E I Addio

Eric Chitty was said to be a good singer, often entertaining the crowds with a song, Len Silver, perhaps not so good but according to his book he would often entertain clients at his Silver Ski resort , singing and accompanying himself on the ukulele. I have heard Howdy Byford fancied himself as as singer after a few beers. Are there any other riders known for their singing ,? I use the word singing in the loosest possible way in Fred’s Case. Pity we don’t see Freddie over here any more though..

On the other side of the coin I have to say he guested for Lakeside several times over the years and always rode as if he was a home rider. I remember one occasion when he crashed and hurt his leg badly but he continued riding through the pain barrier and only withdrew once Lakeside reached the point that they couldn’t lose. When he had his bad crash in Poland Lakeside fans collected £750 for him. That’s a measure of how much he was liked. Yes, I know he could be a moaner and a whinger at times, but what I am saying is that it wasn’t all one way.

That’s what happened after Lee Richardson died. In fact I think it was about two months before Lakeside signed a replacement and Lee’s position in the pits remained empty in that period as I recall.

Half the Ipswich team were ex- scramblers at one point, as were Arthur Browning , Tom Leadbiter and a few others , including today, riders like Richard Lawson and the Worralls. I can’t think of any that started in Speedway and then moved over to an average standard I scrambling. They are totally different techniques. As a side point though, I remember about 6/7 years ago Peter Karlsson rode in a grass track in Kent , on a bike he borrowed from Paul Hurry. He had never sat on a grass track bike before but proved unbeatable in the heats but unfortunately the meeting was rained off before the Finals. Similarly I once saw Anders Michanek in an end of season grass track at Lydden. He absolutely whopped everybody. I don’t think anybody has mentioned Joe Screen yet. He didn’t particularly concentrate on grass track but used to ride in big money continental meetings , which were not always ovals but some included sweeping right hand bends and jumps . By all accounts he was pretty hot stuff. One thing I forgot to mention about Alf Hagon was that he was also winner of the famous Red Marley Hill Climb which adds to his claim to be top all rounder.

I don’t agree. Speedway takes a bit of time to the idea of controlling the whole thing with the throttle but according to Chris Louis , once he learnt to control the bike he found it quite easy. I don’t think you can limit it to just Speedway and grasstrack. Speedway in particular is not really regarded as part of motor cycling by the main motor cycling fraternity. In fact there are plenty of speedway riders that have never even ridden any other sort of bike, not even a road bike. The point is that if anyone is successful in any other discipline there is little financial incentive to turn to speedway. Greatest British all rounder ? Alf Hagon must be in the frame. Ridden in all disciplines, usually on bikes he built himself , decent speedway second string , British Grasstrack Champion and World Speed Record Holder at something like 209 mph on a bike he built himself.

Even Vissings friend and flat mate Henning Beger said Vissing was a looney and on and off track had a few screws loose.

Was that when he came back with one leg shorter than the other ?

Thanks. I love when these old memories come back. I am not sure if I ever saw Ron Mountford ride but I knew of him. Coventry in those days seemed to have a very stable team back then, keeping the same riders year on year. While we have Coventry under the spotlight, what memories do fans have of Tony Lomas and Ken McKinlay. Tony Lomas was a tester for Triumphs in Meriden. I only saw him a couple of times but if I recall correctly he was an all round motorcyclist, who came to speedway a bit later than most and if my memory is right he was a road racer before that. As for Hurri-Ken McKinlay I loved watching him at West Ham. Probably the best tactician and team rider I can remember, on a par with Leigh Adams. What was he like at Coventry ?

Thanks Sid.

Yes thanks for that correction. I had forgotten about Ron Mountford. Now I come to think about it, was Ron Mountford, rather than Les Owen that seemed to be regularly getting injured , or were they both somewhat injury prone ?

Wasn’t Les Owens entire career plagued by injury? I think he lost the sight of one eye in a workshop accident, and I believe he had one leg a bit shorter than the other as a result of a track crash. I think he was one of those riders like Paul Hurry who spent more time on the injury list than he did on the track . Is that correct Sid ? Did John Harrhy race again after that crash?

Norman Hunter owned a motorcycle shop.

Fantastic pictures. Not sure they answer my query but at least I now know why the Harley Peashooter was called a “peashooter” . Just my guess work again, but looking at the position of the handlebars and footrests it sort of leads one to take up a leg trailing position. Interesting also is the front fork design which remained almost unchanged for 40 years. Probably the best pictures of a bike from that era I can ever remember seeing. Thanks for posting them

Does anybody know what sort of tyres they were using in the early days of broadsiding ? I would imagine that they must have been basically road tyres. I doubt if the sport was big enough to make it worthwhile for a manufacturer to produce special track tyres, and even if they did technology was probably no advance enough to make it financially viable. This very likely affected the way the bike handled and might well have had something to do with the riders style ( maybe one of a number of factors). Even as late as the sixties they were using trials tyres with the treads on one side cut at an angle to help with cornering. At a guess I would say specialist trials tyres only came available after WW2 when trials bikes themselves became more specialist and as far as I know purpose made Speedway tyres only became used in the UK and Australia when Ove Fundin started using Barums around the mid- sixties( even then I think they were bannned at first ) . This is something I’ve never thought about until this discussion and my thoughts are more or less guess work, but does anyone know any more about it ?

Yes that was a nasty article by a nasty man. I think the article was actually in the Sunday Mirror and the farce was that Leitch was trying to say that most of the public had never heard of Speedway, when it was the Sunday Mirror that sponsored the World Final and contained a regular Weekly column on Speedway by Don Clarke. The thrust of Sam Lietchs article was that Speedway was not a proper sport. Subsequently there was a strong reaction from Speedway fans and Briggo went to lunch with Leitch explaining what was involved in riding a Speedway bike , and Leith wrote another article more or less climbing down, no doubt in part because the editors were concerned at maintaining the readership of Speedway fans in a sport that was much more popular then than it is today