Why Was Wembley Better Than Cardiff?.

[OveFundinFan]

I do prefer the GP series but this year particularly I been thinking it might be too much in a 12 GP series.

I am thinking a 6 series would be better.

Possibly Britain, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Aussie/NZ, Czech/Italy/Slovenia

Possibly take top 5 from previous years, top 3 from Euro Champs, and early season have 64 rider qualifier - top 8 from 4 meeting go to 2 semis, top 8 into a final, top 4 to GP's, 3 permanent wildcards, and 1 GP meeting wild card.

That gives plenty chances for the top riders to qualify one way other another.

Obviously GP season would start a bit later.

 

I wouldnt want to go to a one off world final, as good as Wembley was, perhaps more so for the atmosphere that stadium created in the years a good crowd was the order of the day. Every winner of the one off world championship was worthy, but too many times an engine failure, meeting fall, injury pre world final stopped some from being a worthy champ.

[Bruiser McHuge]

I was a big fan of the old world finals ...I went to ones at Wembley, Gothenburg, Vojens, Norden, Amsterdam and Bradford .....Wembley was great...I even enjoyed Norden in the field !

 

But by the very end the World a Final was a pale shadow of its past...crowds had fallen, very little media interest or TV coverage....Havelock's win must have been one of the lowest profile wins ever and a Brit won it......it had had its day and was fading fast...and if you look back a lot of riders did give up the ghost after 2 or 3 rides and many heats became very predictable outside the tension of the 3 or 4 still in contention of winning..and the fields were often unbalanced with riders often out of their depth from the start.

 

I loved the early world finals I went to and I'd say they had more drama and more tension than most of the GP's , but they were very much of their day and they were dying a slow death at the end.....it was time to move on and the GP's have moved the sport on and look more professional than the last world finals ever did.

[Trees]

Loved the World finals I went to, didn't consider the politics of Speedway as I do now but pleased that the speedway authorities gained from the staging.

 

Also like the fact that the World Championship didn't take such effort for the riders as the gps do now. Keep saying it but a smaller series would be great with BSI gone and the authorities in the staging countries gaining from their own round.

[Grand Central]

I was a big fan of the old world finals ...I went to ones at Wembley, Gothenburg, Vojens, Norden, Amsterdam and Bradford .....Wembley was great...I even enjoyed Norden in the field !

But by the very end the World a Final was a pale shadow of its past...crowds had fallen, very little media interest or TV coverage....Havelock's win must have been one of the lowest profile wins ever and a Brit won it......it had had its day and was fading fast...and if you look back a lot of riders did give up the ghost after 2 or 3 rides and many heats became very predictable outside the tension of the 3 or 4 still in contention of winning..and the fields were often unbalanced with riders often out of their depth from the start.

I loved the early world finals I went to and I'd say they had more drama and more tension than most of the GP's , but they were very much of their day and they were dying a slow death at the end.....it was time to move on and the GP's have moved the sport on and look more professional than the last world finals ever did.

Agree with pretty much all of that.

 

Just one thing that I think gets forgotten about the 'decline' showed in the last few finals, and their venues.

By the mid eighties the FIM was getting dominated by voices that were great advocates of making the move to GP system.

There was no real force or will to make the later World Finals live up to their history.

 

Sorber got Norden, Vaessen the Dutch two-dayer and Ole Olsen got to run a World Final at Vojens in 1988.

The greatest advocate ever of the GP, being the promoter of the first ever World Final to be held at the end of a cul-de-sac on an industrial estate.

Just seven years post Wembley.

 

It wasn't just that the World Finals declined, on their own, they did so with the assistance of those who should have been their custodians.

They were diminished just as much by the 'GP movers' in control picking crap-holes to host them.

The argument to change to a new system is very easy to make if you have been able to denigrate the old system as well.

 

It was a self fulfilling prophecy.

Edited August 14, 2015 by Grand Central

[BWitcher]

 

 

 

What I do agree with though, is it is hideous that a rider can win a GP but not score the most points. Utterly ridiculous. Trying to explain that to new fans has been a right laugh!

 

 

 

What can possibly cause it to be a 'right laugh'.

[Grachan]

What I do agree with though, is it is hideous that a rider can win a GP but not score the most points. Utterly ridiculous. Trying to explain that to new fans has been a right laugh!

No more ridiculous than being able to win most games in a Wimbledon Final but still losing.

[BWitcher]

No more ridiculous than being able to win most games in a Wimbledon Final but still losing.

 

Precisely.. or most points in a set and lose.

 

I really do wonder where these people who allegedly 'laugh' at these things come from. If they even exist of course!

[Bruiser McHuge]

This explaining things to new fans seems a regular issue !........I really don't think new fans give a monkeys as long as they are entertained....that's the be all and end all at the end of the day...

 

As a fan I would certainly not be against a one off world final at a venue like Cardiff and the like....it would be incredibly exciting to have the old qualifiers back again from the Aussie Final and all the national finals through various knockouts through the season ending in a big meeting with live TV and properly hyped .....it could be our Champions League Final or Super Bowl ........I think it's one retro step that would work and would be exciting....

 

But back in the real world it will never happen......the riders wouldn't let it happen...the FIM and the organisers wouldn't let it happen and it would be a non starter...the GP series is a great advert for the sport really...it looks good, it looks professional and comes across well on TV which is always a positive , and it's here to stay

[BWitcher]

The 'new fans laughing' is generally something people just add to their views to try and give them more strength.. has the opposite effect really.

Edited August 14, 2015 by BWitcher

[RobMcCaffery]

80,000 crowd+, Wembley atmosphere and knowing that one rider out of sixteen would be crowned World Champion on the night. It's not that difficult to understand, eh?

 

(Okay, as long as you didn't eat, drink or go to the loo).

[customhouseregular]

A cool-bag with some beers and a couple of dozen scotch eggs did the trick. Going for a pee at Wembley meant missing 4 heats

[waiheke1]

Even more absurd is the fact a rider could win every GP and not win the world title. That's how ridiculous the GP scoring system is.

 

It is possible to win a GP with 12 points with the second place man scoring 20 points. On that basis it is not too fanciful to see a rider becoming World Champion without winning a GP.

Why is it absurd? You could be ranked number one in tennis or golf without winning a major. Win forMula one championship without winning a gp.

What would actually be absurd is a points system where it wasn't possible to be world champ without winning a gp, as it would mean an incredible amount of points being awarded for winning a gp rather than coming second. The points system is the best it has ever been

[Humphrey Appleby]

I was a big fan of the old world finals ...I went to ones at Wembley, Gothenburg, Vojens, Norden, Amsterdam and Bradford .....Wembley was great...I even enjoyed Norden in the field !

But by the very end the World a Final was a pale shadow of its past...crowds had fallen, very little media interest or TV coverage....Havelock's win must have been one of the lowest profile wins ever and a Brit won it......it had had its day and was fading fast...and if you look back a lot of riders did give up the ghost after 2 or 3 rides and many heats became very predictable outside the tension of the 3 or 4 still in contention of winning..and the fields were often unbalanced with riders often out of their depth from the start.

I loved the early world finals I went to and I'd say they had more drama and more tension than most of the GP's , but they were very much of their day and they were dying a slow death at the end.....it was time to move on and the GP's have moved the sport on and look more professional than the last world finals ever did.

This of course is the revisionist myth that GP proponents have created. There was a capacity crowd of maybe 30K+ who watched Havelock win in Wroclaw (I was there), which is an attendance that exceeds anything that most GPs have managed. The following year the world Final went to Pocking which had a maximum capacity of 10K and is in the middle of nowhere, so was never going to pull a big crowd.

 

Only a couple of years earlier, Munich pulled a very large crowd that was likely in excess of anything Cardiff has ever achieved, and Gothenburg was also not shabby.

 

So basically crowds held up pretty well when World Finals were held in attractive locations. As for the unbalanced fields, that was simply down to the way the qualifiers were divided up, and was not inherently a failing of the one-off system. From 1991 onwards though, there were two 'open' Semi-Finals that allowed everyone to reach the World Final on merit, and the fields of latter day Finals had few weak riders.

 

I'm not actually against the GP system, but I suspect had Cardiff and Warsaw been available in the 90s, a World Final there would have drawn as many if not more fans than the GP.

 

But back in the real world it will never happen......the riders wouldn't let it happen...the FIM and the organisers wouldn't let it happen and it would be a non starter...the GP series is a great advert for the sport really...it looks good, it looks professional and comes across well on TV which is always a positive , and it's here to stay

I'd have said cancelling a GP in an indoor stadium of 55k fans looked very unprofessional, did not come over well on television, and was far from a great advert for the sport. Similarly with the borefests in places like Finland, and moving an entire GP to another track at a day's notice.

 

Okay, that's not an inherent failure of the GP system, but could be hurled as a spurious argument against it.

Edited August 14, 2015 by Humphrey Appleby

[topsoil]

This explaining things to new fans seems a regular issue !........I really don't think new fans give a monkeys as long as they are entertained....that's the be all and end all at the end of the day...

 

As a fan I would certainly not be against a one off world final at a venue like Cardiff and the like....it would be incredibly exciting to have the old qualifiers back again from the Aussie Final and all the national finals through various knockouts through the season ending in a big meeting with live TV and properly hyped .....it could be our Champions League Final or Super Bowl ........I think it's one retro step that would work and would be exciting....

 

But back in the real world it will never happen......the riders wouldn't let it happen...the FIM and the organisers wouldn't let it happen and it would be a non starter...the GP series is a great advert for the sport really...it looks good, it looks professional and comes across well on TV which is always a positive , and it's here to stay

I can vouch exactly for the first sentence. Recently went to a meeting with a football team mate of mine, I go every week, he goes once every two or three years. He wasn't interested in guests, rider replacements, he even got the tactical ride rule straight away and never batted an eyelid. He was happy with a pint in his hand and his only comments was about how impressed he was with the riders who "gave it a good go". For all he cared it was riders A B C and D. It just shows you that if speedway wants to win new fans it should concentrate on the entertainment it provides, along with decent facilities, rather than little rule changes.

[waiheke1]

I can vouch exactly for the first sentence. Recently went to a meeting with a football team mate of mine, I go every week, he goes once every two or three years. He wasn't interested in guests, rider replacements, he even got the tactical ride rule straight away and never batted an eyelid. He was happy with a pint in his hand and his only comments was about how impressed he was with the riders who "gave it a good go". For all he cared it was riders A B C and D. It just shows you that if speedway wants to win new fans it should concentrate on the entertainment it provides, along with decent facilities, rather than little rule changes.

Good post

I think it shows that speedway still has a good core product, what is needed is an improvement of the presentation and marketing, to make it 90 minutes of entertainment.

Your post also shows that " mood" is contagious. U and your mate went along to have a good time and did. If you'd spent the two hours going on about how ridiculous the number if guests were and what a farce the TAC ride is, your mate would probably have thought " if someone who goes every week think the rules and sport are a joke, they probably are." They're not likely to enjoy it if you're moaning the whole time. If you describe the TAC sub as being comparable to a losing team in a game of football having goals count double they may laugh. If you instead explain that it's a way of keeping meetings close, partly due to the heavy home advantage in speedway, they'll likely think no more of it and accept it as a quirky rule, most sports have their own quirks.

[mickthemuppet]

 

 

100% agree with you. There are pluses and minuses for both one off world finals and for the GP's. I used to love the qualifying rounds going to KL and Coventry etc for the British, Commonwealth and Overseas finals. But I think some look back at one off World Finals through rose tinted specs. The Finals I can remember were:

89 - Rubbish

90 - Brilliant

91 - not great

92 - boring but over the moon Havvy won

93 - not bad

94 - not bad

CustomHouseRegular I get where you're coming from and I would indeed have loved to seen a Wembely world final, but I disagree that Cardiff is nothing more then a glorified open meeting. Been to every single GP there and always come away thinking it was a good meeting. The boys definitely raise their game for Cardiff. Plus even though I'm a fellow (east) Londoner I think Cardiff is better venue to host a GP. Wembley would be much more expensive, harder for most of the country to get to and there is literally NOTHING to do around the stadium.

What I do agree with though, is it is hideous that a rider can win a GP but not score the most points. Utterly ridiculous. Trying to explain that to new fans has been a right laugh!

 

 

 

 

100% agree with you. There are pluses and minuses for both one off world finals and for the GP's. I used to love the qualifying rounds going to KL and Coventry etc for the British, Commonwealth and Overseas finals. But I think some look back at one off World Finals through rose tinted specs. The Finals I can remember were:

89 - Rubbish

90 - Brilliant

91 - not great

92 - boring but over the moon Havvy won

93 - not bad

94 - not bad

CustomHouseRegular I get where you're coming from and I would indeed have loved to seen a Wembely world final, but I disagree that Cardiff is nothing more then a glorified open meeting. Been to every single GP there and always come away thinking it was a good meeting. The boys definitely raise their game for Cardiff. Plus even though I'm a fellow (east) Londoner I think Cardiff is better venue to host a GP. Wembley would be much more expensive, harder for most of the country to get to and there is literally NOTHING to do around the stadium.

What I do agree with though, is it is hideous that a rider can win a GP but not score the most points. Utterly ridiculous. Trying to explain that to new fans has been a right laugh!

 

Unbelievable

Within 6 miles of Wembley stadium there is more to do that within 60 miles of cardiff stadium.

Wembley is not more expensive.The hotels around there .do not increases their prices like they do in Cardiff

There is probably more trains running into London on one day , than a month going to Cardiff. From abroad there is virtually zero flights going into Cardiff compared to London.I don't think many Poles,swedes or Danes would think Cardiff is easier to get to than London

Edited August 14, 2015 by mickthemuppet

[Trees]

Good post

I think it shows that speedway still has a good core product, what is needed is an improvement of the presentation and marketing, to make it 90 minutes of entertainment.

Your post also shows that " mood" is contagious. U and your mate went along to have a good time and did. If you'd spent the two hours going on about how ridiculous the number if guests were and what a farce the TAC ride is, your mate would probably have thought " if someone who goes every week think the rules and sport are a joke, they probably are." They're not likely to enjoy it if you're moaning the whole time. If you describe the TAC sub as being comparable to a losing team in a game of football having goals count double they may laugh. If you instead explain that it's a way of keeping meetings close, partly due to the heavy home advantage in speedway, they'll likely think no more of it and accept it as a quirky rule, most sports have their own quirks.

A great post too, it's the attitude of the old fans that spoils it for newbies!

[PHILIPRISING]

 

Unbelievable

Within 6 miles of Wembley stadium there is more to do that within 60 miles of cardiff stadium.

Wembley is not more expensive.The hotels around there .do not increases their prices like they do in Cardiff

There is probably more trains running into London on one day , than a month going to Cardiff. From abroad there is virtually zero flights going into Cardiff compared to London.I don't think many Poles,swedes or Danes would think Cardiff is easier to get to than London

BUT there is a whole lot more to do, more bars, restaurants and hotels within half a mile of the Millennium than Wembley Stadium.

[lucifer sam]

Forget Wembley.

 

Go for the Olympic Stadium.

 

Bars, restaurants and hotels all within a few hundred yards.

 

A permanent running track on which a speedway track could be laid.

 

Brilliant public transport (I went to the Anniversary Games a few weeks ago, and it's amazing how quick and easy it is to get back onto the Central Line).

 

50,000 fans inside THAT stadium would make the national press sit up and take notice.

 

All the best

Rob

Edited August 15, 2015 by lucifer sam

[RPNY]

 

Unbelievable

Within 6 miles of Wembley stadium there is more to do that within 60 miles of cardiff stadium.

Wembley is not more expensive.The hotels around there .do not increases their prices like they do in Cardiff

There is probably more trains running into London on one day , than a month going to Cardiff. From abroad there is virtually zero flights going into Cardiff compared to London.I don't think many Poles,swedes or Danes would think Cardiff is easier to get to than London

 

cardiff's social scene it literally outside of the stadium, hence all the speedway fans are together, that wouldn't be the case at Wembley there is nothing around the stadium

the hotels might not increase but i wouldn't want to stay in wembley its not a nice area and if you're staying in the center of london hotels are not cheap

the flights i'll give you but most budget airlines go into stanstead or lute, miles from Wembley