iris123 Posted January 10, 2022 Report Share Posted January 10, 2022 (edited) Talk about a round of the Ivan mauger farewell in Bremen brought back memories of the old place. Not that i ever went there. But a nice stadium in a big city with some top meetings held there. The Bremen Golden Key was i think their annual top event, and Mauger won it a few times i seem t recall. Anyway, someone has posted a nice history on Wiki The Hansastadion (also spelled Hansa-Stadion) was a motorsport racetrack in the northwest German city of Bremen. It had a sand track, was mainly used for the speedway and, with seating for up to 15,000, was one of the largest sports facilities in Bremen. A total of 70 racing days were held here between September 1953 and May 1988. The Hansastadion was located in the Bremen district of Kattenturm, which is part of the Obervieland district and, above all, the southern district. It was between the street Arsterdamm - a large northwest-southeast tangent of the district - in the southwest and the Mühlendamm in the northeast, opposite the confluence of the street Im Arster Felde in the Arsterdamm. The Mühlendamm was expanded to the western section of the Arsten motorway feeder in the mid-1970s. Speedway races were held in Bremen immediately after the end of the Second World War. For example, in front of several thousand spectators, they drove on a dirt track near the Zum Kuhhirten restaurant on Stadtwerder. A grass track race in the Vahr district remained unsuccessful. In May 1952 the Motorsport Club (MSC) Hansa was entered in the association register as a local club of the ADAC. It emerged from the Bremen motorcycle club and initially had just under 40 members. The club initially carried out its races mainly at the Zum Kuhhirten, but soon there was a desire for its own racetrack. The 28,000 square meter area of the former Potthast brickworks at Arsterdamm 70 was leased and the residents there signed that they agreed to the construction of a sports and racing track. The construction work - financed without any state or municipal subsidies - began in December 1952, but was interrupted soon afterwards due to the winter frost. The association members filled the disused loam and clay pit on the property with rubble, debris from the New Town and soil. A construction company gave them a bulldozer free of charge to level the site. A layer of red debris was then layed At the time of opening, the Hansastadion had the largest and most modern sand racing track for motorbikes in northern Germany. The track was 398 meters long, ten meters on the straights and 15 meters wide in the bends, making it the only North German sand track to meet international regulations at the time of opening. In the interior of the stadium there was at times a football pitch for VfB Komet Bremen. Any further considerations to open the track for the training of racing cyclists, however, were rejected. The first race in the new Hansastadion was held on September 20, 1953 and, with 8,000 spectators, it already attracted significantly more audiences than had been expected. In the following 36 years there was lively racing and the dirt track in Kattenturm developed into one of the most famous speedway tracks in Europe. There were up to four meetings per year, on each of which several races were held. The main prize was always the "Golden Bremen Key". From 1974 there were also runs for the various world championships in the Hansastadion. The most important events of this kind were: May 1, 1974: Qualifying round of the continental championship of the individual World Championship June 29, 1975: Continental semi-finals of the Team World Cup May 1, 1977: Quarter-finals of the continental round of the individual World Championship July 13, 1980: Continental team World Cup final June 5, 1983: Semi-finals of the Pairs World Cup May 1, 1985: Quarter-finals of the continental round of the individual World Championship In peak times, more than 10,000 spectators attended the races - in some cases they even came from abroad, for example from the Netherlands or Denmark. From 1973 onwards, MSC Hansa and VfB Komet Bremen took part in the then new Speedway Bundesliga. A comprehensive renovation of the stadium took place in the spring of 1978. Not only were modern track fences installed, but the capacity of the stands was also increased to 14,000 or 15,000 spectators by backfilling the ramparts. The racetrack itself was renewed by a British specialist company. 1500 tons of dump and 300 tons of fine slag were used; a very hard, almost dust-free coating was created. After the reopening, the "Master of Speedway" competition took place for the first time on May 1st of the same year, and from then on the world elite of sport regularly competed in Bremen. For example, Zoltán Adorján, Kenny Carter, Peter Collins, Sam Ermolenko, Erik Gundersen, Michael Andrew Lee, Ivan Mauger, Chris Morton, Hans Nielsen, Ole Olsen, Bobby Schwartz and Dennis Sigalos drove in the Hansastadion The decline of the MSC Hansa - and with it the Hansastadion - began in the early 1980s. Fuel and motorcycle prices rose sharply while audience interest fell. An average of 3,000 to 4,000 visitors per day of the race came to Arsterdamm, which meant that the events were hardly profitable for the club. In the course of the emerging environmental movement, high-emission motorsport was also seen as a contributor to environmental problems. The requirements for carrying out the noisy events were increasingly tightened: In the end, it was only allowed to drive four hours per month - and that only in westerly winds below Beaufort 4. That made regular training impossible. After VfB Komet Bremen had also moved to the Arsten district, MSC Hansa pulled its team from the Bundesliga in the spring of 1983 In addition, after the death of the farmer Wilhelm Bredehöft (1896–1980), who had leased the stadium grounds to the club, there was a dispute about its continued use. The 16-strong community of heirs favored commercial use. After a conversation with Building Senator Bernd Meyer, the heirs agreed in the spring of 1985 to allow the MSC Hansa to continue to use it until December 30, 1986. Their application to rededicate the site from green to commercial space, however, was not approved and the Senator did not want to continue the development plan procedure. At the beginning of December 1986, the club received verbal confirmation that it would also be able to host speedway races in the following two years. In April 1987, the Obervieland Advisory Board, MSC Hansa and the Afghanan-Greyhound Club Nord agreed on temporary use of the stadium by the dog club. He wanted to use the facility twice a week to run the animals and organize a race with up to 300 spectators once a year. However, the plans stalled and in October of the same year the advisory board discussed again whether the stadium could actually be made available for greyhound races. When it finally became clear that the lease would not be extended beyond 1988, the city authorities intervened again The group of heirs offered the property for sale for 2.2 million Deutschmarks - a sum that the association was unable to raise. The economic development agency of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen stood out as an interested party and wanted to open up the area for industrial settlements. Corresponding negotiations began on May 17, 1988. The MSC Hansa then turned to the Senator for Economic Affairs and the Sports Department. Senator for Economic Affairs Uwe Beckmeyer stopped the request of the business development agency and pointed out that one wanted to try first to use the stadium for other sporting activities. At the end of June 1988, the Bremen Equestrian Federation considered using the stadium for tournament purposes, but withdrew when it was realized that it was right in the approach lane of Bremen airport. At the same time, western riders from Bremen-Nord also expressed their interest if a sand area was built in the stadium. From October 1988, the members of the MSC Hansa were banned from entering the stadium.The advisory board and local office of Obervieland emphatically demanded the preservation of the sports facility. Ultimately, however, the property was not bought by the public sector, although the city would have liked to keep the site for sport. As a result, the community of heirs officially offered the property for commercial purposes, because there were no binding provisions of a development plan that would have excluded commercial activity at the time. In the discussion, the settlement of two forwarding companies was planned, which the residents rejected because of the announced size of the companies As a result, the deputation for urban development dealt with the problem and passed a plan drawing up resolution, which called on the city planning office to stipulate bindingly what and in what form may be built on the site of the Hansastadion. It was decided to draw up a development plan that should correspond to the interests of all those involved. This decision had suspensive effect for commercial building applications. At Christmas 1988 it became known that the community of heirs was definitely not extending the lease agreement with the association. This meant the end of the speedway races in the Hansastadion. As part of the considerations for possible re-use options, it was considered, among other things, to host the German junior equestrian championships (jumping, dressage, vaulting, pony riding) in the Hansastadion in August 1989. In the end, however, it did not materialize. On November 30, 1990, the empty, wooden clubhouse at the stadium burned down completely. The cause was determined to be arson by young people. In March 1991, Bremer Gewerbebau GmbH offered the site to commercial users for sale. After the stadium was demolished in the 1990s, the site lay fallow for a long time, apart from the establishment of a furniture store. It was not until 2004 that a Christian free church congregation erected its new church building on a plot of land measuring around 7700 square meters. Finally, in March of the same year, the Obervieland Advisory Board decided to name a short - just over 100 meters long - connecting road in the Am Mohrenshof industrial park - at the location of the former sports facility - as Am Hansastadion https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansastadion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFIiSPZCqog Edited January 10, 2022 by iris123 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iris123 Posted January 10, 2022 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2022 (edited) Link to info on the Golden Key - Master of Speedway https://speedwaychampions.yolasite.com/key-bar-hammer-gala.php Edited January 10, 2022 by iris123 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iris123 Posted January 10, 2022 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2022 Found a fairly comprehensive piece on the Master of Speedway meeting Apparently an idea of Ole Olsen and Peter Adams who romoted it. Originally one or two meetings should have been held in the UK, but of course that was turned down by the BSPA https://www.speedway-forum.de/forum/index.php?thread/18836-master-of-speedway-bremen-1978-1988/&pageNo=2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iris123 Posted January 11, 2022 Author Report Share Posted January 11, 2022 (edited) A tv report from the 1980 Continental Final of the SWC, with a tight race between Egon Müller and Eddie Jancarz Result Poland 36, Czech 29 West Germany 26 USSR 5 Edited January 11, 2022 by iris123 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOBBATH Posted January 11, 2022 Report Share Posted January 11, 2022 Most interesting post, Iris. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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