mickthemuppet

Certainly the Swedish Grand Prix at Ullevi does not pay. It has lost money for the last three years and the attendance has gone down each year. One of the main reasons it does not draw the Swedish people in is it is a non Speedway city. Yet is is a great stadium and city for Speedway.

Very naughty Norbold. You deleted the part of your posting after the .......saying .Ian Hoskins says his father opened Odsal Speedway. That just about sums it all up. I rest my case How would I know what was said in the article as I have not even seen the story yet.

So who did open Odsal to Speedway then Norbold if it was not Johnny Hoskins

Maybe this is the gradual start of the break up of the GP's. Darcy Ward looks like he will not take part, now Pepe. The riders should want to take part in the GP's but until they are paid a proper rate eventually they will struggle to field a competitive 16 riders.

The only reason Darcy Ward might turn a wild card down is because the money in the GP's is pathetic and if they bring the new rule in Poland next season he could be frozen out. Poland will probably bring in a rule that any team can only have one GP rider. Only 4 or 5 riders make a profit out of a GP. It is obscene that the prize money for a GP ranges from £6500 down to £1000 depending where you finish. That roughly £60,000 prize money for a 3 live hour meeting. The riders have to take their accommodation.travel ,mechanic's fees out of that. Compare that to Sky paying on average £2,4million per live Premier League football match. I know what is more entertaining. So ING will have to up the ante or the GP's will die unless they pay a sensible return for the riders efforts . If one rider won say 10 Grand Prix's he would only win ££65,000. That is awful compared to some darts and snooker prize money. Speedway should end all this rubbish with the GP's and get back to it's roots again and have a proper world championship. There are people who have nothing to do with Speedway earning far more out of it than Speedway itself

Perhaps I should have said that my posting about West Maitland were taken from a book called "Speedway Walkabout" by a certaiin Johnny Hoskins. Perhaps you should all read it and you might understand the topic a little bit more. I would think he would have a better idea than anybody else about what happenedce. Would that be enough evidence for you Olddon

The only thing correct about your statement was that I was not a speedway rider in 1923. Why do you think Colin Srewart's version of West Maitland is more correct than what I have said. I got my information from a book on Speedway which I would think is more correct than any other version that you have put on here

Johnny Hoskins became the secretary of the Local Hunter River Agricultural Society that promoted the dirt track meeting at the Show Ground , West Maitland. It was the first time that the show ground had electricity. Some riders wore helmets others never bothered. Very few wore gloves.Some were 250 cc's some were 1000 cc's. It was two mile handicap races of 6 riders. Sixty riders took part and there was £50 prize money. One of the rules was no rider must take his foot or feet off the footrest. No safety fence and not called Speedway

Nice to see you are learning my trade to drive fork lift trucks. I did not have any special training I just picked it up as I went along

The arguments about where was the first Speedway meeting will always be disputed. Maybe we should find out what the word speedway actually means and where did it come from. The word speedway became into being around the period of 1890 to 1910. The word meant a stadium for either cars or motorbikes and came from USA. There is a town in Indiana USA called Speedway (population 12,500) So could this mean that speedway roughly as we know it started there during this period, which is a lot earlier than anything in England or Australia.

There might have been a Jack Storey or is that another story

No commentary on tonight's live match. You can hear the bikes and crowd but no chat

Any alterations for tonight's (Wednesday) teams

I am suprised that nobody has mention Gary Havelock or Chris Louis who both are former world champions. I would certainly place them ahead of Trevor Hedge,The Boococks,Geoff Pusey,McKinlay,Ray Wilson and Kelvin Tatum

Speedway not on Premier until 22.00 They got non league football on earlier. They advertized live speedway but hardly any live now so have cancelled by subscription.

Great comment from Jan on the heat two crash between Nicki Pedersen and Bjarne Pedersen "I dont think there is any doubt it ,Pedersen will be excluded from the re-run as being the cause of the accident"

yes, although sky are showing spanish football live ,you will have to press the red button and then you will get the gp

Ipswich Ideal team for next season would be Jarek Hampel Hans Andersen Danny King Taylor Poole Lasse Bjerre Sam Masters Cameron Heeps Lets get back in a proper league with local derbies against Kings Lynn,Peterborough and Arena Essex. It is difficult to name the three local derbies in the Premier league. Plus TV money and under half the travelling costs. Then heat leaders like Nikki Pedersen,Emil Sayfudtinov compared to Leigh Lanham and Joe Screen. Perhaps a lot of those that have disappeared from the terraces would come back again. How many will attend a early bank holiday match against Kings Lynn compared to Rye House. At least three times as many for KL compared to RH

Speedway has been sold down the Swannee by IMG. Is there another sport that has a live three hour TV programme in which the winner receives under £7,000 and some of the riders do not even get paid £1.000 Compare this to so called sports like Snooker and Darts the prize money is ludicious. It would be great if all the riders refused to ride in the GP,s until they got a better deal

There has never been a World Final or GP season where the best 15 or 16 riders have ridden in since Speedway started.

Has there ever been a match which has ended in a draw like tonight's match between Isle Of Wight and Mildenhall; Cameron Heeps was the only rider for Mildenhall to win a race for them, yet they still managed to get a draw out of the meeting. Has this ever happened before?

Belle Vue 1928

My apologies . I was looking at Denmark race draw and not Scandinavian

The GP draw shows JB Jensen riding at number 9. Why is Thomass Jonasson not riding

Philip I think you will find that the old one off world final only came to Wembley every 3 years in later times, but then there were Inter-Continental and Commonweath etc finals in the intermediate years. Surely you cannot be saying it would only come to England every six years most likely four. Could understand England,Sweden,Denmark and Poland. Anywhere else would be a financial disaster. There was very little publicity in the national papers when Mark Loram won the world title. Compare this with tennis which has a comparable TV viewing figures(except Wimbledon) and there has not been a singles British Grand Slam champion for 34 years yet there is plenty of publicity in newspapers for this sport without having a winner since 1977