manchesterpaul

Some very good points made by NIcki Pedersen in a large article in this weeks Speedway Star. Like most fans and riders he wants riders to be able to race in both competitions. An excerpt from a news story in Sportowefakty tonight and is now just starting to filter into the media elsewhere too. The content of the letter sent to the FIM Europe: We, as riders who have already received an invitation to take part in Speedway European Championships in 2014, we declare that we will insist that we were allowed to take part in the competition, despite the fact that we are also regular participants FIM Speedway Grand Prix. We consider a ban on anyone to participate in the continental championships, as a very bad decision, which reduces the popularity of our sport and wasted opportunity that was created to promote it, mainly because of television, reaching 71 countries. We believe that this decision is a limitation of our freedom. According to EU law, freedom of contract is one of the fundamental rights and not accept a situation where we are limited in such an artificial and unfair manner. As experienced speedway riders who put a lot of work to build the image of a world speedway, we expect more respect and comity on the part of managers of global and European speedway. We look forward to a fair solution to this situation and the immediate response from the board of the FIM-Europe. Signed: Tomasz Gollob Andreas Jonsson Nicki Pedersen Emil Sajfutdinow

I was a little surprised a couple of months ago when R&R stated that he thought the Swedish league was stronger than Poland, and your 10% would have probably have been subjected to a twiddle with too lol. But then again i've not looked at the stats from very recent seasons and can only presume there has been an increase in power of the Swedish League? Reason being that - until a couple of seasons ago - i used to copy and paste the stats from Sportowefakty into a spreadsheet at the end of each season from the various leagues and also apply a weighting that on the whole proved highly accurate across a high percentage of the riders. Even aside from the weighting adjustment one used to see rider after rider whose averages went from their highest being in the UK Elite League and then decrease in the Swedish Elitserien to their lowest figures being in the Polish Ekstraliga due to increases in class of riders competing. I haven't got the time at the moment, or inclination lol, but it might be interesting to cobble together all the three leagues but not with 'rolling averages' for the UK, as surely all leagues need to be subjected to the same basic criteria. I personally would prefer bonus points to be included as i feel it reflects a truer sporting performance as to what happened on the track. Thankfully the Speedway Star and every other publication over the decades have always published averages including bonus points and rightly leave the 'team-building' averages to that purpose alone. Incidentally 'waihekeaces' do you judge your top 30 to a classification of the top 30 riders in the world or......the top 30 LEAGUE riders in the world? I used to wonder about that angle when i compiled my ratings. I would possibly lean towards it being a league (team) rider rating although obviously there would be a great crossover in it also being a fair reflection of world rankings. Maybe a rider has to be a little more selfish to win the world title? Does your 10% rule hold pretty much fairly well across the board of riders. I have an inkling that to use the same increment is not sheer coincidence or an exactly calculated percentage. Like i say i'd therefore probably twiddle with the sliding rating. What thread was your top 30 published in (if you did post it), lol don't worry not to find fault with i'd just like to see it. I'm presuming the top 30 aren't 30 you selected as such then rated them and instead are the top 30 from all rider ratings? Right now i haven't got the time and/or it's not that deep into the off-season for me to feel the need to be researching such things lol. I can think of riders like Ivan Mauger who would likely to have always topped the league averages when winning his titles but then again he didn't ride in three leagues or more per season. Also like a few others along the years he was an exceptional rider in his time and clearly conclusions would be better drawn from a large sample of riders over the season than just the top echelon.

I should point out that whilst the BSPA website says; "TAI will make be on BT Sport Live this Wednesday at 8pm." The Sky EPG, a weekly tv mag and an internet subscription tv guide all say it's 7pm' Not sure what dialect 'will make be on' comes from lol.

Cheers for the heads up on that.

All cool and a needed specific thread for 2014. As for others, if they have, posting about the SGP/BSI/SEC/One Sport conflict in that well it's often hard to decide where to place a thread or comments on a subject. Personally i would have preferred the SEC to be added to the SGP/SWC section but not particularly fussed.

Yeah i heard that too at the start of the last podcast. Hope he or his assistants do their research a bit better as we certainly don't want to hear what the old Granada Reports TV channel did when Peter Collins won his world title and they referred to him as the speedway DRIVER! Just came on here to let people know if they don't already that the shows, or more accurately, the interviews are available as podcasts. I certainly won't be sat next to the radio for three hours between the scheduled broadcast time of 10am-1pm. I've only glanced at the timing of the most recent podcast and it's 37 minutes long, so i'm presuming it's the interview bits and nothing else?

I was unaware that even one let alone two new threads had been started up on this topic. Then again i'm only occasionally having a glance at the forums. Lol gee how many posts in how many sections are there now? I must check out the National League section to see if one has been started there too hee hee.

BACK ON TOPIC (a serious one): A rare-ish winter foray back to the forum for me and with despair! lol. Looks like it's gone all nuclear now very sad. I certainly won't be voting in the FIM rider of the year contest, nasty stuff going on right now to the detriment of the sport. SEC: Starts riders from GP blocked! http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/395289/sec-starty-zawodnikow-z-gp-zablokowane-co-dalej-z-cyklem A partial sample of the Google Translate version, make of it what you will, what you can, but the gist is there and hopefully Speedway Star will confirm/enlighten us this Thursday "International Motorcycling Federation decided to block the possibility of the players starts with Grand Prix with the SEC. About the war on BSI line (organizer GP) - One Sport (organizer SEC) we have already written . International Motorcycling Federation (FIM) said that it could be blocked launches riders from GP series in the SEC. One of the representatives of the FIM announced the decision the players already at the Grand Prix in Torun. Now officially entered into force. - Sorry proved to us the most pessimistic scenario. Starts riders from the Grand Prix are being blocked. At this time, all contracts are in the hands of lawyers. They will determine what steps will be taken in the near future. This applies to sponsorship agreements, as well as television - told SportoweFakty.pl Adam Krużyński , a representative of the main sponsor of the SEC 's nice. Appalled by the decision of the FIM, is one of the representatives of the organizer of the SEC. - At the moment, we do not want to comment more broadly, our position on this situation, consult with lawyers. We have a valid contract with the FIM-Europe, based on which we have made ​​a number of other commitments. This is not a joke, it is not fun - the impression that not everyone understands. There's been a big mistake. Information on these ideas, thoughts; plans BSI and FIM, of course, came to us for a long time, but no official message is not received. The decision came by mail a few days ago - it looks exactly that in the rules of the FIM-Europe will record that in the competition rank Championships competitors can not compete Grand Prix. Interestingly, the players receiving a wild card into the cycle SGP (Gollob and Jonsson) have not received the information that the choice of the SGP automatically eliminates them from competing in the SEC. Generously allowed us, however, that one player GP cycle could start in the SEC with a wild card in the individual tournament. Interestingly, it was also (authoritarian, without consultation) the decision that the leading three riders SEC obtains final promotion to ... Grand Prix Challenge. Aside from the substantive value of this brilliant idea, there is a problem - the SEC would have to decide by the end of August, which is basically impossible without causing conflicts with other terms. They lose the fans, the players lose, you lose the discipline - said the representative of One Sport Jan Konikiewicz . SEC organizers were left alone on the battlefield. They expect, however, that the authorities of the Polish Association of Motor explicitly denounced in this case. - Contrary to the ASN in this matter, we hope that it will be a clear and direct manner expressed - in one way or the other."

Lol ok i'm lost with that...make this the most puzzling

Ok that got to be one of the most puzzling posts ever lol.....please may i ask who on earth 'we' is???

I think you'll find that having to subscribe to multiple packages to access a single sport all adds up. When i initially subscribed to Sky Sports it covered pretty much ALL football and many other of my favourite sports, including ALL speedway. However, in the last few years i find that i have to pay fees to multiple companies just for full coverage of the football alone. Then my other sports such as Speedway, American Football, Nascar and MMA are all scattered across different platforms. I wish the various companies would group together for a multi ticket that allows one access to all the stations. Incidentally, and each to their own opinion no problem, the Premier Sports coverage of the Swedish league has been a fantastic and entertaining bonus with an excellent commentator.

Methinks Thomas sealed his crown during the second leg of the Elite League play-off final tonight lol.

Gonna record the rest of the meeting and try and watch four world cup qualifying matches at once lol. England bring the only one of the home nations i'll be watching.

Gee they thought it was all over after heat 2, it is for sure now after heat 3. Oh well it leaves me to fill my various screens with several football World Cup qualifying games. Nice to see the giant advertising placards held by the start line girls, hope Birmingham got a fair whack of money for that, well done indeed.

Gee nw42 don't think i'll be getting a mac anytime soon lol, Hope my racecards aren't as convoluted to print out on that operating system (no bad reflection meant to drofgum's cards at all) Incidentally, i would have produced a MiniMax racecard for the finals with the formatting of my Swedish and Danish styles but thought Sky produced their own. I just had a glance at the Sky card for the first time and wow i never knew it's only a BLANK card they supply! Alas ,we might likely not have Sky next season so i won't get to produce them. I've also always held back from producing cards for domestic meetings in case fans may not purchase the match programme if they have a racecard. However, on reflection i think the way the economy is that people can either afford to go to a meeting or not and if the former they'll likely have the dosh and will to buy a programme.

Clearly they are doing so again today as there is a link on the page to access the 'full' version - which yeah guess what? doesn't let you access it. Main NEW gripe today with so many people having needed to know if the meeting is on and other relevant news to that, is why oh why couldn't they use some common sense and have the page that one eventually lands on state whether it was on, clearly there was going to be high demand, instead we get a tortuous route as follows 1. Takes over ten minutes to finally land on the lo-fi page. 2. You click on the 'News' link and nothing happens for around five minutes so one tries the full version link. 3. Back to the ten minutes wait for the lo-fi welcome page as the previous step was a failure. 4. GrrRRRRR still no news as one has to click on another 'news' link to get to the news! 5. Again waiting and waiting for that page to opent. 6. OMG absolutely no news about the meeting being on or off on that news page! Why couldn't they post the very important information on the first lo-fi page you land on, if you are lucky after ten minutes to get on it? How inane to expect people to navigate through several pages when the site isn't loading due to demand and it's hell just to get on a site landing page. PUT THE INFO ON THE LANDING PAGE PLEASE. Ok i'm off to the Poole site as i'm sure that's working!

EH! Ok that's got to be the strangest and most unfathomable comment i've ever seen on these forums lol. Gee i do hope we would be given subtitles as i know i'm not the only one who can't understand a word that he says. The only person in speedway who rivals him is Neil Middleditch with his 'machine gun speed' speaking. Cheers for that i had been disappointed there hadn't been any links to it which left me thinking there would be none available anywhere.

Presuming there is a computer in the building (?) there are free webcam software programmes which will with 'motion detection' being set trigger alerts and email or upload to a server as many photographs as you wish of anyone present. Also they can be set for live streaming. You don't even need a high quality webcam or security system. I've helped people get great results just using a standard cheapo analog cctv camera costing a few pounds. A camera outside for before they gain entry would enable a call to the police to be made and one inside would grab a snap of burglars or vandals. Even in the case of Arson the computer would be clicking or streaming merrily away before it gets engulfed in flames. I don't know the area around Ashfield is it out of hearing of a populated area, not that many people take note of alarms, least of all the Police! Does the stadium have no security at all? or was the fire well ablaze before anyone could respond?

One would presume and hope that it was an electrical fault as at that time it would be very rare indeed for a random arsonist or malicious firebug to strike. I'm presuming safely that it has to be the former option.

Paul Bellamy quoted on Sportowefakty this morning claiming/making it clear that he has no input in the whole affair... "It is true that the FIM infection cycle start SGP participants in the competition rank Speedway European Championship? - Please refer this question to the representatives of the FIM. Contracts with żużlowcami to compete in the world championships are concluded by the International Motorcycling Federation. This is about FIM and not BSI."

Paul Bellamy quoted on Sportowefakty this morning saying Tomasz Gollob has a good chance of a Wild Card. "What are the chances that Chris Holder and Tomasz Gollob receive a permanent wild card for the season 2014? - Large. These are the world champions, after all. Chris Holder could not defend his title due to injury. Tomasz Gollob three years ago was the best in the world. From the speedway will begin awarding a wild card for the season 2014."

Good to hear as the BARB figures were shown to be greatly unreliable in a study a few years back, haven't a clue what it was now mind. Gee! i think from experience most people dread hearing a company say "there is to be a major software upgrade which will bring some good new features for consumers" as it often results in fixing/improving something that isn't broke and breaks it lol. Whilst i'm not fussed if somebody knows what i watch on tv for every minute i watch it i do think this extensive SNOOPING is going into some very dodgy waters. How long before the police or other authorities will be demanding (if they don't already do) a report of what a viewer has watched? I can certainly think of many criminal cases where they would like to infer negative aspects to a person's personality. God help anyone who watches documentaries to do with terrorism, instantly picked up by GCHQ and PRISM (plus the various other similar eavesdropping programmes that trawl all forms of communications and household media electronics). Of course one of the biggest causes of concern is how Sky have failed to ensure that people know about their viewing choices being recorded. Certainly as of now the vast majority of subscribers do NOT have a clue about it happening.

And most likely they went and asked the women if they prefer Whiskas to any other cat food and they asked the cats what their shampoo preference was for

Lol not when i tuned in they didn't and not at the start of the broadcast when they refer to the headline stories coming up and also the other sports that they will be covering, which is why i tuned out. Maybe you saw a later edition where they fit little 'non-worthy' bits in?. Maybe they did show it in that actual hour but simply had deemed it not worthy of a mention in the headlines or mention of the other sports coming up? lol. Whatever.

Are you referring to the little ticker tape thing at the bottom of the screen? I switched on to Sky Sports News at the top of the hour and what i quoted above was the case. Also i was obviously referring to a video report/article.interview etc as part of the news and not a line of text. Also i wasn't referring to website coverage but actual TV (Sports) News coverage as in 'Sky Sports News' on the TV. Anyway whatever, those of us who watched the meeting and follow speedway had a fantastic and entertaining night indeed it's their loss.