IainB

I miss it, it brought a different demographic to Speedway a younger and often female demographic that you just tended not to see at league Speedway, some of these were foreign but a lot seemed to be British. I know of people with little to no interest in Speedway who used to attend from Leicester, so there must have been others. As league Speedway is followed by an older, more male demographic, a lot of who arent interested in actually having a good time socially or enjoying the atmosphere that a big crowd generates and only interested in "the racing" and filling their programmes in before a race is complete and standing there in stoney faced silence offering no applause when a rider comes round and acknowledges the crowd... when they stopped going it only left "the normals" and that just wasn't enough to sustain it. (Controversial, sorry if that's you). It's done the sport as much damage as the loss of Wembley did back in the 80's and it's going to take some coming back from. I went to every one and enjoyed every experience I had... even the ones with crap racing. I only stayed over twice, never in Cardiff, never went just to get p155ed up, never paid more than £30 for a ticket after year one and just had a cheap maccies to keep the costs down. With the 14 odd tracks we currently have running today it's difficult to see how the British Speedway showpiece event can attract a crowd of more than 6,500 ever again in the current setup.

Well, there's ckall else to do with every speedway match in the country being called off this week, when they mostly could have been run with some effort from those involved.

We had absolutely biblical rain in Leicester for over an hour during the night before the Sheffield match last week yet the track was dusty after a couple of races, yes we did have 30 degree temps during that day but with the wind we're having at the moment and around 15 hours of daylight I do feel this was a bit of a premature postponement. When you've sat and watched a GP qualifier from Glasgow at the weekend being ridden, often in driving rain, on a wet track you have to wonder why Ippo meetings get called off so easily... like the BV match the other week! Have the Foxhole drainage problems resurfaced?

Probably no riders, Klindt will need to rest his poorly knee after all of the recent exertion!

6,500 each night, most of them the same people

F*ckenback replaces Lindgren

I blame El Nino (and Poole, of course) 😁

Lewis Bridger also maybe looking at Flat Track... but who cares 😉 https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZDYmhSiIws/?igsh=MTQycnd3NGlpa2lwbg==

1 wild card down already as Bewley will get that. And with some of the strange wild card selections in recent years, who can blame them for a belt and braces approach.

Pootle not Poodle 🐩

Dodged a bullet there! Nicolai Klindt?

In Poole? 😉

It's either an individual sport or a team sport, can't be both, you can't have Haarland going off every other weekend to try and be Individual World Football Champion. Other sports like F1 for example pretend to be a team sport but the fans don't really care who the constructors champions are, they're only interested in the drivers. I can see Poland breaking away from the FIM and going it alone with Ekstraliga, there's too much money involved not to... Sorry, not really relevant to this thread, hey ho

I mean if they moved Friday's to Saturday, would they automatically move Saturday's to Sunday, or just go straight for the 2 in 1 day? Anything in the rules? Or is it a make it up as you go along thing?

Didn't even know it was on 😁

The riders, with today's bikes, seemed perfectly fine with things at Glasgow on Saturday night, racing on a wet track, often in driving rain... the difference, they were chasing personal World Championship glory in an FIM meeting as opposed to riding in a humdrum league meeting in front of one man and his dog 🐕‍🦺🧍‍♀️

Could we have 2 in 1 day?

Just watched it all back on BSN and Kemp was pretty hard on Flint in the first staging of 14, so received as good as he gave. Rerun was also the correct decision imo, they were still pretty close at the time of the stoppage.

https://ukflattrack.forumotion.com/

Should show some commitment to the UK then!

Just do what I do and pretend there is no Speedway at King's Lynn... it works for me 👍🏻 They fell off my list of tracks to attend years ago. Been in the car park too many times as the meeting has been called off.

Yeah, I'll admit British Speedway doesn't help itself with it's fixture (erm) planning, that's self inflicted but the BS he's pulled with Plymouth last season and now the last Redcar meeting are a pretty poor reflection on him... and he was rewarded with a testimonial meeting at the beginning of the season, just saying.

If he's that Danish perhaps he should consider basing himself in Denmark. Like many riders, seem happy to base themselves in the UK while putting British Speedway at the bottom of their priority list.

They may have to initially cut their squad size down but they can't be affording to lose their top stars due to injuries sustained abroad. It's the only thing missing from the Polish model to make it a real professional sport and it surely must be what they're working towards and they're probably only one big tv deal away from achieving it... Having said that I've just watched the ZG Leszno match, ran in front of a big, young crowd... but they didn't even have a children's race during the interval (with the obligatory rabid dog chasing them all around)... think how much that would add to the gate, they've definitely missed a trick there 😉

Twas ever thus...