Humphrey Appleby

Not exactly millions - a couple of million a year, and the exact amount appears to be linked to certain earnings. It certainly also used to be the case that the FIM paid the prize money out of this as well.

I'm sure lessons were learned.

It was the slogan of a recruiting poster for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, inspiring many British volunteers to sign-up (including George Orwell who can hardly be described as a communist). WW2 broke out not long after, making it all very prescient. It's of course better known these days as the title of the Manic Street Preachers song about the subject.

If you tolerate this, then your children will be next turned out to be quite poignant...

I'm sure he would say that as he's thinking of the royalties, but is he so convinced that he'd fund the re-release...

It did feature early performances of Dirk Bogarde, Sid James, Bill Owen and (an even then old looking) Thora Hird who all went on to become acclaimed famous actors though, so there would probably have been wider interest beyond speedway fans. Peter Duncan went on to to play a bit part in Flash Gordon and become a Blue Peter presenter, so probably not the same public interest...

Yes, but all the cars in an F1 GP are on-track at the same time, so it's the same for everyone at any given moment. That's not the case with a Speedway GP.

They hoped to get some of the big oval racing events, like Indycar and NASCAR, and I remember going to the first race there some years ago. Don't think those lasted long though. I've been back a few times since for test days, but whilst its a great facility, it always seemed woefully underused. There only seemed to be 2 or 3 cars driving round the track at any given time during the week.

I suspect Steve Purchase wishes he'd never heard of speedway given the subsequent developments...

I can't understand why people are thinking this is so complicated. How do they think it works in F1 (answer = one transponder located in standard position at front of car, and backup transponder located in standard position at back of car*)? Just put the transponder in a standard position on the front of the bike, most likely under the fork cover. The difference in positioning from bike-to-bike will be millimetres, but will have no consequences for timed qualifying because it'll all be relative. For racing, if there's an extremely close finish, most good timing systems have an option for a photo finish which I think is determined by a beam across the track of some sort. So if there's any discrepancy because of minute differences in the positioning of transponders, that should be able to sort it out, and is also what happens in F1. Obviously in a race, the clock needs to start when the tapes go up (or when the green light goes out if that's used). The race begins at that moment, not when a rider crosses the start line (which potentially they may never do) - it would be utterly daft to base the results of a race on how quickly someone rode around the circuit if they finished behind someone else. * It's not unknown for one of the transponders in an F1 car to fail, so sometimes times will only be recorded from the rear transponder.

There obviously are teams (normally ex-Football League) that can command decent attendances at that level, but it's really only a small handful. Look at the average attendances of other clubs in that league and they're far more akin to speedway ones.

It's not entirely their fault as some things have been beyond their control, and the sport lacks influential patronage as leverage. And speedway has suffered from changing lifestyles and interests along with many other businesses. But promoters can be blamed for collectively failing to control rider wages which are probably the biggest cost and are something they absolutely can influence.

It happens a fair bit at non-league level, where some glory-hunter throws money at a club to climb the pyramid, despite the fact it's never going to be sustainable once they stop subsidising the club. Almost unheard of at Football League level though because generally there's more history and sustainable interest behind the clubs there, plus there's arguably more due diligence checks. But even the top level of British speedway is probably equivalent to only the 6th tier (Vanarama League North or South) of English football these days.

I'd guess a speedway club could legally be run as a sole proprietorship. The designated promoter does not necessarily have to be the owner of the club, so this is just defining that promoter is a compulsory role. The text could be better constructed, but it does make sense in a roundabout way. Of course, the lack of consistency over the board members is just sloppy.

In football, there's almost always another sucker/gloryhunter who'll come along and pay off the debts of the previous sucker/gloryhunter.