rusky

That is true there are flights to other locations, albeit on an infrequent basis. Onward travel from most of those airports mentioned is not easy either. New science, Tony frequently has to wait in Arlanda Stockholm airport for anything up to 6 or 7 hours for a flight on occasions. I will ask him the specifics of his journey home from Cardiff at the weekend, but I seem to remember it's quite an intense journey, not something most of us would want to do do every 2 weeks for most of the year, to several times throughout the off season for various meetings and seminars.

Indeed...on Gotland would be more specific, in a small village outside of the main town on the island, Visby.

Tony is very well respected within SVEMO at all levels and as such that may well be an option for him.. And yes travel is pretty difficult from where Tony lives, and is substantially less to Norrkoping than any of the SGP locations with the possible exception of Stockholm. Even after Cardiff his journey home will be very time consuming and will take him virtually a full day, with a significant waiting period in Stockholm. Luckily its now the Holiday season in Sweden so the number of flights to his home has increased from the Swedish mainland. Out of season there are far fewer flights or a 4.5 hour (I think) ferry ride. However, the area that Tony lives in is an extremely nice part of the world - an area that many people would like to live I would suggest.

And there in lies the problem. Eurosport has given Speedway such an opportunity to exposure to all kinds of bike fans, and as such a commentator is needed who is not preaching to the converted so to speak. For what its worth, I felt Jack was doing that well and was passing on information that the casual viewer would find interesting, and informative. The trouble is that most of us who have been followers for any period of time will already know that information so we see it as a negative. As many on here have already alluded to, Eurosport have undoubtedly removed the wrong one of the commentating pair........

A couple for starters: Many years ago we were on a coach from King's Lynn to Eastbourne, and we arrived at Eastbourne where there was one guy 'organising' the car park and he stuck our coach in the most awkward place imaginable. Our coach driver was less than impressed and a discussion started. However, quite a few of our number had come straight from work to get the coach. They were lab technicians for British Sugar (I think it was) and they had there work clothes with them - white lab coats. They promptly donned the lab coats and proceeded to 'arrange' all the incoming cars for them - it was very funny I was doing a spot of driving for an international tour where there were about 14 or 15 riders of varying nationalities and it involved a ferry ride. One of the number, an English International who had a certain reputation with the ladies, had just started dating a very attractive young lady who was the star of a soft porn magazine that month (think Penthouse, Playboy etc.)Said international was very keen to show everybody these pictures relentlessly but after a while it became a bit tiresome and people were starting to get a little bored with it all. After a while this magazine went missing, and the said rider was more than a little angry. Several hours later the magazine re-appeared and the pages of with the young lady were now stuck together - I'll leave you to imagine how they were stuck together other than to say it was the handy work (if you'll excuse the pun) of another English international. The guy whose magazine it was, was less than impressed...

On the Simon Mayo drivetime show on Radio 2 tonight, the Friday night sports fixture was vintage scrambling. The guy who was talking about it was quite keen to emphasis the sound of the 500 singles, and the SMELL OF CASTROL R. He was saying these were the 2 things that people would enjoy if they came to watch.

And he is supporting a charity event in and around West Norfolk. Please excuse the EDP for having him as a King's Lynn rider.... http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/king_s_lynn_speedway_riders_get_set_for_a_charity_beach_run_1_3498817

Two of his Brothers had a go, Mark & Paul the twins, and I think given half a chance his sister would of had a go too....

Here you go Gustix, its on the iplayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03qf50y and you need to move the slider to 1 hour43 minutes or so....

as mentioned above Gustix, speedway was held in Barcelona in 1991, to my knowledge that was the last meeting held in Spain.

Ok, so this event was at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona. This stadium was opened in 1991, and the grand opening was a motorcycling spectacular comprising flat track, trials & speedway with Quads thrown in for good measure. The speedway was organised by Graham Drury & Ian Thomas. This meeting was previously covered in this topic on this forum: http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=65496

One of lifes good guys....... RIP Dougie

I was in the pits at the time with Tomas Topinka, and yes Mark / Stefan was quite shy, but his English was pretty good. There was definitely an accent, but not distinctly East European and could well of passed for Afrikaans ....... We were quite surprised to see him riding for Hungary a couple of years later at a meeting we were at, and he suggested that he had some kind of split nationality between Hungary & South Africa, with a British grand parent on the South African side....

But Steve, his actual costs are pretty much the same for the infrastructure (ie Lighting, power, insurance, track maintenance, medical cover etc.) whether its EL or NL meetings. The only cost saving in real terms is wages, so that would be the same difference if he was renting the stadium.

The thing is that King's Lynn have spent time, effort and money developing both Lewis Kerr & Robert lambert, with there policy of bringing on riders. If you are going to allocate your numbers 6 & 7 on a whim, then you might as well do it for all riders. There is also a concern that riders who have very promising futures will be allocated to tracks which will do absolutley nothing for their long term careers, and eventually jepoardise their careers, and in turn the future of British Speedway in the long term

How about some form of handicap system, whereby a points limit is agreed by all of the promoters, say 38 points as an example. However Poole decide that they can afford to build to 45 points, but Eastbourne (as an example) could only afford to build to 32 points. In each meeting Poole would get a starting figure of -7 (limit - built to so 38 - 45) points whilst Eastbourne would get +6 ( points limit - built to so 38 - 32) so in this example when Poole meet Eastbourne the starting advantage to Eastbourne would be 13 points. The advantage to this idea (as I see it)would be that teams could actually build up an asset base which could actually be used and may well engender some loyalty amongst riders. Obviously there would need to be some regulation around replacements and how they would fit in, and I would also suggest that the average used should be based on a rolling average over say the last 6 meetings. A similar system to that used in Sweden, to keep line ups accurate

how annoying are Pearson & Tatum tonight. makes you appreciate how good Steve Day & Scotty are. I'm sure Tatum has broken his microphone, its very poor quality sound tonight....

<p>the shale has not been changed it is the same as last year...literally. the track is being relaid overnight

Definitely not Toni Kasper, so I don't think your assumption is correct.

Not the case as I understand it... The local trackstaff wanted a slick racetrack. Tony Olsson argued for a grippy track, and got one....

Sweden only by the look of it Ghostwalker ..... Its blocked by SVT to me (I'll be Having words with Mr Nahlin & Mr Stenlund....lol)

I'm sure Tiddler told me he is 64, but Bettsy will be 70 this year I believe

That'll be the same one as Terry Betts, if you look at the pictures. Terry will be 70 years old in September, but looks at least 20 years younger than that......

I was hunting for a stream for Assen, and found this.....

As you may well know, in the Tomas Topinka farewell meeting we elected to use the old 13 heat format, with second half culminating in an individual final. Initially we went that route as we couldn't decide whether we wanted a team meeting, or an individual so we decided to go with both...... The interesting thing though, was that a significant number of people at the meeting had never seen this meeting format before, and the overriding opinion was that this was a vast improvement on what they currently see week in, week out (it obviously helps that the scoreline was close, there was very entertaining racing, and both teams were well constructed and evenly matched). Does anybody else have any thoughts on this ?