Humphrey Appleby

Do you go to motor sport much? Plenty of women involved in it, especially in car racing - including doing the 'dirty jobs'. Certainly nowhere near as many as men, but then if you look at Communications & Marketing then the situation would be different.

It’s not about being offended. I’ve nothing against looking at attractive women. It’s just tacky for the same reason that I’ve never understood why it’s necessary to drape rather fake women over cars to sell them. I find it rather insulting that someone would think they could sway my purchase that way.

I think it was clear why national teams weren't allowed, but why didn't they try and do something with club teams? It would have at least had more relevance.

And if there wasn't that sort of clause in the contract, then OneSport must have very poor lawyers.

I doubt it'll be shown where I live, even if I wanted to.

For whom? For a private promoter and maybe 18 riders going through the motions in a utterly pointless event?

Eventually the law pinned something on the serial dodgy dealer.. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/invaro-collapse-businessman-terry-lindon-3349013

This Speedway of Nations is a innovative and exciting competition that's never been seen before, and will stop Poland winning everything. Those who point out that the World Team Cup used to be run with a pairs + reserve format and with Semi-Finals, and that Team Ice Speedway has always been run over a couple days, are merely being churlish and not getting with the programme...

The whole concept of national teams and national representation is breaking down in a world with ever greater mobility and desperation for sporting success (both on the part of competitors and countries). To some extent it's fair enough that competitors with parentage or genuine links to more than one country have the choice, but flags of convenience are making a farce of it all. We saw that in the Olympic skiing half-pipe where the 'Hungarian' competitor basically just skied down the course without doing a single trick, although at least the 'Tongan' cross-country skier made a decent effort and didn't even finish last. To be honest, I don't really see why competitors in individual sports need to be representing any country at all, nor those in made-up 'team' sports like the luge doubles or pairs skating.

The Cricket World Cup and T20 World Cup are still 11-a-side competitions. The IRB Sevens is an addition to, not a replacement for the Rugby World Cup. Run the Pairs as a second tier competition if you like, but too much of the tail wagging the dog here.

A team competition implies a certain strength-of-depth, otherwise why not just have 1-rider teams to allow more countries to be competitive? There's really only 9 test playing countries, but no-one suggests turning that sport's premier competition into single wicket cricket to make things more competitive. This best pairs competition just shows a complete lack of imagination and devalues one of the better events in the calendar. There's nothing new or unique about it whatsoever, and whilst it might be tolerable if it alternated with the SWC (as originally indicated), now it seems that it's actually intended to replace the SWC.

Which is what?

Carry On Speedway has a certain ring to it...

They were probably lucky to scrap together the 15 'teams' they actually have, as evidenced by the statement in the press release that said "It will be great to see as many as 15 nations". What's the betting that a Poland II and III will end up in the Race-Offs?

Well it's pretty much the same, content wise! Obviously the online version doesn't get delayed and you get sent it wherever you are. On a A4 tablet it's about the same as reading the paper version and it's still readable on a iPad Mini.