaps some Aussies taking up ice-racing. Would be really cool !

Nice to see a couple of Tasmanian tracks hosting the solos again. However, on the other hand there are not a lot of WA dates on the list, except for a couple of sidecar events at Geraldton. Will there be solo speedway at Kwinana this year? And, there seems to be no more solo action in the Northern Teritory? Does Darwin still have some Solo speedway? But there's one more track I have never heard about - Moruya (NSW) - where is that? Is it a new track? Who is running it?

Where was Wallner?

Wait for this Saturday Night in Austria -Stange, Hefenbrock and Smolinski are all in the Under 21 World Final. Let's judge them after that.

Honestly I can't understand why the Bydgoszcz team manager did not protest and defend his rider against the harsh exclusion after the crash with Jacek Gollob. It was obvious that none but Jacek was to blame for the two riders coming down in that situation. PePe was on the outside and had already gone past Jacek, when Jacek moved out trying to block PePe. Where was PePe supposed to go, squeezed in between Jacek and the fence. I mean Gollob could have gone to the inside there was the whole width of the track available for him but PePe could go nowhere. Jacek's move caused the accident and this was pretty obvious to everyone who saw it. How can the referee make such a diabolical decision is really beyond me. He can't be so stupid, can he? Maybe he was just not brave enough to exclude a home rider or even worse, he might have played his part in the home team's strategy to win this match at all cost. I wouldn't blame anybody more than the referee. If a rider makes such a move as Jacek Gollob did, he should be rightly excluded, but to make a decision like this referee did, is the real scandal. I hope the PZM does take a closer look at what happened here.