keepturningleft

I think the comparison of Bomber with Peter Collins is valid. I saw PC in his heyday and have plenty of videos of the great man from the 70's, and without doubt there are some striking similarities. No matter where PC was in a race, you always felt he could find a way through and win. Bomber is exactly the same. Exciting times ahead!

The new issue of VSM has failed to reveal the mystery track featured in the previous issue on page 33. Anyway, I reckon it's the Shay, Halifax.

Booey was my first speedway hero at Halifax in the late 60's. It was obvious Eric was a real personality even in the days before todays endless TV interviews. I can't wait to read the book!

sorry I meant TMC...

I’ll lay my cards on the table here, I am a bit of an aficionado on the SP’s and the punk period in general. Amazingly, the SP’s played their last ever gig (not counting the 90’s comeback) 2 minutes away from my front door in Huddersfield on Christmas day 1977, but I couldn’t go because of family commitments!! Some of the music of the period has aged well and some hasn’t. The Clash sound more dated than the SP’s to my ears for example… and did it really rid of us ELP etc?… well we’ve still got dreary pompous stuff like Coldplay, so maybe not! The statement from tigerbrandcoffee is not true, the band played on all their recordings. The only anomaly is that Steve Jones played all the bass guitar parts at the expense of Sid Vicious. TCM, I love the Sex Pistols and Frank Sinatra!! Andy M, I could discuss the cultural phenomenon of this all day but hang on…this is a speedway forum!!

How to alienate sections of your readers in one easy lesson. With Backtrack covering mainly the 70’s and 80’s period, it follows that for many of your readers, myself included, the pop music of that period will have played an important part in our upbringing and background Therefore it was with dismay that I read on page 20 of the latest issue, a highly opinionated condemnation of “the awful God Save The Queen by the Sex Pistols”, when in fact this is classic single by one of the most important bands in history. Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but please keep prejudicial comments on non-speedway topics out of an otherwise terrific magazine. A minor point this I know, but it’s been bugging me all week! Stick to speedway!!

Totally bewildered by people's reaction to colour. The era covered by VSM may be perceived as a 'black & white period', but the 60's 70's and 80's?? When you think of late Beatles pyschedilea and 70's glam rock and beyond, do you think of black & white? Hardly. Speedway Star started publishing in colour in 1970! There is a point however, about other photos being in colour at the expense of speedway photos. Another great issue..keep the colour coming!

Fantastic meeting! I think Nigel Pearson deserves credit for his mentions and nods to the wider world of speedway and some of the issues eg Swindon. Getting more and more enraged about the Joker. Poland were clearly and consistently the third best team all night. The idea that they could have won because of a single ride by their star man is so outrageously unfair, I can barley find the words...

The body language and his general tone whilst being interviewed has convinced me that TRick has indeed 'switched off', and that this season is mainly a winding down operation to retirement. Duplicating his incredible achievements of last year was always going to be a tall order. Mindful of the terrible injuries that have befallen recent world champions, I don't blame the man for taking it easier. He has been the the most brilliant rider of recent times by miles. Let him finish his amazing career in one piece and give him the credit he deserves.

Re the Cracker programme...do you suppose the typesetters were having a larf or what...page 2, left column, 8th line down...!!

There was a grim inevitability about all this. A soon as the March 12 date was announced, the first thing that flashed into my mind was, it's way too early in the year and bad weather is almost a foregone conclusion.

My house, Huddersfield, 18 miles from Owlerton, it's snowing quite hard. Don't know if I can get out of my driveway let alone to Sheffield.

Fabulous web site, I didn't know it existed. I'm still astonished there is no book about Belle Vue given it's status as arguably the greatest speedway venue ever. How about it Norbold??

I'm sure this will be a magazine from the stable of Howard Jones. Mr Jones had produced some good magazines in the past especially on defunct tracks. Unfortunately, the most recent publications have been of poor technical quality ie: non glossy paper which means poor resolution of printed photographs. I wish Mr Jones well, but I rather think he will now find it difficut to compete with glossy, high quality mags like Backtrack.

I took my log in name from a comment made by Simon Wigg. He was being interviewed by a magazine (can't remember when or for what mag), and was asked something like 'What's the best way to ride speedway?, to which he replied, 'drop the clutch and keep turning left'. I thought that was brilliant and never forgot it!

I would like to see articles on people prominent in the sport who are not neccesarily ex riders. Someone like Dave Lanning from the TV commentating point of view would be an interesting subject, as would high profile promoters from the era. More feature based articles would add variety - the possibilites would be endless. I reckon eventually you must run out of the really big name interviews. In fact, who is there left of the truly big stars from the 70'sand 80's? Gundersen, Olsen, Morans - who else? Not many. Fantastic mag Keep up the good work. PS Minor Nitpick Hackney reunion (clearly of personal interest to the author) gets a whopping four pages, other tracks with equally long histories get substantially less!!

I can't see a re-run of the meeting anywhere on the Sky sports listings. Does anyone know if it will be on somewhere, sometime?

Congratulations Tony R. The greatest speedway RACER of all time!

Fantastic, brilliant entertainment. The GP gets bettter and better!

Julia Bradbury is/was the greatest female presenter of speedway by a hundred miles.

It was pretty obvious that Tony Rickardsson was not quite giving it his all last night. Poised on the edge of record equalling greatness, it was clear he was not going to take any risks, a point belatedly picked up by the commentary. And who can blame him? Poland were always going to be the winners last night, no need to put yourself in any potentially dangerous situations. Mauger rarely took any risks in his entire career, so safe and boring was he. Can someone help me out with the maths. Can Trick mathmatically wrap it all up this Saturday?

Much is made of Ivan's era being tougher than todays era, but I actually disagree. There is another way of defining a tough era. Having been someone who has straddled all eras since the mid 60's, I reckon racing has never been as furious and cut and thrust as it is today. There is carnage in nearly every GP, so manic and intense are the first corners. Three recent world champions have had their careers ended with serious injuries. Craven aside, this never happened in the 60's and 70's. I have lots of videos from the 70's, and it surprises me how tame(ish), some of the racing from that era looks compared to today. In those days there were certainly thrills aplenty from the likes of Peter Collins and one or two others, but today we have umpteen Peter Collinses. Look at the death defying stuff we see all the time from Mark Loram, Andreas Jonsson and indeed Rickardson himself.

It wasn't the starting gate or the track that spoiled tonight's coverage, but Sam Ermolenko's appalling commentating style. Sam has been a great rider and ambassador for the sport over the years but he should stay out of commentary boxes. Half of what he says makes no grammatical sense. He is less articulate than my cat, and if I hear the words 'Buddy' and 'wheels in line' much more I'm going to start watching with the sound off.

It would be nice to imagine him storming into the office of the head of BBC Sport and demanding to know why the BBC continue to ignore this fantastic sport.

I'll assume that what he said wasn't very interesting then.