World Individual Champinonship As Well As Gp?

[waiheke1]

OK, obviously there are a lot of people on the forum very anti GP and in favour of bringing back the old fashioned one off World Championship system. Now realistically, that isn’t going to happen, and there’s not enough room in the calendar to fit in both, or the GP riders would never turn out for British clubs.

 

However, the idea of having both GP and a Individual Championship is definitely appealing, and I think you could make it work.

 

I’d have it short and sweet, three qualifying “meetings mirroring the old style qualifiers, so you’d have an Overseas final (England/US/Aussie/NZ), Nordic Final (Swedes/Danes/Finns/Norway) and a Continental final (Poland/Czech/Russia/rest of Europe). Top5 from each to the World Final, with the remaining slot going to the National Champion of the nation hosting the final.

Final to be rotated on a 5 yearly cycle between UK, Poland, Demark, Sweden and another European country (which could vary each “cycle”.)

 

GP riders for that year would be “seeded” to the relevant qualifying meeting, with the rest of the places awarded based on each countries national championships.

 

So, for example the Overseas final 2012 would include Crump, Holder, Ward,Harris and Hancock plus say top 4 from 2012 Brit final, 4 Australians, 2 Americans and one Kiwi.

Nordic final would include Pedersen x2, Bjerre, Lindback, Lindgren and Jonsson, plus another 3 Danes, 3 Swedes, 2 Norwegians and one Finn.

Continental final would have Gollob, PP, Emil and Hampel, plus say 4 Poles, 2 Russians, 2 Czechs and one each from 4 other European nations (say Germany, Italy, Hungary, Croatia etc).

(Note: For above examples have used the 15 “qualified” for the 2012 GP).

 

Hold the final a couple of weeks after the completion of the GP, and try to find some way of offering a significant financial prize for the winner. Hopefully this would satisfy the “old school” as well as fans of the current GP system.

 

In terms of qualifying, if deemed better, you could reduce by 1 the qualifying spots from each meeting, and instead seed to the final the reigning World Champ, the GP champ for that year and the under 21 GP champ for that year (if the GP champs had already qualified, those spots could go instead to the best performed rider not having qualified).

 

What do people think. Could it work, and would this satisfy those in favour of a return to the old ways?

[Humphrey Appleby]

What do people think. Could it work, and would this satisfy those in favour of a return to the old ways?

 

It wouldn't solve any of the issues related to the current SGP, and having two 'world championships' would dilute the value of the title. It would end-up like boxing where there are so many world titles that no-one can take any of them very seriously.

 

A knockout world championship would just add more dates to the calendar, wouldn't improve the prize money, nor would address the issue of money flowing out of the sport. I would agree that the SGP needs to have a more open qualification process, but that could be achieved in other ways.

[Dave_minall]

Wouldn't work, and once again there is nothing wrong with the current system - it's factors outside of the GP that are having an effect.

 

If poland didn't have the ridiculous 1 GP rider per team rule, this whole debate wouldn't exist.

 

Don't blame the solution, blame the problem.