manchesterpaul

Yeah just noticed that story on sportowefakty too. It says the fifth rider has yet to be named but......IS there a fifth rider nameable? Maybe we'll get the current incumbent 'The Invisible Man' lol.

EVENT 1 AVAILABLE as of NOW! You can directly download from the following page. FREE MiniMax Racecard 2011 World Cup - Event 1 The official 'confirmed' line-ups for these meetings are issued a fair bit in advance of the actual date. Unfortunately, due to the nature of speedway there can be injuries and withdrawals ahead of the actual day. Therefore, even though i make them available a couple or so days ahead of the events, it may prove prudent to wait until the day before or the day itself to download. The decision is yours! If there are late, or indeed very late changes, i will update them right up to just before the meeting. Event 2, despite the confirmed line-up still showing as originally billed on the official site, clearly seems to be heading for major alterations in the Russian team.

Forget New York, New York.....Speedfreak, Speedfreak, Speedfreak so good obrien48 named it three times

Thank you and even more appreciation and awe for the season preview. I was wondering where on earth was i when you penned the thread as i didn't remember it. However, just moving on to the second page i see i took part in the conversation lol....fortunately i'm not going extremely forgetful as i see that it was initiated in October of last year. A truly excellent season preview and i'll be keeping an eye out for next season's one too. Interesting to see that Västervik have a nature reserve nearby! Wish we had swedish planning officials in the UK we might get more tracks open

As mentioned elsewhere i've got all the leagues averages on a single page and if one whizzes across them, or uses ctrl+F and enter the riders name, you can very quickly see how in the vast majority of cases there is a clear pecking order in descending order of Polish Ekstraliga, Swedish Elit and UK's Elite. Riders tend to attain a higher average in the Elite by a distinctive margin with their polish and swedish figures being closer to each other. However, most achieve their lowest average in the hardest league the polish Ekstraliga. It's more noted outside of the out and out world class top riders.

Has it been clarified as to who is to blame for no visas being issued in time for the Laguta's? Is it the officials/staff involved in processing them or is it the riders or their managers who failed to allow enough time when applying?

It's certainly been a nice little battle at times. As ever a pleasant way to spend the early part of a Tuesday evening. I meant to 'Google Earth' the track at Vastervik as i think several of the swedish tracks are pretty much set in the middle of a forest (ok possibly a slight exaggeration) and i do marvel at the amount of spectators that make their way there. I would hazard a guess not much available in the way of public trasport to access some of the tracks. Despite that they have excellent crowds compared to the UK. Certainly makes for a scenic drive instead of concrete motorways to and from the tracks. Whatever part of this vast globe you reside in have a good evening all, even if evening is a little way away for some of you.

Disappointing 'effort' by Richardson in that heat has pretty much sealed the home win???

Perfect timing the length of the interval it gave me just enough time to go for a......ok i won't mention that but i feel lighter now. And no i'm not Al Bundy in disguise lol.

Oooops! sorry about that, it's rare i don't read a thread from the start. The swedish meetings start at just after 6pm so i'm still trying to do several things at once. I'm even having to watch the meeting using the live tv pause facility. I keep catching up when i can fast forward through the tv breaks only to fall behind again lol.

You do actually see families and young and old at speedway in Britain, i was referring that you don't see them in such quantity at football matches. You're right about the picnics but (in England) sitting on wet grass and eating soggy sandwiches isn't the greatest pleasure lol. Plus with the rain really teeming down your beer gets watered down and you never get to drink it, or your coffee as the cup keeps filling up with rainwater.

A fine and very valuable win by Peter Ljung in heat 9.

Just glad i was right and not seeing things lol. By the way.......wow!...excellent link there Ghostwalker and with english subtitles Maybe the site saw they were were getting lots of hits from the UK.

Tv commentator here in the UK saying their scorecard had Okoniewski penned in for heat 5 in blue. However, not according to my home made scorecard which, as per swedish tv captions had Aspgren riding. I hope the british channel not going the way of Sky when it comes to not having correct line-ups and stats. I'll go with the swedish tv graphics and my own scorecard for now and presume it was indeed Aspgren who rode. I hadn't taken notice of the rider number or his leathers.

It's an absolute delight to see such a healthy attendance and, as the camera shots show, made up of all ages. Can you ever imagine taking a toddler in a push chair to a football match!. Old and very young all able to relax in a large crowd. Hope it's a similar good summer for the sport all over Europe.

The next heat is possibly a key one and if the away team is to win, one would expect a heat win, if not hmmmmm they might struggle.

Annoyed at myself i didn't post this pre-meeting as i was intending to but i got sidetracked. Whilst not having the confidence to challenge your superb knowledge of swedish speedway, i would have thought the reserve match up balances out as surely Kim Nilsson is a very good rider? I promise with all my heart i was intending to post that before he streaked away at the initial staging of the second heat. Also, you do give Vargarna a fair chance in the match though? I think they do have a decent chance of putting up a very good battle indeed.

Regarding the tv meeting i notice that for Västervik Chris Harris is averaging under seven points a match. Are the swedish fans as voiciferous in their complaints if they think a rider is underperforming for their club?. Or in this case is that sort of average acceptable to them from Chris Harris seeing that he has attained a similar one in the polish league and only in the british league is he some two points a meeting higher?.

I hope that doesn't happen, i certainly don't remember that happening last year with sportowefakty. I've got the 2010 averages somewhere on my computer. I think they did change their url's during the season, although i can't be sure about that either lol. I'll check out the other average links given in this thread. I do, at the moment, prefer the sportowefakty as they are very detailed. In addition to the all riders and team tables they have lists sorted by most race wins, retirements, exclusions and falls etc. A very good touch as well is next to the normal average they list one that gives how many points a rider actually averages a meeting. So if someone like Fredrik Lindgren of Wolverhampton is receiving extra rides in a top heavy team he may have that particular average showing at 14.29 and his normal average next to it showing 9.95. Again just personal preference but biggest plus for me is unlike Sky who tonight showed Nicki Pedersen on something like 10.46, sportowefakty have him on his results in his eight league matches this season of 9.05. As i'm not a team manager or promoter building a team, i'm not interested in all this strange green sheet stuff, i simply want to kow from a sporting perspective what points a rider is averaging. UPDATE Just glanced at the swedish ones and apart from being very cramped they commit a cardinal sin in my eyes lol, they show the average points per race and not per meeting. Also, they don't have anywhere near the same categories as the polish ones when it comes to presenting tables. Aditionally you have to go clicking links all the time to drill down. The sportowefakty has every stat clubs and riders on a single page. Plus, because it's presented without a surrounding webpage full of banners etc the polish one is very easy to read and, as i say, not cramped and no links to click. The swedish site itself is good though on the whole, but so long as they don't stop halfway through the season! i'll stick with the polish site. Sent it.

If you are capable of the inanely simple task of pasting about a dozen lines of text into a notepad document and saving it on your computer you can as i have for years enjoy the benefit of....every single riders average in order, plus sorted into teams and exclusions, engine failures etc lol...yep they do the lot (do sportowefakty)...all of the leagues below; UK Elite UK Premier Polish leagues 1, 2 and 3 Swedish leagues 1 and 2 Danish German Czech Russian ALL ON A SINGLE PAGE! It just takes a few lines of html code and iframes......just PM if you want the requisite text.

From the 1st July i've now added next to each of the main tables (which are still sorted by the traditional points) a mini Projected Points table. Remember this isn't a predictive system based on personal judgements. It is how they actually stand as and when you view it. It extrapolates all the results so far and presents them on to an even number of matches ridden. It's an 'as now' view and not predicting the end of season points. One quick example comparing systems and for illustrative purposes i've made the records identical and simplistic save for the imbalance of matches (away ones in this case) which is where the projected points comes into it's own. Team A and Team B finish the season with identical records. -----------------P----W3---W2--D1--L0-----W4--W3--D2----L1----L0-----Pts Team A-----38----19-----0-----0-----0------0------0-----0-----19-----0------76 Team B-----38----19----0-----0-----0-------0------0-----0-----19-----0------76 Yet a snapshot taken during the season could have for example. -----------------P---W3--W2--D1--L0-----W4--W3--D2----L1----L0-----Pts------+/- -----PP Team A-----18----6-----0-----0-----0------0------0-----0-----12-----0------30......+12------76 Team B------8-----6-----0-----0-----0------0------0-----0-------2-----0-----20.......+2-------76 The traditional table has A at 30pts and B at 20pts The plus/minus system has A at +12 and B at +2 The projected points has A at 76 and B at 76. The traditional table can't show the equality of the teams at the time because of the imbalance in the number of matches ridden. One would have to mentally divide the matches ridden and points gained so far in both the home and away fields for all of the teams. The projected points just needs one simple glance. The plus/minus system wrongly shows team A to be 6 times a better team than B. Because the +/- system does not extrapolate the home and away matches into a season total of an 'even' number of matches. It will quite often tell you nothing useful at all and be misleading. The projected points system extrapolates the actual results so far and applies them to an even yardstick of eventual matches to be ridden. It the only system that shows the true even performance levels of the teams.

Have the Laguta brothers managed to obtain their visas in time after all then? Have they been confirmed to ride? Incidentally, there will be MiniMax racecards for all of the meetings.

Our Swedish friends have given a site before but i failed to bookmark it. The amazing Polish site needless to say has updates, click on the individual matches for everry heat and overall rider scores. Plus, if you run it through Google you can enjoy the race comments too. Tonights updates http://live.sportowefakty.pl/ligaszwedzka.htm Also, worth saving is a Google translated link to their main site. Obviously every time you go to a new page it translates that too. Therefore go to Google and enter this link then save it as a bookmark and you'll always have a translated version without any waiting. http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/

Very nice to such a good crowd. Incidentally, for anybody watching this on Premier Sports and filling in a scorecard be aware that the replacement commentator has just covered the last two races oblivious to two tactical substitution changes. Rune Holta in heat 7 and Hans Andersen in heat 8. I realise they don't get verbal feeds from the track, but that's all the more reason to be looking at the screen graphics. There is a rider line-up at the start of the race, all throughout the race there is a nice sized graphic of the positions and a very large graphic detailing the heat result at the end of the race. Unfortunately, the commentator was quite unaware of the changes. Just pointing this out as a heads up to viewers, only as with Sky, one doesn't like to criticize too much as one is so glad to be watching the sport.

Surely it's a lot harder to have to calculate the permutations in one's head? Therefore, to be able to throw a 'quick glance' at a large full screen view of a spreadsheet with the correct info in plain sight would be easier. By the way Spook please read as well my reply to crumpiefan below which contains a very pretinent point. Anyway on to your own observations, this is where i'm stunned (not at yourself lol). Again, i have zilch education in use of computers, programming or spreadsheets. Everything i learn is on a need to do basis. My girlfriend will often chuckle becasue i can actually get computers to do all sorts of amazing things, but at the same time be oblivious to a simple shortcut method in a word processor (because i don't work as a secretary etc.). But, if i on such an uneducated basis (computer wise) can provide a speadsheet that DOES ACCOMPLISH the calculations you mention above and present them in plain sight, why can't a professional broadcasting organization like Sky create or access the same? I don't even use Excel, i use a free open source spreadsheet, and i haven't created a masterpiece. One doesn't need a masterpiece to do these calculations within a speadsheet. Again i state it isn't complex mathematics. My spreadsheet automatically sorts and colour codes the qualifiers and any unable to qualify despite having races to come. You simply glance at the screen. Why on earth with even a simple spreadsheet would yourself or anyone have to bury your head in the screen?, the spreadsheet should automatically sort for you and colour code too. Have a glance at my SGP MiniMax racacard for the British Grand Prix and on that you will see how my interactive spreadsheet displays the heats (with accumulative meeting and series scores for each rider in every race). Then take into account my interactive version also instantly displays the rider grid sorted by race wins etc. etc. Plus it also has the overall series standings instantly sorted too. There is absolutely no need to study the screen and think, it's all done for you. All one has to do is type in 3,2,1,0 or whatever mishap befell a rider regards engine failures, falls or exclusions. If he's unfortunate to be struck by lightning then type in whatever word you wish such as zapped (lol) in the heat and it won't effect the speadsheet calculations. Indeed it will recognize that not finishing because one was struck by lightning is worth less than a last placed zero points finish and sort accordingly hee hee. I've tried not to mention the name of the software in order to give them the benefit of the doubt. As we all know it's human input error that is often the cause of errors in output of a computer. Although, even allowing for that, i do wonder at times if it works anywhere as well as my own quickly cobbled together version. Plus, of course, it could well be that the information from the software isn't being passed on to the commentators. So, i'll not decry the software without being in full possession of the facts. Why does Sam not correct the commentators or even fill us in with the information of what is at stake a lot more than he barely does now? At the end of the day they have a studio team and they frequently make reference to Sam and his software etc. Yet we still find ourselves with incorrect information and the comical tell-tale sudden hesitation in the voice of the presenters when something clearly isn't right and often accompanied by puzzled looks. So shame on Sky if the correct information isn't being passed on to the viewers. I forgot to mention that in my original post, but let's be clear regarding some of the blunders last night (and in previous years) one did not need a spreadsheet to know that certain riders were already out of the meeting or had already qualified for the semi-finals. It was as you say yourself, and is often the case, that one just glances down at a basic racecard and can see why someone is out or in. No calculations needed it's staring you in the face. Again my gripe and blame isn't aimed at the commentators as they have a lot of things to do. I certainly don't think i would be able to do their job. But it's up to the production team to have information fed to them. Whether that is by giving them a monitor with a spreadsheet 'like mine' lol that at a glance shows you what's what or someone who has one and then passes the info to them on a slip of paper or as a(nother) voice in their headphones. Of course, i totally agree that it is good to have Sky showing speedway. I certainly wouldn't pick a broadcast to pieces regarding how many times a commentator stumbles over his words or repeats a phrase regularly. I always strongly suggest that those who over criticize such things to get a tape recorder and commentate on a couple of meetings. Then play it back see how often one is stumbling over one's words and often talking broken biscuits. Also, see how many catchphrases you end up with. Then theres the silence to fill inbetween the actual racing. Do take into consideration though that you won't have to hold a conversation with a co-commentator and have people talking to you and directing you to do things at the same time. Of course i'm grateful to Sky for speedway and i've often praised their broadcasts too. However, let's remember it's a two-way deal, it isn't charity bestowed upon us. I only purchased Sky originally because of them broadcasting speedway. Accessing their 'exclusive' coverage of football was never a problem, I never missed a Manchester United match in any competition for years thanks to high quality streaming. Sky now get from me monthly the considerable fees for the absolute total package they have. Whilst that is because i follow other sports such as Mixed Martial Arts, Nascar, American Football, American Ice Hockey and via the various channels practically every football tournament in the world and all of the top leagues, additionally we'll watch the film channels too etc....it is only because they show speedway that i initially purchased Sky. I'm sure many other fans have gone on to subscribe to more packages over time after getting it solely for speedway originally. Therefore, i don't think it's too much to ask that they provide their viewers with CORRECT vitally important information ahead of the semi-finals. Anyways, i truly enjoyed last night and thanks to Sky for broadcasting it WITH a studio team too. I can only barely imagine how good it must have been to have actually been there in the crowd at the meeting. Glad all those who went undoubtedly got an enjoyable reward for toddling along to the GP.