Speedway...the name?

[fatface]

Was at a sports conference this week and I got talking to some guys from British Fencing....and I said that they would have more luck engaging kids if they called it sword-fighting. Anyway, got me thinking about the names of sports and I don't remember ever actually hearing how speedway got its name. Why is is not called dirt-track racing? I prefer the name 'speedway', but just curious....

[bigdave]

44 minutes ago, fatface said:

Was at a sports conference this week and I got talking to some guys from British Fencing....and I said that they would have more luck engaging kids if they called it sword-fighting. Anyway, got me thinking about the names of sports and I don't remember ever actually hearing how speedway got its name. Why is is not called dirt-track racing? I prefer the name 'speedway', but just curious....

The speedway we refer to is the shortened name for Motorcycle Speedway. Here is Wikipedia's take on the origins of the sport: Motorcycle speedway - Wikipedia

 

[iris123]

2 hours ago, fatface said:

Was at a sports conference this week and I got talking to some guys from British Fencing....and I said that they would have more luck engaging kids if they called it sword-fighting. Anyway, got me thinking about the names of sports and I don't remember ever actually hearing how speedway got its name. Why is is not called dirt-track racing? I prefer the name 'speedway', but just curious....

Not sure, but thought we had a thread or at least a convo on this before.

If i am not wrong our old friend Parsoles did mention there was a time when they tried to go from the original dirt track racing to 'dracing' along the lines that they wanted to use 'gracing' (i think from memory) for greyhound racing

Speedway was of course in use previous to our sport (ok, that is another debate) with the Indianapolis Speedway....which then gave the name to the US car track racing....and speedway was in use in the US previous to track racing as being the name of the new highways

for my tuppence. Sure norbold will give us more detail 

[iris123]

One comment among a few on here previously

 

[iris123]

Not sure if this is the first 'speedway'. But maybe the first link between motorbike racing and a speedway. 1904

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_Fairgrounds_Speedway

[norbold]

I'm not really sure of the origin of the word speedway and how it came to be applied to the sport.

This is as far as I can trace it. Inventor and entrepreneur, A J Hunting, opened the concrete Marouba Speedway track somewhere round about 1924/5. Before that, a series of small oval track meetings had been held at West Maitland and various other locations. Although they were actually grass tracks, the grass got so worn away that the riders were effectively riding on dirt. Because this made the racing more spectacular, A J Hunting began to create first class dirt tracks from the off, i.e., not relying on the grass being worn away. 

His first was in Brisbane and it was this track that was really the first specially created dirt track. Others soon followed suit, for example Johnnie Hoskins created Sydney Royal Speedway.

Hunting then set up his organisation, International Speedways Limited to bring speedway to this country and founded the Speedway News, the first edition of which came out on 19 May, 1928.

That quote from TwoMinuteWarning that iris reproduced above is not quite accurate as the term speedway is used in that very first Speedway News to denote the racing and not just the stadium or track. For example, there is a large advert on Page 12 for the Gold Helmet which says that "the Gold Helmet is the blue riband of speedway racing....", though, it has to be said that both terms, speedway and dirt track racing, are used throughout.

Enquiries are ongoing!

 

 

[chunky]

Of course it can't bloody be called bloody dirt-track bloody racing, as there's no bloody dirt on the bloody tracks. Anyway, if it's supossed to be bloody dirt-track, why do we have a bloody dirt deflector?

[norbold]

In 1926, Cambridge undergraduate and keen motorcyclist, Lionel Wills, visited Australia. He later wrote about this visit:

"To a keen motor-cyclist, a trip to Australia did not hold forth much promise...

"My first pennyworth of Sydney newspaper contained a pleasant surprise; for there, tucked away in a corner, was the announcement 'Speedway Royal - next Saturday 8 p.m.'

"A strange new word - 'Speedway';  but it sounded not unlike something to do with motor-cycles.

"Saturday arrived: I paid my half-dollar and trickled into the grounds. From the other side of the stand came a roar, the old familiar sound of a racing Douglas.....

"I broke into a run [and] burst into the arena. Two machines were hurtling straight at me at a hundred and fifty miles an hour, neck and neck, clean out of control. They were skidding, broadside on, engines roaring flat out, and for the first time in a mis-spent life I shut my eyes and waited for the crash.

"No, no crash! Let's have a look, sure enough there they are, blinding down the straight and heeling madly over into the next bend. This time they're for it; they can't get away with that sort of thing twice; the chap on the outside is mad - you can't skid a motor-cycle like that. Hi! Someone stop him and tell him so; this is blue murder.

"Came a bored voice from behind, 'Shut up, you fool, they're only practising, wait till the racing starts!"
 

[Bavarian]

Interesting topic this.

Could it be that "Dirt Track" was more of a general term, and "Speedway" was introduced as a more specific term for the short distance racing on the smaller tracks? A new name, to differenciate the new sport from what the Americans had long known back then and what they still know today as Dirt Track or Flat Track racing?

I wonder if the term "Speedway" was chosen to give the teams' league racing it a catchy name, when that got going in 1929. Initially there had been an "English Dirt Track League", but not for long under this name. The term "Speedway"-League was probably more appealing, sounding more modern and exciting. It will have been regarded as more appropriate a term for this new team sport. A concisely desiganted name, just like other sports such as "Cricket" or "Rugby" had.

On the continent, where league racing was never established in the pre-war years, the sport remained to be known as "Dirt Track". Here the term "Speedway" didn't catch on until well after the war.