fatface

Yes. But to be fair to BSI they have taken the Speedway GP series forward. I don't think any fair-minded person would question that. Cardiff, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Sydney, Stockholm and the like have been a big step forward from the model they inherited of Coventry, Landshut and Linkoping.etc. It's not all been a gold-plated success, granted. But the ambition and vision have put the World Championship in a better place than it was 20 years ago. That said, it has stalled in recent years - I never got any sense that IMG treated BSI anything other than a tennant in their offices - and the time is right for someone with a truly international reach to have a crack.

Thanks both. Really appreciate the response and the rule explanation. Still seems an oddity with Petersen declared winner after only winning one race. still, 40 years on, I haven't lost any sleep over it

Anorak question coming... According to the records for that Golden Helmet, Petersen won the first race from Morton, the second was a dead-heat and no third race? Don't understand why...at 1.5 and 0.5, the third race is not dead rubber, is it? Mike Lee? One the the most talented riders ever. I think everyone on this forum has a story about him visiting their track and wiping the floor with the home hero. But from the outside, seems quite an immature character, with a life littered with personal and professional fall outs with the world apparently all against him.

Absolutely bang on. As a fan, I have no strong feeling either way for Zmarzlik. To be honest, I would have preferred Woffinden to have won. But I do like it when our World Champion is a rider who demonstrates real all-round quality by overtaking his closest rivals. Think Penhall v Olsen and Knudsen 1981, Collins v Simmons in 1976 and Rickardsson v Nielsen in 1994. Its the mark of a real champion. Zmarzlik is a bona fide class act well worthy of the mantle of World Champion.

Great final (Except for those determined not to enjoy it!) The right result. Woffinden hardly put a foot wrong in the final, but Zmarzlik is just too fast right now.

It looks every inch that he is heading straight for the "best riders never to be World Champion" lists. Missed what should have been peak years in the GPs and Zmarzlik and Woffinden have got ahead of him and they will likely both be in the mix for the remainder of Sayfutdinov's GP career too.

Zmarzlik is quicker. He was in Wroclaw too. But Woffinden is tactically superb. He's the only man who can stop the Pole tonight.

It was just one of those rare perfect storms in sport where everything clicked. Gundersen was ripe to step out of Penhall's shadow to be outright no1. He did and then some. King and Wigg had shown potential, but there was no guarantee they would step up a level. Both did. Collins and Grahame were already solid performers, but with Penhall gone and some young team mates, more was expected. They delivered. Pedersen was a raw recruit and could easily have struggled. He didn't and hit the ground running as a superb discovery. Ravn could have been low on confidence having been dropped by Belle Vue. The opposite, he rode like he had a point to prove and did. Fantastic team with no weak link. It is one of the rare times we went out of our way to watch a league match not involving a team we supported. We went to the Shay to see the Heathens visit. The other time was to watch Oxford visit Sheffield, mainly to see if Shawn Moran could get one over a peak Hans Nielsen.

Taxi for sure. Or Hire Car if you are happy to drive? Pretty straightforward run.

Sorry to say that these days I am one of those whose sole speedway outing of the year is Cardiff. And, I would definitely go to both nights. Even though 2019's racing was poor, I am yet to leave Cardiff not wishing I could do it all again the next night I don't doubt that a Cardiff double up would be the most challenging sell of the season. You are talking about a 75k stadium back to back that typically fills 40k for the speedway. But, the other GPs - on the face of it - seem like a no brainer. Like I say, the Arenacross is an interesting example. Another to look at is the London Grand Prix Athletics. It's a sport I am close to and that attracts a mix of athletics geeks and more casual sports fans and families. It was formerly a single Friday night event, but that switched to two days and has been a big success. Of course, neither provides the definitive answer for speedway. But it's an idea well worth exploring.

There's a lot different sports can learn a lot from one another. But it's asking for trouble when you copy and paste from other sports. It just doesn't work like that. I get the impression that what has played out here in the scoring is a result of classic corporate politics. The top guy at the FIM Jorge Viegas is far removed from understanding speedway and has issued two key developments he'd like to see for the sport....standardisation in scoring with other FIM sports and moving into new territories. So, Armando Castagna, unable to deliver on the latter, so he delivers on the former. He keeps the boss content and is seen to be making progress.

Ssshhh!

I think it's beyond all of us to prevent moaning. I can only speak for myself and I stay for two nights at the (very reasonable) Uni Campus. Others fork out for two nights at somewhere swisher, some for a simple B&B, some AirBNB, others on the outskirts, some in and out for the day. I am not quite clear on why the costs (admittedly steep in some cases) would increase if there were two GPs anyway? In my experience of B&Bs, you have to book two nights anyway over the GP weekend to get a bed. So, it makes little difference to the B&B owner anyway. Or if you did want to stay for one night and see both GPs, then find somewhere that will do that, stay over Friday and head off post-GP on Saturday. Or if you wanted juts to see one GP on Friday or Saturday and begrudged any accommodation fees, then don't stay. Choices aplenty for everyone. It's a free country. Ticket-wise for the GP, I'd suggest full price for one night and 33% off if you booked both GPs. I suspect Cardiff would be the more challenging sell, but for the sell-outs in Poland, looking from the outside, on paper it makes sense. Again, as above, needs a proper bit of research though.

Hmm...but doesn't a quickly sold-out stadium suggest there is a bigger market out there?

That's an interesting point and a valid example you raise. The devil is in the detail of this and it would require deeper market research than our musings. My suspicion is that the Arenacross crowd is more of a casual motorsports/entertainment crowd and the speedway crowd are much more committed fans of the sport. So, would the speedway fans be interested in the back to back option unlike the more transient Arenacross crowd? I suspect so, but like you, I don't know. That's where the market research is required. Again, only my suspicions, but I think the majority of Speedway GP goers make a weekend of it. One final point, I think's it's a mistake to make assumptions that speedway fans are similar to other motorsports fans. I think there is quite a distinction, with a lot of speedway fans (I'd suggest the majority) having little or no interest in other motorsport, so findings from wider motorsport are not always applicable to speedway. So, I think you are right that back to back GPs shouldn't be implemented blindly from 2021, but nor should the idea be dismissed. Worth looking into though

Yes, I must say that in the one-off era though, I didn't think the two day worked well at all. And yes, I was at that final too. Saturday night crackled along (although was still no barnstormer) and Sunday felt very flat with nothing to race for for half the field. I guess we'll have two perspectives on it anyway. I assume you were cheering Hans Nielsen to the title? I was cheering Chris Morton and Sunday was a dead duck. It might have been different if the the lower half of the field had something to ride for....like automatic qualification to the following year's final perhaps? But, that wouldn't have been in the spirit of the one-off either. By the way, I watched that final again on YouTube recently and was pleasantly surprised that some of the racing was quite decent. Also, Nielsen was a real cut above everyone else.

Great racing - tick Flawed scoring - tick But the other takeaway from this weekend is having GPs back to back on Friday and Saturday nights makes perfect sense going forward. In terms of practically, financially and competitively. We all know it's a costly job and a half putting these events on, particularly for the one-off tracks. So, why not just do it twice over the weekend from 2021 onwards - offering better value for the punter, spreading costs thinner for the organisers, even greater exposure for sponsors, double the content for media? Have a small practice on a Friday morning and crack on into the racing for Friday night. From a riders perspective, it gives ample chance for everyone to get something out of the weekend. Any rider struggling with set up on Friday, has a chance to come back wiser on Saturday and potentially, an even more competitive meeting. From a punter's perspective too, you could get a "double discount" for both nights and I think most would go for it. Every GP I've been to - Cardiff, Prague, Daugvapils, Lonigo, Torun Krsko, Bydgoszcz - has consisted of a very enjoyable Friday night p** up looking forward to the next night. But would I rather have been sniffing the fumes and seeing 23 races? Damn right!

Aye I suppose that semi final were alreet. Mind you, I seen Eric Boocock do same every ruddy week at t'Shay in t'sixties. And you try telling the kids that today... and they won't believe you.

Nothing will be perfect. Formats should be geared to elimate or seriously hamper any potential corruption or manipulation. This new format makes it MORE likely. I am not citing unlikely scenarios either. We've all seen plenty of GPs where one rider is particularly "dialled in" that night. On these occasions, the rider has every motivation to keep the pedal to the metal and grab every point they can to improve their World Championship standing. This won't be the case going forward with the new format. It doesn't take the biggest conspiracist to see a situation where that rider arrives at his last ride on 12 points, he will be much less incentivised to go all out. More likely, they will be checking their programmes and scores of their close rivals in the series and plotting what result would serve them best...Rather than going for a rewardless maximum. The longer the series goes and the championship rivals and the qualification cut off contenders emerge, the more likely this scenario will play out.

Of course and you won't find me advocating a return to the old system and the Nordic-British-American-Intergalactic Final and such. It had had its day and was flawed. I'm no black and white extremist - unfashionable as that may be. Broadly speaking, I think the GPs are a great product, with excellent racing and well presented. I'd like to see the sport in more territories, but overall the World Championship has taken a significant step forward under the GP format from its latter years as a one off. I also congratulate the organisers for pulling togther a series at all this year in a very challenging climate. But, the new scoring format dents the series' credibility, by removing some of the edge from the heats and increasing the possibility of manipulation.

I'm well up for innovation and evolution. Change is healthy. But this particular change is just change for change's sake. And it's a change that could easily devalue the product... As opposed to the previous format (which after years of GP tinkering, was the fairest) every race mattered. If say Zmarzlik and Woffinden are going to head to head at the top of the standings, then the heat they clash is a two (or more) pointer. It matters. But if it's just a qualifier towards the semis, they are much less incentivized to race it cut throat and - if they miss the start - settle for safe second or third. In the scheme of things, it matters less and is - potentially - irrelevant. Worse still, the new format opens up a greater chance of race fixing. Let's say Woffinden has sailed through his first four heats and has 12 points and is safe as a leading qualifier for the semis going into the last round of heats. Zmarzlik has finished on 8 points is sweating on a place in the semis. Woffinden lines up against three others on 6 or 7 points (non title rivals) in his last heat. I'm sure you can see what I am driving at...... Without every point mattering, Woffinden would actually have less to gain winning his heat than trailing in last and scuppering Zmarzlik's chances. I just don't think it has been properly thought through and discussed. I get why the FIM - from a distance - might like standardisation, but the onus is on the GP organisers to map out these scenarios and show why it is isn't possible to drive a square peg into a round hole.

Thanks very much for sharing. Lovely bit of film. There was a picture of Meadowbank packed to the rafters with the towering tenements in the background in the Speedway Star a few months ago too. Glorious image.

My first visit was in 1982 when the Aces (Morton, Collins, Ross etc) beat the Bees (Olsen, Knudsen, Shirra etc.) 40-38 to close in on the title. Now that's an away win! It seemed plush, smart, professional...a proper sports stadium. My last visit was when working in the area in 2007 I took in a Coventry v Eastbourne match, my first time at Brandon for years and I sat in the same place i had 25 years earlier and was struck about how little it had really changed. It was dusty and tired. Like most speedways to be honest. In between I enjoyed some British Finals in the late 80s and early 90s, which were usually full of some great scraps. Generally very happy memories.

I wouldn't begrudge him the highlight of his career and you are right in saying the conditions were the same for everyone. But can anyone honestly say he would have qualified in normal circumstances? The track was a soggy quagmire, only suited to gating for three-quarters of the meeting. Peter Collins and Chris Morton were eliminated and three days earlier had won the World Pairs, beating some blokes called Gundersen and Nielsen (wonder what became of them?!). Phil Collins was the defending Overseas Champion and he went out. Simon Wigg scraped through after two lasts in the clag. As I say, I liked Martin Yeates as a rider, but under normal racing conditions, he wouldn't have got anywhere near 4th or 5th in Britain. The 84 British Final is (rightly) remembered as Kenny Carter's iconic career performance. But it was a freak meeting, with a freak result. Conditions dictated that the cream couldn't rise to the top and it says everything that of the six eliminated at the next round (Overseas Final), five were qualifiers from that British Final.

I can't quite say why, but the pairs and fours at NL/Div2 level have always been much more watchable than at BL/Div1 level.