asturmer Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 Why is there no ice speedway in England, I mean real ice speedway with spikes n all!(not Telford style) Is there an ice venue big enough like Assen in Holland, or would one need to be built and would the weather allow for an outdoor refrigerated venue which could be used for ice skating or even ice car racing by another club or clubs! Britain has such talented youngsters and I,m convinced the UK would produce a match for the Russians. Ok its easy for me to imagine this from the dust bowl of Western Australia, but has anyone ever tried to start up such a venture in the UK? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Humphrey Appleby Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 Is there an ice venue big enough like Assen in Holland, or would one need to be built and would the weather allow for an outdoor refrigerated venue which could be used for ice skating or even ice car racing by another club or clubs! Ice racing is usually held on speed skating tracks, and there are none in Britain as far as I know. There is little interest in conventional speed skating in Britain, so not worth investing in the necessary facilities. The little interest in speed skating there is, is in the short track form which is held on conventional ice rinks (e.g. ice hockey rinks) that are too small for proper ice racing. Weather doesn't come into the issue. The Netherlands has a 400m outdoor speed skating track in nearly every town, and the weather there is similar to the UK. Sometimes the track is covered (although open in the middle) as in Assen, but it's by no means necessary. The tracks are usually open from about October to April, but speed skating is almost a religion in that country (particularly in the north). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iris123 Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 Same as in Berlin.They have two speed skating rinks there.I guess(but am not sure)they might be from wither side of the Berlin wall? Berlin was left with two or three of a lot of things like Opera houses/Airports and such after the fall.The one used regularly for the World Championship Ice Speedway is just an open outside skating rink,similar to Inzell(but Inzell of course is in deep and cold Bavaria).The other one is i think a fully enclosed speed skating rink,that did host some Ice Speedway,but hosts the big Speed Skating events as well as Inzell holding both Speedway and Skating.Plus i think Erfurt is also a fully enclosed rink.But Berlins weather isn't much different from the UK i guess.Not like Bavaria or Austria. There was atry out on a temporary surface here in Hamburg a few years back by a couple of Russian riders(i think) to see if they could hold a meeting on that.Nothing was ever heard since.The temporary rink hasn't been back either though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MARK246 Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 Why is there no ice speedway in England, I mean real ice speedway with spikes n all!(not Telford style) Is there an ice venue big enough like Assen in Holland, or would one need to be built and would the weather allow for an outdoor refrigerated venue which could be used for ice skating or even ice car racing by another club or clubs! Britain has such talented youngsters and I,m convinced the UK would produce a match for the Russians. Ok its easy for me to imagine this from the dust bowl of Western Australia, but has anyone ever tried to start up such a venture in the UK? The rumours about three years ago were that Sheffield was going to have a speed skating rink, prior to that it was Bradford. As with all sporting venues in the UK cost, useage and available land site's are the problem. To transform Stockholm's Östermalms Speed skating arena for ice racing takes about two weeks during which time it cannot be used. The biggest problem is the thickness of the ice, it needs to be increased from 25mm to 120/160mm. The weather plays a larger part than one may imagine. If the air temperature is high it creates a soft top layer of ice making it difficult to ride on,this combined with needing to know when to switch off the refridgeration plant means it's a far more involved job than it looks at first sight. Unlike, just throwing shale on a concrete floor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conkers Posted October 20, 2008 Report Share Posted October 20, 2008 Sheffield was certainly on the cards a few years ago, as Neil Machin was going to promote the venue. They were planning to build something along the lines of the artificial ski slopes which are springing up, with a 400 meter oval next to it. There was talk in the early 1970s of a venue adjacent to an Ice Rink in Aviemore, although it never got further than the talk. (They staged indoor Ice meetings at Aviemore rink though) Unfortunately the cost of a 400m oval is prohibitive if you don't get the punters to skate on it. The high maintainance costs of these ovals have seen a reduction in the tracks in the Netherlands over the years, as Eindhoven, Deventer and Groningen have all gone, and Hoogeveen hasn't been used for Ice Racing since Nikolai Nitchenko was killed there doing demo laps for potential sponsors. Even the ice rink next to the Assen Ice Track has gone and is now a mexican bar when the Ice Racing isn't using it as a pits area. Berlin has Wilmersdorf in the west, and The Sportforum in the old east. They staged the Masters of Spikes there for several years, but the Speed skating people decided that they were losing too much money to the Ice Racing, so they kicked them out! (I remember going to the MoS one year and there was an Ice Hockey Match in one of the rinks, a figure skating competition in another, and a public skating session in the third, plus the Master of Spikes on the oval) Manchester has the Chill Factore at the Trafford Centre which is an artificial ski slope. It opened to massive crowds, but it will be a few years before they recoup the £31 million it cost. They built a new Ice Rink in Altrincham which replaced the old Devonshire Road rink, it is starting to recoup it's investment, only because they have three public skating sessions a day (schools tend to use one of them), and the rink is the minimum size for Ice Hockey so as to have one game a week. As Mark says, (and he should know!) the Ice needs to be thicker than for speed skating. Iris123 and I have fond memories of trying to step off the track onto the centre at Wilmersdorf, a good 15 inches drop from Track to the centre, and not falling on our backsides! Building up the track to that thickness takes time. And as for the temperature, I remember at Assen a few years ago, it was warm on the Saturday, so they turned up the refridgeration unit, and the racing was held up for 30 minutes as they tried to clear the fog off the covered section of the Assen track. What you have to remember is that the Russian Tracks are in areas where it is cold. My Daughter's friend is Russian, and her Mum is from a village near Krasnagorsk. She knows about the Ice Racing and says they could ride on the Ice a lot longer than many other countries. I don't think the potential owners of such a facility in the UK would lose money from Public sessions to let the bikes in. Even though the Dutch have tracks where they can have Ice Racing, the riders have to travel to Sweden or Russia to train. I think Motorclub Assen get the track for about a week before the meeting and they allow the bikes on from Thursday Night to Sunday, then return the Stadium to the owners. Unless there is a Speedway daft Millionaire out there who wants to build an Ice track, I think the Brits will have to spend their winters training in Sweden, then chasing the Ice round Europe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iris123 Posted October 21, 2008 Report Share Posted October 21, 2008 Iris123 and I have fond memories of trying to step off the track onto the centre at Wilmersdorf, a good 15 inches drop from Track to the centre, and not falling on our backsides! Your memories are fonder than mine mate,as you had those special spikes on your shoes!.You was walking around all confident,while i knew at any minute i might have 4 or 5,000 people laughing at me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conkers Posted October 21, 2008 Report Share Posted October 21, 2008 I was being ironic (wish I knew what it meant mind!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MARK246 Posted October 21, 2008 Report Share Posted October 21, 2008 (edited) To add a bit more to this topic, Östermalms (Stockholm) will be used again this coming winter for the WC qualification round, but the one in Sanock, Poland is to be moved. Both are artificial circuits and it seems with the milder weather the only way to ensure these meetings can be run. Swedish ice racing tracks in general are naturally frozen,some using flooded speedway tracks, others flooded fields. The main exception are the Bandy ( a form of hockey on ice with a ball and larger pitch size than ice hockey) tracks, these are traditionally used at the end of the Bandy season (march) and are artificially frozen. The reason they get used at the end of the season is the ice thickness,Bandy isn't played on thick ice? Edited October 26, 2008 by MARK246 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asturmer Posted October 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 To add a bit more to this topic, Östermalms (Stockholm) will be used again this coming winter for the WC qualification round, but the one in Sanock, Poland is to be moved. Both are artificial circuits and it seems with the milder weather the only way to ensure these meetings can be run. Swedish ice racing tracks in general are naturally frozen,some using flooded speedway tracks, others flooded fields. The main exception are the Bandy ( a form of hockey on ice with a ball and larger pitch size than ice hockey) tracks, these are traditionally used at the end of the Bandy season (march) and are artificially frozen. The reason they get used at the end of the season is the ice thickness,Bandy isn't played on thick ice? News hot off the press and heard here in the Worlds most isolated City, Perth Australia!! Roman Abramovich is looking to trial Ice RACING AT STAMFORD BRIDGE with a meeting on an artificial track next June,at Chelsea, followed by a round of the World Ice Racing Series. Can someone out there look in to this as it came from a reliable source here in Australia! The Russians are saying that Abramovich is a keen ice racing fan!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conkers Posted October 28, 2008 Report Share Posted October 28, 2008 News hot off the press and heard here in the Worlds most isolated City, Perth Australia!! Roman Abramovich is looking to trial Ice RACING AT STAMFORD BRIDGE with a meeting on an artificial track next June,at Chelsea, followed by a round of the World Ice Racing Series. Can someone out there look in to this as it came from a reliable source here in Australia! The Russians are saying that Abramovich is a keen ice racing fan!!! Have a look at the thread in the Speedway General Discussion (Link Here) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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