marko

Wow, he was that good

Look forward to hearing the thoughts of anyone who attended this match, was Lakeside unlucky or was there an air of resignation about the thing?

Yes there is self interest but if a club won’t do it’s due diligence when attempting to book a guest you can’t blame everyone else.

Looks like Josh Pickering saved us from an even bigger defeat, he and Adam put Nick Morris to shame, surely a top flight heat leader should be scoring a lot more than 4 points in the second tier?

I certainly would not blame any fan for wanting to stay, fans of any sport want to support their riders, players etc when they are down, I think we all feel that we need to let them know we are here and routing for them, especially when they are unable to get back to their feet. Hope the boy will not have any lasting damage, the kid has a lot of raw talent but this sport can be very cruel sometimes. Re: the guest situation - I think this will go down at a Lakeside error, these are the same people who had to change the team on the eve of the season because they didn't make 100% sure of the averages.

Makes all the difference when you have proper plant equipment and not tractors that are 50 years old and only has one gear and dodgy brakes ;-)

According to LakesideLive the track was "rideable" there is a big difference between rideable and raceable, fans pay to watch riders race, not ride, not blaming them, they have to follow the narrative of trying to entice people to go, even if its under a false pretence.

I think this was nothing more than a desperate attempt to get fans money and try and limp to ten heats no matter how farcical the racing got, ignore the fact fans pay to watch 15 heats of RACING, not ten heats of RIDING.

Exactly Cityrebel, I wished a had saved a screen shot of the rain radar at around 6:30 pm, I could have posted it and proved beyond any doubt the futility of attempting to run a meeting. Rain can die out but not when it’s on that scale and across such a huge area of the country.

I said a few weeks ago (continuing decline of speedway thread) that this was going to start happening, most of the tracks are so bare to the bone that just a little bit of rain at the wrong time (race time) will make them pretty much no go, and tonight classic example of that although given the nature of the rain that was falling around the region, I am not sure if even a deep track would have been recoverable by scraping the extra shale off but certainly a slick track, no chance at all. As already mentioned I was working this afternoon/evening so I couldn't have gone anyway, but having seen the radar at 6pm I can tell you now, I would not have ventured out had I been at home and not working, there was simply NO WAY this meeting was either going to be A. on, or B. go the distance.

This was all before another promoter pipped up, Im talking about much earlier in the season, and in fact the same thing has been happening for several years now, its not something new, lessons should have been learnt a long time ago.

I said earlier there was more in the way, apparently Lakeside don't care for forecasts, they just wanted to get the meeting on at all costs because they Fd up earlier in the season by having so many blank Fridays, well that's the price you pay, next time the weather looks dodgy people won't bother.

I’m at Shenfield now and rain has hit here but stopped, checking the weather radar though suggests the track is getting hit hard and that won’t be the last of it for the night. Good job we raced last week, oh hang on!

I’m at work so can’t make it tonight, not seen any rain yet though although clouds have been darkening around London and Essex.

Lakeside can’t run most Saturdays because of four wheeled motorsport using the venue, that’s proably why it would make sense for the Hammers to run the odd meeting at Rye on a Saturday night where no other promoters can complain about it. if they fail to complete fixtures this season, that I think will be the end of it, there is no gong back if you can’t make an effort when your clearly one of the fancied top three or four teams.

One factor which has meant meetings taking longer is the fact that the bikes are not allowed on the track whilst plant equipment is still on it and vice versa, and at Lakeside we have to wait even longer because the track man insists on driving both the grader and the water truck so we have to wait for him to do a few laps on one tractor, then get on another tractor and do a few laps on that. Big gaps between heats kills the flow of a meeting and atmosphere when there is one.

Most of the support I suspect comes from north of the river, I would certainly not follow the club if it moved into Kent because of the travelling plus the Kent track is a joke, there is more dirt on the M20.

Trouble is too many riders have conditioned themselves to the point they are only happy riding a track that is slick and bone dry, a lot of skill has gone out of the sport since they brought in the laydowns, its now all about whack the throttle and hold on.

Troy Batchelor would have loved this track

According to the current radar there is a huge rainstorm over the area as I type this at half seven, so there is no way this meeting could have gone ahead tonight even if it had not rained earlier, I don't know where they get there forecasts from but maybe they should consider changing it? "no more rain after 3pm" hmmm

Yes Tony, the forecast, but not the radar! there is potentially a big difference, anyway it doesn't matter, I called it right, they got it wrong, but we all lose.

Foolish to suggest at 3pm that everything was going to be ok given the amount of rain around if they had checked the radar before hand. Another Friday night lost, another fixture we now have to rearrange with a fellow Friday night track, all those Fridays earlier in the season when it was dry and we didn't run.

I wonder what sort of state the track is in after all the rain yesterday, a lot more of the wet stuff forecasted for this afternoon so its not good.

Would not surprise me, in fact a poster on the Lakeside forum, called this way back on the 26th July, and I have to agree, I can't see how we are going to get our fixtures in with limited Fridays, we are likely to be in the play offs, we are still in the koc and that early season competition which we won our group in.

Something else not helping is that every time you see a video on youtube from speedway portal or speedway gb the tracks are dry, they are already down to the base on the inside even after just a couple of heats, you cant expect the track to soak up and store water when there is nothing to soak it up, in the summer you get dust as we have seen a lot recently, but at least the meeting can go on, and providing the vision of the riders isn't overly impacted its safe, but if tracks continue like this, when we start getting the wetter whether in September and October, meetings will be rained off left, right and centre because the rain will just sit there, nothing to soak it up and therefore you cant scrub the wet shale off because there isn't anything of substance to scrape off. What on earth is going on? are promoters en bloc refusing to buy any more shale in the hope that some miracle will present itself as a cheaper alternative?