FIM Women's Speedway Academy at Belle Vue

[truthsayer]

In a sport that needs as many new competitors as it can get, it is encouraging to see this forum encouraging 50% of the population to take up speedway.

Again, speedway's obsession with 'team' racing sees it miss an opportunity. Women's speedway could easily be a thing and bring welcome numbers into the industry and publicity to the sport.

Not every competitor needs to challenge to be a world champion, sometimes being a participant is all that matters. Speedway's lack of inclusion is just one of things that will lead to its demise.

[DazS]

next you will be asking to give out medals to the losers.

13 minutes ago, truthsayer said:

15 minutes ago, truthsayer said:

15 minutes ago, truthsayer said:

Not every competitor needs to challenge to be a world champion, sometimes being a participant is all that matters. Speedway's lack of inclusion is just one of things that will lead to its demise.



 

 

[truthsayer]

2 minutes ago, DazS said:

next you will be asking to give out medals to the losers.

 

No, not at all.

If you play Sunday league football you are doing it because you want to play, not because you think you'll win the FA Cup.

I can ride motocross for fun, but I can't really ride speedway for fun - it's all about getting people into teams.

I'm in my 40s. Been around bikes all my life and tried speedway a bit in the past. I'd happily have a speedway bike in the garage and use it to practice and do some amateur meetings maybe 10 times a year. I'd probably put £3000-4000 in the speedway economy every year, but there's no place for me to race. It is not, to use a modern term, inclusive.

Seniors racing, womens' racing, electric racing, youth racing, classic racing.... all potential audiences for speedway to build its participant base. But no, it's a closed shop and would rather focus on team racing and bringing in ready made imports. There, straight away, is an income stream for speedway and a way to build the sport. It's economics as much as anything.

[DazS]

we all know we are in a cost of living crises  , the media keep reminding us.and guess who controls that. anyway good to know your into your bikes i am likewise, i did race speedway in the eighties, in fact my 1st bike i ever rode was a jap., 1st time i ever rode a bike with brakes and gears i was 28, did a bit of moto cross, then past my bike test when i was 30. done a few track days and mad Sunday isle of man. all good clean fun.

[truthsayer]

So how appealing would it be for a speedway club to have a meeting consisting of 16 female riders, 16 classic riders and 16 youth riders?

48 competitors and three meetings on a day. Each pays £150 to enter and they don’t have to worry about attracting a crowd or paying anyone at the end.

That’s sport at a grassroots level. Speedway doesn’t have this but there’s no reason why it couldn’t. I’m not saying it would be easy, but as a business model I’d bet it’s a heck of a lot easier than paying out money to international riders, in the hope that they can create a product which brings in enough at the gate to make it financially viable.

This is why it is important to attract competitors into the sport.

[DazS]

in the early eighties i did training schools at Bellevue Hyde rd and Ellesmere port, 30 to 40 riders every week , nothing like that now. like you say speedway bike only one thing you can do with it race speedway. numbers your talking just not there. 

[truthsayer]

Just now, DazS said:

numbers you're talking just not there. 

They are not there just now, for sure, but they could be. I don't think it's a difficult target to try and meet.

Speedway needs to build a grassroots. I genuinely don't think this is asking too much. Even if that wasn't achievable, 30 riders paying £100 for a good day of racing and practice should be possible if you target the right people, and hopefully viable for some venues.

 

[DazS]

love your enthusiasm, but aint gonna happen. people want everything handed to them on a plate these days, the get up and go people, slowly being told to shut up. (in a inclusive way)

[truthsayer]

8 minutes ago, DazS said:

 people want everything handed to them on a plate these days, the get up and go people, slowly being told to shut up. (in a inclusive way)

I agree with you, but not in the way you probably think.

Modern society makes things easy and accessible for us. To order a takeaway, watch live sport, to have a debate like we are here... are so easy because of technology. The things that were special to us 20 years ago are not so special now, because everything is so easy to access.

But people still want to do stuff, especially over 40s and 50s, where we have money, memories and a bit of health! 

Seriously, those running speedway need to understand times have changed and that tastes and standards are higher than they once were. They need to develop their product for those who 'want it handed on a plate'. Driving for hours to get two or three races after the main meeting is not good value for 'junior' riders. Making a product where I pay to play and know I am getting good value is the modern way of doing things. 

Getting back on topic, women's speedway can be a way to regenerate the sport. There's an opportunity to make the sport accessible by females who have felt excluded from other forms of motorcycle racing, a good PR opportunity and a chance to build a business model away from the currently unsustainable spectator sport/team racing format. It's a formula which could equally be extended to youth racing, and to those who want to race classic bikes or uprights.

As an aside, I could see a 'Masters Tour' being good business for the current speedway audience. 

[DazS]

the technology given to us is not in our best interests, its actually dumbing us down , as a society we are so controlled you even think we are free living human beings, you do understand they money we work for and spend most of our time trying to make a living. the money from the central banks is created out of thin air.. to cut a long story short we and our labour is the money and they are the parasites living of us. they are taking the p8ss out of us, we must now be the most ignorant people who have ever lived.bet you dont even know the meaning of the word government, (control the mind) but dont you worry about that its just a conspiracy theory. 

[KK62]

On 8/13/2023 at 10:30 AM, truthsayer said:

In a sport that needs as many new competitors as it can get, it is encouraging to see this forum encouraging 50% of the population to take up speedway.

Again, speedway's obsession with 'team' racing sees it miss an opportunity. Women's speedway could easily be a thing and bring welcome numbers into the industry and publicity to the sport.

Not every competitor needs to challenge to be a world champion, sometimes being a participant is all that matters. Speedway's lack of inclusion is just one of things that will lead to its demise.

Three ladies in Redcars Amateur meeting yesterday and all scored good points.

Katie Gordon was third in the Open Class, Rachel Hellowell on the rostrum in her class and Morgan Leonard scored good points.

[MassMarauder]

Women race against men all the time in the States, at least in New York.  And yes, you can comment on track size but the women I have seen race and have spoken to were not worried in the slightest about racing blokes.  It's not a physical one on one combat sport.  Bike control and riding ability counts.  I admit in the  top leagues/GP level, elbows on corner 1 are important.  Personally I think it would be great to open up the National league (d3) to women in teams.  If they want to race, let 'em.

[*JJ]

14 hours ago, MassMarauder said:

Women race against men all the time in the States, at least in New York.  And yes, you can comment on track size but the women I have seen race and have spoken to were not worried in the slightest about racing blokes.  It's not a physical one on one combat sport.  Bike control and riding ability counts.  I admit in the  top leagues/GP level, elbows on corner 1 are important.  Personally I think it would be great to open up the National league (d3) to women in teams.  If they want to race, let 'em.

There would be nothing stopping them, if they were good enough.

[truthsayer]

20 hours ago, MassMarauder said:

Women race against men all the time in the States, at least in New York.  And yes, you can comment on track size but the women I have seen race and have spoken to were not worried in the slightest about racing blokes.  It's not a physical one on one combat sport.  Bike control and riding ability counts.  I admit in the  top leagues/GP level, elbows on corner 1 are important.  Personally I think it would be great to open up the National league (d3) to women in teams.  If they want to race, let 'em.

There is nothing stopping women racing against men here in the UK either, it's happened a few times with little success.

There will always be a debate about 'women's only' motorcycle racing. I am not a woman, and to be honest different women will have different opinions to each other, but one could see a demand for a female category.

Why, because any woman coming into the sport today will be handicapped not by their physicality but by the fact they have less experience than competitors and by prejudice. There are women who want to race motorcycles, but they so often quit because they've not felt welcome in a man's world. This has happened often in superbike racing. Speedway has a chance to make a 'safe space' for female competitors by making a 'women only' competition. It takes time, but it can evolve into a serious championship which would help attract a different audience too.

Speedway's formula of relying on spectators paying to watch team racing is unsustainable. If speedway is to survive in the UK, it needs to find ways to create a product where competitors pay to play - as is the case in almost every other sport in the world. That probably means categorisation: youth racing, classic racing, Over 50s, uprights, sidecars, flattrackers, women... making the sport more inclusive. Women would seem to be an obvious place to start and would be symbolic, if nothing else, of throwing off the chains of speedway's stubborn reluctance to change.