Legends What Order?

[waiheke1]

Holder now one of the top 5 Aussies of all time?

[stratton]

Holder now one of the top 5 Aussies of all time?

no order. J Crump, Young, Sanders, Holder, (Crump senior/ Adams) could not leave either out.!

[waiheke1]

Huxley, Duggan?

Interesting reading Briggos autobiography, saying that he reckons Crump snr would have been world champ in 75 if he'd done it right - reckons he should have used the four valve for the first month of the season where he cleaned up, and then kept it for the world final. The psycholigical edge of the riders not having beaten Crump while he was on the 4 valvve he reckons would have given him the edge to take out the title.

[stratton]

Huxley, Duggan?

Interesting reading Briggos autobiography, saying that he reckons Crump snr would have been world champ in 75 if he'd done it right - reckons he should have used the four valve for the first month of the season where he cleaned up, and then kept it for the world final. The psycholigical edge of the riders not having beaten Crump while he was on the 4 valvve he reckons would have given him the edge to take out the title.

Both were great riders the reason they were not included were no fault of there own just the war (ect).Crump in 75 was outstanding and that was his chance gone, but he still had a great career also he had a squeak in PCs win.1982 he was disappointing and i thought he could really ruffle some feathers as in league racing he was still a force to be reconned with.

[AD1974]

Very interesting topic this one: going back to the format at the start of the thread - picking the top 5 for each nation is like an all-time World Cup I guess. I have done something along these lines as an all-time individual World Final which appearaed on the Speedway Plus website a while back.

 

I'm a statistician and have analysed all the World Finals - or nearest equivalents from each year - right back to 1929. I know the old chestnut that stats don't tell you everything but when trying to compare riders of different eras what else can you go on really. This is based on actual achievements in world finals only which goes some way to explain why Bobby Schwartz isn't even considered (how did he never make a final?!) and Chris Holder isn't even in the Aussie top 10 just yet! Also it is on form over a fairly consistent period of time so riders who shone briefly, albeit very brightly, at the top, such as Tom Farndon or Vic Duggan, are held back a little by that although I have tried to take special cases into account where possible.

 

And believe me when I say some of the results surprised me too but I'm just reporting what comes out! I know at their very best you could say anybody who won a title (Ermolenko, Jonsson, Szczakiel & Holder all lose out to riders who never won) would beat anybody who didn't but I had to pick some rules and stick by them! (An extreme of this would be that Kenny Carter never made the top 3 but keeps out people like Michael Lee and 2-time champ Freddie Williams who you could very sensibly argue were better riders at their peak.)

 

Anyway, seeing this thread gave me a gentle nudge to update the 2012 GP results and thought it may be of interest for people to see how it translates to this for each nation's top 5...

 

In a WTC style the C Final would have:

 

3rd Czechs - Lukas Dryml, Roman Matousek, Jiri Stancl, Antonin Kasper & Martin Vaculik

2nd Germans - Egon Muller, Karl Maier, Gerd Riss, Josef Hofmeister & Georg Hack

1st Rest of the World - Eric Chitty (Canada), Rune Holta (Norway), Armando Castagna (Italy), Kai Niemi (Finland) & Sverre Harrfeldt (Norway)

 

B FINAL:

 

4th Russia - Igor Plechanov, Emil Sajfutdinov, Boris Samorodov, Grigori Khlinovski & Vladimir Gordeev

3rd Poland - Tomasz Gollob, Pawel Waloszek, Jarek Hampel, Antoni Woryna & Zenon Plech

2nd New Zealand - Ivan Mauger, Barry Briggs, Ronnie Moore, Ron Johnston & Bob Andrews

1st Great Britain - Jack Parker, Bill Kitchen, Peter Collins, Peter Craven & Kenny Carter

 

AND THE BIG FINAL -

 

4th USA - Jack Milne, Greg Hancock, Bruce Penhall, Wilbur Lamoreaux & Billy Hamill

3rd Australia - Jason Crump, Bluey Wilkinson, Jack Young, Leigh Adams & Vic Huxley

2nd Sweden - Ove Fundin, Tony Rickardsson, Anders Michanek, Bjorn Knutsson & Olle Nygren

 

and the WORLD CHAMPIONS

 

DENMARK - Hans Nielsen, Nicki Pedersen, Ole Olsen, Erik Gundersen & Jan O Pedersen

[waiheke1]

How have you worked out these stats? must say i found it perplexing that you could rate carter - three finals no top 3 finishes - ahead ofxlee, who finished on the podium three times. i then noted that carter hsd a hifher points per final record than lee which i thought could explain it- though this would seem a slightly simplistic measure- but lee had a higher average than peter collins who nade your list?

also, how did u compare scores/results from gps (and various formats) vs old style finals?

[AD1974]

I'd start by saying that personally/subjectively I'd place the 3 riders you mention in the order of Collins first, Lee second and Carter third if they could all meet at their very best. Whatever - I think we'd all like some Brits of their standard around today!

 

I suppose the hardest question is - how do you define a rider's peak? Roughly my stuff is based primarily on the best '15 consecutive rides' for each rider. I've tried to remove things such as exclusions, falls, EFs and a few other bits and pieces as much as possible too to give a better reflection of their actual points scoring at their peak. (That said you've highlighted an interesting quirk with Collins where I've made a 50/50 call to leave a ride in but I guess many would have taken it out?)

 

If you're interested in the geekery side for the 3 riders you mentioned then here it is - but it's probably a little boring to anybody not obsessed with numbers!

 

For Peter Collins his best 'run of 15' was 3 3 0 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 3 2 - this gets a weighting to give more emphasis to his 'best run of 5' and 'best run of 10' and ends with an average final score of 13.16.

 

Carter was tricky as he only had 13 completed rides but this has been extended to 15 using his average race score so his best run was 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 1 2 3 3 1 1 2.38 2.38 - average weighted score of 12.79.

 

Michael Lee has a best run of 2 3 3 0 3 2 3 3 3 3 1 3 2 0 3 - average weighted score of 12.17.

 

Basically consistency costs Lee a higher rating.

 

The thing I mentioned above with Collins is that the 0 in his scores was the one in the '75 World Final when his chances were cocked up by some fans watering the track. I've tried to avoid getting involved in hypotheticals as much as possible but perhaps harsh that I've left this ride in. Would move his score up to 13.67 if I took it out.

 

 

Yes, GPs were a bit of a stinker to compare! Very briefly I've converted each GP into a 'ride' (top 4=3, next 4=2 etc) and then averaged these into 5 rides. Not easy but the most sensible method I could come up with to equate one format to the other.

 

The hardest for me was trying to include the best equivalent from the war years and how much to 'extrapolate' riders who had shortened careers. The balance between acknowledging the weaker fields outside official finals but not overly punishing riders like Bill Kitchen and Eric Chitty was a nightmare! As the old saying goes - you can only beat what is in front of you. Then there are also people like Tom Farndon, who just didn't get enough rides to try and extrapolate how good he was, and Vic Duggan who lost what would probably have been his peak years completely to WWII. It's hard to do anything other than hypothesize about just how the names I've mentioned would measure up against people like Collins, Carter & Lee.

 

 

My aim was to attempt to compare actual results as objectively as possible but you don't have to look hard through riders you know well to find examples where the ranking doesn't tell the whole story. For example:

Was Andy Smith really a better rider than John Cook, Ronnie Correy or Joe Screen?

Was Armando Castgana better than Shawn Moran?

Was Kelly really the better of the Moran brothers?

 

 

Never going to be a perfect way of doing this - which is what makes this kind of conversation so great - but with so many riders people never saw racing and so many different eras it's hard to find any better way to try and look at the question objectively.

 

Hope this wasn't all too boring - I did warn you I'm a statistician so really the clue was in my previous post! And apologies if the reply is late coming through but I'm still in my 'new to the forum' period where my posts need approving by a mod!

[stratton]

Carter in front of Lee no way head to head Lee was in front, Carter I loved as a rider was very talented and should of had a chance of winning a championship.But Lee especially was a special talent the best I've seen aged 16 and I would say be level with PC who also was a mega talent both of them were in front of Carter but Carter was a talent no doubt about it.

Edited January 18, 2013 by sidney

[bill94d]

You surely can't have an Australian all time great team without Graham Warren? Never seen him mentioned, but I'm new to this!!

[AD1974]

Carter in front of Lee no way head to head Lee was in front, Carter I loved as a rider was very talented and should of had a chance of winning a championship.But Lee especially was a special talent the best I've seen aged 16 and I would say be level with PC who also was a mega talent both of them were in front of Carter but Carter was a talent no doubt about it.

 

 

With 100% honesty my gut feeling says that on their very best day, with both totally free of all the problems that went on in their heads at various stages, Lee would come out on top. He certainly had the most natural talent and clearly was the better of the pair in their first 3 seasons of riding. To be fair I think you would struggle to name many who can claim to be ahead of Lee in their first 3 seasons - a 10+ average, senior & junior British titles, 9 points in a WTC win and 4th in a World Final which, with a tougher ref, he may even have won!

 

Once Carter caught him up at the very top level though I would say there is next to nothing between them.

 

It's certainly true that Lee won a World Final, had two 3rds and a 4th place while Carter never got higher than 5th. I don't like dealing in hypotheticals but Carter suffered bad luck(?) in 81 & 82 and was injured in 84 & 85 so that best finish of 5th is a little misleading for sure. You could definitely justify a perfectly sensible method which puts Lee ahead using just the numbers but the over '3 years' method I went for Carter ranks higher.

 

Also, away from just world finals, if you compare the 2 all round in terms of any other bits of their careers it is hard to split them too - WARNING, another geek overload on its way!

 

Going from the speedway database website - http://wwosbackup.proboards.com/index.cgi - you could barely get a piece of tissue paper between them. Looking at their best 5 seasons - Lee wins 4 of the 5 but Carter wins on average across them on account of having a higher 'best ever' so not sure how much that helps!

 

Both won the British Junior title in their first full top flight season and both won two senior British titles. Lee was part of 2 World Cup winning sides whilst Carter won a World Pairs and if you look at their scores in these competitions it is hard to split them on that to be honest. Carter can throw in a pair of British League Riders wins too.

 

I guess it depends excatly what question you are asking and how you judge what their very best was. If you are looking at them racing on their very best day I think I'd stick with my gut feeling that Lee would win more than he'd lose. If you are measuring them over a longer period at the very top of their game I think personally I would plump for Carter by a very small margin.

 

For full disclosure I think it best to own up to the fact that I grew up near Halifax and got into speedway in the early 80s so no surprises for guessing where any subjectivity will obviously lead me although I've tried my best to not do this! :-)

[stratton]

A great post AD1974, and you have put a great case across i liked both and it is down to everyone's own opinion.Lee for me where his record holds up is that his head to head record from 1977 til 83 is very good against the best.Mauger,Olsen,Penhall,Nielsen,Gundersen,Sigalos,Moran if i hazard a guess and going through the meetings Lee,s career meetings with Collins and Jessup over the years were very close.

Edited January 22, 2013 by sidney

[Seymour Dix]

Hi ww, gotta say the only times I've seen Howard Cole mentioned in speedway literature he is always identified as English e.g. Maurice Jones book on the World Final- Howard Cole appeared in1969 and is shown as English. Bob Hughes interesting case -does anyone know where he was born??

 

I think Bob Hughes was born in Anglesey North Wales. If memory serves me he was a useful 1st Div 2nd String/ Reserve.

[waiheke1]

I'd start by saying that personally/subjectively I'd place the 3 riders you mention in the order of Collins first, Lee second and Carter third if they could all meet at their very best. Whatever - I think we'd all like some Brits of their standard around today!

 

I suppose the hardest question is - how do you define a rider's peak? Roughly my stuff is based primarily on the best '15 consecutive rides' for each rider. I've tried to remove things such as exclusions, falls, EFs and a few other bits and pieces as much as possible too to give a better reflection of their actual points scoring at their peak. (That said you've highlighted an interesting quirk with Collins where I've made a 50/50 call to leave a ride in but I guess many would have taken it out?)

 

If you're interested in the geekery side for the 3 riders you mentioned then here it is - but it's probably a little boring to anybody not obsessed with numbers!

 

For Peter Collins his best 'run of 15' was 3 3 0 3 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 3 2 - this gets a weighting to give more emphasis to his 'best run of 5' and 'best run of 10' and ends with an average final score of 13.16.

 

Carter was tricky as he only had 13 completed rides but this has been extended to 15 using his average race score so his best run was 3 2 3 3 3 3 3 1 2 3 3 1 1 2.38 2.38 - average weighted score of 12.79.

 

Michael Lee has a best run of 2 3 3 0 3 2 3 3 3 3 1 3 2 0 3 - average weighted score of 12.17.

 

Basically consistency costs Lee a higher rating.

 

The thing I mentioned above with Collins is that the 0 in his scores was the one in the '75 World Final when his chances were cocked up by some fans watering the track. I've tried to avoid getting involved in hypotheticals as much as possible but perhaps harsh that I've left this ride in. Would move his score up to 13.67 if I took it out.

 

 

Yes, GPs were a bit of a stinker to compare! Very briefly I've converted each GP into a 'ride' (top 4=3, next 4=2 etc) and then averaged these into 5 rides. Not easy but the most sensible method I could come up with to equate one format to the other.

 

The hardest for me was trying to include the best equivalent from the war years and how much to 'extrapolate' riders who had shortened careers. The balance between acknowledging the weaker fields outside official finals but not overly punishing riders like Bill Kitchen and Eric Chitty was a nightmare! As the old saying goes - you can only beat what is in front of you. Then there are also people like Tom Farndon, who just didn't get enough rides to try and extrapolate how good he was, and Vic Duggan who lost what would probably have been his peak years completely to WWII. It's hard to do anything other than hypothesize about just how the names I've mentioned would measure up against people like Collins, Carter & Lee.

 

 

My aim was to attempt to compare actual results as objectively as possible but you don't have to look hard through riders you know well to find examples where the ranking doesn't tell the whole story. For example:

Was Andy Smith really a better rider than John Cook, Ronnie Correy or Joe Screen?

Was Armando Castgana better than Shawn Moran?

Was Kelly really the better of the Moran brothers?

 

 

Never going to be a perfect way of doing this - which is what makes this kind of conversation so great - but with so many riders people never saw racing and so many different eras it's hard to find any better way to try and look at the question objectively.

 

Hope this wasn't all too boring - I did warn you I'm a statistician so really the clue was in my previous post! And apologies if the reply is late coming through but I'm still in my 'new to the forum' period where my posts need approving by a mod!

 

Thanks for the replies, as a bit of a stats geek myself I found it interesting. Just a few thoughts.

1. I think in determining "greatness" to look at World Final perfrmances only is a bit limiting. Not considering for example Barry Briggs consecutive BLRC titles, Hans Nielsen’s dominance of the BL, or Peter Collins team riding and World Pairs titles with 5(?) different partners, does them a disservice. But I do appreciate that in depth statistical analysis of all competitions would be incredibly time consuming!
   
2. With a statistical approach focusing on World Finals only , I think you need to have some sort of “bonus” system to reward world titles and rostrum finishes. A 13 point display which earns a third spot is surely not equivalent to one such as Gunderrsen’s title winning display in 1985 . Also seems ludicrous that Lee (one world title, two third places) could finish behind Carter (5^th placed highest finish)
   
3. I like the idea of adjusting for engine failures and crashes which were not purely rider error. However, rather than excluding these, perhaps a better approach would be to take the riders position at the time of the incident. So carter would get a second place for his e/f in 81 and a third for his fall in 82. If you are adjusting, I think you do need to adjust for the Collins fall you mentioned too.
   
4. Personally, I think a better approach would be to look at rider’s top 5 world finals, rathe r than three consecutive, and perhaps adding 2 points to the meeting score for winning the event, 1 point for second and 0.5 points for third, or something like that. I think this allows reward of performance over a period of time, and doesn’t unfairly penalize riders who may have consistently made world finals but had the odd “off” meeting.
   
5. Carter vs Lee is an interesting one, in that their peaks didn’t really overlap. Lee was great 1977-80 and 1983, Carter from 80-85 (but missed large chunks of 84/85 with injury), so only in 1983 were they both world class at the same time – in that year I believe Lee’s performances outstripped Carter’s. Personally, at the time (I started going in 81) I always ranked Carter above Lee, I guess because for most for that period KC was the better rider of the two, and bvecuase I watched most of my speedqay at Hyde Rd (and also the Shay) both tracks where Carter excelled
   

I also did some statistical analysis a while back (using a method similar to what I outlined above with best 5 performances in each stage evaluated with bonus points for rostrum finishes and qualification) on the world finals (and qualifiers ) of the 80s, Lee I think I had being eliminated at overseas final stage, while Carter made the final and finished 6

^th

. However, using the same system I also had Lee placing fifth in a best of the 70s final.

. However, looking back at their careers I think you have to rank Lee ahead of Carter, certainly in terms

of pure talent but also in terms of achievement.

As a footnote, I was at Odsal when both rode their final world chsmpionship

meetings, and what a sad way for two English greats to bow out. It was the British semi final 1986, Lee started with a last and then failed to finish any of his remaining rides. Carter had only two points at the interval (on his home track!), but won his last two rides and a run-off to qualify for the British final – which of course he wouldn’t ride in, as less than a week later he was dead. If you want a defining moment in the deline of English speedway, that particular emeting stands out for me (even if England did end with a healthy number of finalists that year, none of them were nearly as talented as Lee and Carter, the two Englishmen of the generation genuinely good enough to have been world Champ.

Edited March 8, 2013 by waihekeaces1

[stratton]

Lee,s career finished in my opinion when he was loaded up ready to go to the British Final but was stopped as the pathetic ban was not overturned.A disaster for him and speedway and then for me speedway spiralled downhill the debate on the Lee,Carter, Collins has been brilliant and is a very close thing.For me my top 3 Brits would be Craven, Lee, Collins, with Carter in amongst a host of other riders SImmo crash,Jessup,Louis,Wilson,

Edited March 8, 2013 by sidney

[oldace]

Lee,s career finished in my opinion when he was loaded up ready to go to the British Final but was stopped as the pathetic ban was not overturned.A disaster for him and speedway and then for me speedway spiralled downhill the debate on the Lee,Carter, Collins has been brilliant and is a very close thing.For me my top 3 Brits would be Craven, Lee, Collins, with Carter in amongst a host of other riders SImmo crash,Jessup,Louis,Wilson,

 

Not a bad top three although I would have them in a different order. Three superbly natural talents on a speedway bike.

[The White Knight]

Mine would be Craven, Collins and Lee with Simmo in fourth.

[waiheke1]

For me my top 3 Brits would be Craven, Lee, Collins, with Carter in amongst a host of other riders SImmo crash,Jessup,Louis,Wilson,

collins, craven,lee for me.

I can see valid arguments for and against ranking carter above/below simmons and jessup, but think you'd certainly have to rank him ahead of crash, louis and wilson, none of whom (imho) were ever really genuine world title contenders.

[stratton]

 

collins, craven,lee for me.

I can see valid arguments for and against ranking carter above/below simmons and jessup, but think you'd certainly have to rank him ahead of crash, louis and wilson, none of whom (imho) were ever really genuine world title contenders.

Craven ( a 10 times world finalist) 2 times champion rostrum x2 died at only aged 29.On achievements alone i would of thought he would have to be in front of Collins? As for Louis you underate him i believe,he did get a rostrum spot was 4th once and he was a late starter in speedway.Louis was underated was his world final stats better than Kenny? one of the best i see ride at the Abbey in the 70s could beat Briggs and crash and not many did that!

[The White Knight]

Craven ( a 10 times world finalist) 2 times champion rostrum x2 died at only aged 29.On achievements alone i would of thought he would have to be in front of Collins? As for Louis you underate him i believe,he did get a rostrum spot was 4th once and he was a late starter in speedway.Louis was underated was his world final stats better than Kenny? one of the best i see ride at the Abbey in the 70s could beat Briggs and crash and not many did that!

 

Simmo finished SECOND one year sidney.

[stratton]

 

 

Simmo finished SECOND one year sidney.

Yes he did WK, in 76, 1975 and 1976 Crump could of won it couldn't do it though. Simmo was a stylist never ever see that guy out of control on a speedway bike. Edited March 9, 2013 by sidney