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Phil

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Everything posted by Phil

  1. Thanks Shalewhale that looks like it will be a great help.
  2. For the past 2 years I have managed to get a bus from Cardiff to Rumney but last year they closed all the roads in the city centre straight after the GP so you have to work about 10 minutes to the other side of the city to catch the bus. Thankfully a kind local fan showed us the way from the central bus station to where we can get the bus but knowing my luck they will go straight to the bus stop and not got to the central bus station this year. So does anyone know the road where you can catch the bus to Rumney?
  3. What stupid time to have it on! Hardly going to attract any new viewers at the time of the day.
  4. Suerly you must have been sent some free tickets by now after writing the above.
  5. Phil

    Who????

    For some unknown reason it is supposed to be a secret and not advertised, last year I think it leaked out about 3 days before. I am sure it will not be long before we know. Any ideas who it is then Steve Shovlar?
  6. £10 off the ticket touts and then go and sit in a free £45 seat? Don't blame you!
  7. Info about sams bar and Prince Of Wales www.speedwaymanager.co.uk/gp/ Photos form the GP 2002 http://community.webshots.com/album/40215839mNLkPa
  8. You will find travel info on http://www.traffic-wales.com/ such as..... Cars Leave M4 at Junction 33 (A4232) and follow signs to park and ride sites. Parking charge (inclusive of shuttle bus) £ 5.00 per vehicle.
  9. Any more suggestions for pubs / times or anything! Only 8 days to go! http://uk.weather.com/weather/detail/UKXX0030?dayNum=8
  10. Phil

    Lions Roar Back to Leicester

    I'll try and find my programme from this meeting and give you the full story. I remember writing a report on it and thinking I didn't want to go to speedway anymore. But then I was a hot headed youngster back then. No, he's called Eric. Unless Nigel really is making a very rare visit to England. No, he's called Nigel!...lol I guess there are two Nigel boococks then
  11. Steady Howe you go! Ready Steady Go!
  12. Dean Barker and Stoney. I really don't understand why these riders would want to be in the GP anyway. Have they got any chance at all of getting into the top 10 in the next few years?…IMO No. David Howie and Simon Stead are young riders with an aspiration to be World Champions one day or certainly get into the top 10. If they can do this or not we will have to see. Chris Harris must be a bit disappointed that he has not been picked. Robbo maybe flying but does everyone (or the selectors) know that. Steady and Howie are more well known and talked about. He who shouts loudest and all that. Not saying this is right off course.
  13. Any more suggestions for pubs? Last year we suggested Sam's Bar at about 1:00pm and then The Prince Of Wales from 3:00pm onwards. My vote goes for the…. The Prince Of Wales - 3:00pm onwards. And maybe at different pub earlier on which preferably with seating outside such as Sams's bar or Callaghan's Irish Bar. At the moment I am not sure what time I will make it to Cardiff.
  14. Did anyone manage to get a drink after the GP finished last year? Or did you fly of either back home or the hotel as soon as it finished. We tried a few places but they said they were closing and would not let you in. e.g Prince of Wales. Did the GP finish about 11:00pm last year! Decided to head back to the hotel and went for a curry just across the road from our hotel. We managed to get a bus back but it was the last one and nearly missed it as the Bus Station was closed. Thankfully a local supporter showed about a dozen of us the way to the bus stop. Did people find it hard getting a taxi?
  15. I was wondering if there used or if they ever experimented with any staggered start races with 6 more riders? Best riders at the back and see if they can win the race at the front.
  16. The start girls have gone down hill, but the white helmet made up for it The raceing was poor to start off with but got better. Mark Loram. Glad they had some sort of fitness test but sounded more like an agreement to me. Not convinced he should have been awarded the points. Does this now opens the flood gates to lots of appeals in the future?
  17. Phil

    Staggered starts 6+ in a race.

    Fun idea (or mabye not!) but seriously I am sure you know that racing is strictly forbidden on training tracks.
  18. Phil

    Staggered starts 6+ in a race.

    What were the problems of them? Would it not be good viewing to see the likes of Billy H come from the back of an 8 rider race to win it. The issues I can think of is there is not enough time to get from back to front in so few laps.
  19. FEW = Not many; small, limited, or confined in number; -- indicating a small portion of units an indefinite but relatively small number; Like the example! "they bought a case of beer and drank a few" I STILL have not got my ticket :-(
  20. Going on previous years you will be able to buy tickets at the stadium or outside! But why don't you buy one from mick track shop at Sheffield rach?
  21. True-grit slide show a wheel success It was a Cinderella sport. Now it's turned the corner Jeremy Alexander Thursday May 1, 2003 The Guardian The parallels are clear, the differences marked, the irony stark. Speedway's world champion is going for his sixth title, starting on May 17. As formula one struggles not to recede into the back of boring beyond, speedway is on a sharp rise. And the man behind its expanding championship, modelled on motor racing's grand prix series, was formerly commercial director of Benetton's formula one operation. John Postlethwaite left Benetton in 1997, not because he wanted to be Bernie Ecclestone but to run his own show. He had no idea then it would be Benfield Sports International which, in January 2000, bought the rights to speedway's grand prix series. As chief executive he is responsible for commercial, television and promoter agreements. Since then the series, trundling along since 1995 with six grands prix, has taken off. Attendance in 2000 averaged 6,300. Last year, over 10 races, it was 22,000. In 2000 the British grand prix drew 7,000 to Coventry, three-quarters of capacity. A year later Benfield got more than 31,000 to Cardiff. On June 14, with ticket sales 16% up on last year, they should top 40,000 at the Millennium Stadium. It is not quite Wembley in the 70s, when 100,000 saw Ole Olsen win three world titles and speedway was second to football as a spectator sport. But after a generation in which its image dropped below the parapets of public consciousness - and England secretly had three world champions in Michael Lee (1980), Gary Havelock (1992) and Mark Loram (2000) - the sport has reinvented itself at the top. Postlethwaite readily respects where he has come from. "Formula one sets the benchmark," he says, generously using the present tense. "We may be reaming about getting to that level but at present we are concentrating on giving good value to sponsors and TV." Riders are decorated with logos at all angles like a child's scrapbook. Tear-off bannering gives sponsors clear visibility however much the dust flies. And television coverage grows apace - from 27 countries in 2000 to more than100 this year. Since 1999 live coverage has increased fourfold, highlights fivefold. Sky Sports will show each of this year's races live on Saturday evenings, with Channel 4 doing a one-hour highlights programme with interviews and insights the following Saturday morning. Showjumping and squash have waxed on the back of TV and waned for want of significance or personalities. Speedway means to stay. Essentially Benfield has devised a package which is delivered first-class, and practically the same, for each grand prix - unlike formula one which gets lost in the countryside where no one can see, or under the bonnet where nobody cares. The bikes are simple, of one make or the other, skeletal and possessed of a silencer, somewhat pointlessly considering the din the crowd makes with klaxons throughout the three-hour sequence of 25 races that tapers 24 riders, four at a time over four laps, into a precise order of points-scoring. Because the event is self-contained in a stadium, every moment of every race is seen. The champagne moment, copied from formula one, is as wretched as, presumably, the champagne; and the spectacle ends in cannon-fired confetti and fireworks. It is a presentation to wow children and embrace the family, with air-horns making everyone a participant. There are limits, though, and Postlethwaite believes they have been reached. "We are going to ease the music down," he says, "and try to restrict the sale of canisters on air-horns." If sounds are to be down, sights remain up. "We want to grow in conjunction with the leagues," he says. The top riders, regardless of nationality, compete for clubs in Sweden and Poland, strongholds of the sport, besides here. And Postlethwaite sees a series of "perhaps 16 races in five years' time". Television is taking speedway to all Europe, and Germany and Italy are prime targets. "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears . . . and don't expect to get them back in working order." There are only nine races this year, all in Europe, after Sydney's race ran into problems with the local promoter. It will surely return. Australia has five of the 24 riders, including Jason Crump (the world No2), Ryan Sullivan (No3) and Leigh Adams (No4), and 32,000 attended the first international event there for 20 years. Wellington, too, is interested. New Zealand has the stronger pedigree with Ivan Mauger, a record six times world champion, Barry Briggs (four) and Ronnie Moore (two). The United States has a world champion still competing, Greg Hancock. But Europe is speedway's heartland and Tony Rickardsson of Sweden its current champion. Like Michael Schumacher he won his first title in 1994, the last year of the condensed format. Olsen, now race director, says: "Everyone heard of speedway for three weeks and then there was a vacuum for 49." It sounds like Wimbledon and tennis. Now, he says, "the flagship is there to attract more interest. We are getting back into the big stadiums. It's an entertainment package and we have to make sure it runs snappy." His son Jacob runs Team Denmark. They have micro speedway there, starting at 50cc, graduating to 80cc at 10 and the full 500cc at 16. Under-age opportunities exist here too and grass roots mean what they say. Many come into the sport through grass speedway or motocross. If there is nothing to choose between the machines, what makes Rickardsson consistently come out on top? Olsen Snr says: "He's a bit tough. He knows what he wants at a particular track according to the surface. The top riders are skilful at setting up their bikes." The champion plays that down with candour. "A speedway bike is not very technical. I tell my mechanics how I want it. It's not often I get my hands dirty now." But he does admit he weighs the set-up for the start against racing thereafter according to conditions and opponents. In a word, at 32, it is probably experience, which runs on into consistency. Lee Richardson, 24 and entering his first series as an automatic qualifier (No17) in the wake of Loram (No8) and the other Briton Scott Nicholls (No13), confirms as much. "Tony always gets the set-up right. He's tactically clever and his mental attitude is so good. He wouldn't dive in if he was second and he didn't have to. He's the man of his era." And the era may go on. "If I can keep fit and focused and enjoy it, I will keep going," he says. "I hope I don't peak yet. Why not bounce around for a few more years?" Thus speaks a man who is a big fish in the big pool and happy to be a small fish in the small Poole, his British club.
  22. I don't like the sound of that. :-( The music and air horns greatly add to the atmosphere at Cardiff, even if I do always go deaf for a few days afterwards. There were a few people who thought the noise level was too much. I personally agree it was getting a little loud. To restrict them the obvious solutions would be to ban people from bring them into the stadium and just sell them inside. The only problem if they are going to take this approach it should have been printed on the back of the tickets which I assume it has not. They could try and stop the unofficial traders outside the stadium but that will not be easy. At least they are not banning them, they are not allowed at the vast majority of other sporting events and stadiums. The newspaper report was a great advert to the sport and it sounds like Channel 4 are doing the highlights show which I thought was very good.
  23. Have Sean Wilson, Simon Stead and Robbie Kesslar started riding in Poland yet this year and who for?
  24. Peak fitness is a prerequisite for a competitive edge - expert information on all aspects of physical and mental fitness including diet, training. Improve Your Race Performance with Better Physical and Mental Training Somone has got to buy Mr Gollob this book!
  25. Wales Tourist Board Backs SGP “The three year deal, which includes event banners, media backdrop signage as well as advertising and tickets, is part of a new sponsorship category for the nine round world championship FIM Speedway Grand Prix Series (SGP).” Have BSI secured another 3 years at the Millennium Stadium? When BSI first agreed the deal for the GP to be held at the Millennium Stadium I believe it was for only 3 years, this year being the 3rd? It has been well documented in the press that the pitch at the Millennium Stadium has on occasions been of poor quality and they have had to lay new turf down on more occasions than they would have liked. This is more thank likely nothing to do with speedway taking a large portion of the turf up each year (and more design of the Stadium ) but it can not help and I did wonder if they renew the contract to hold the GP at the Millennium Stadium in future years.
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