HenryW

Parken in Copenhagen and Friends Arena in Stockholm also had roofs.

Fairly sure he's still living in Bydgoszcz, as he has done since his wife finished University in St Petersburg years ago. Both him and Artem stay there with their families and have Polish passports. What they didn't have at the start of this year was a polish license, which is what made them different from Gleb.

Holder and Fricke are both German names, are they not? Germany maybe gets first shout on the alternate World Champions

Most of the ones giving Britain a swerve aren't able to get a visa to race here...A good few of them would probably be here for extra races if they could.

Attendance figures are on the Ekstraliga site. Obviously the whole season isn't done yet this year but the average across the league in these years are: 2018: 10,559 2019: 10,815 2022: 8,265 Some key factors might be: Leszno's average is down from 11,922 in 2018 and 11,196 in 2019 to 5,300 this year. Zielona Gora are not in the league and they had 12,222 and 10,714 in those seasons, whilst Ostrow are running 6,274. Czestochowa have also seen a significant drop. Play off matches probably push the average up.

Withdrew from the meeting with a shoulder injury...Managed to struggle through the GP with it, but today was too much, apparently!

Don't forget about Emil. Taking away 2 of the top 3 in the World makes it a less relevant World Title this year, if you ask me.

Yes, but that's not the equivalent of banning Russian individuals from competing for club sides in domestic leagues outside of Russia. As far as I know Russians are still free to play for clubs in other domestic football leagues in Europe, Russians are still free to play in the NHL, etc.

Did they? Russia and Russian athletes were banned in many international competitions, but I'm not aware of any other domestic sports leagues banning Russian individuals from competing for clubs. Maybe I just missed that happening. Did any of the football leagues ban all Russians? Hockey leagues? That is the sort of level I was thinking about.

Or maybe just shouldn't have banned the Russian riders from league competitions. Have any of the major club leagues in other sports taken a similar approach?

Impressive effort from Steve after not racing since 2005...Unless it was Sam you were meaning? (sorry, couldn't resist) I agree with your main point that the amount of riders in both leagues is a joke and along with the amount of guests used, totally devalues the "team" element

You can see some pics on this facebook post You don't need to have a FB account to view as it's on a public group.

Yes, but apparently not Polish league Swedish and Danish league is what they are suggesting on their website: https://premiersports.com/sports/speedway

I see that Premier Sports say they will have some Danish league speedway this year.

Lidsey has had a season here already. That was maybe enough for him

Guessing they were maybe looking at the Ekstraliga website which seems to have those dates listed: PGE Ekstraliga | PGE Ekstraliga - PGE Ekstraliga (speedwayekstraliga.pl) Although, if you download the fixture list PDF, it has the Friday/Sunday dates rather than Thursday/Saturday

What that not the early season trophy contested between the winners of the league and ko cup from the previous year?

Seems to be there now.

You can imagine a legal challenge coming in if this continues, as it basically says there are two levels of Polish Citizenship based on whether you were born in the Country or not. I'm not sure that fits with EU law.

He basically stated that he believed what was shown on Russian TV, that it was more accurate than the propaganda shown on Western TV, implying that he agreed with the current Russian military operations in Ukraine. He also talked about the Russians being killed in Donbas for the last 8 years by Ukraine and how no sanctions were imposed and no sportsmen were stopped from competing during that time.

Not just Poland, I assume. Any Swedish or Danish matches on UK nights would surely have taken priority as well.

I hope they've called Zelenskyy to tell him. That should cheer him right up. He'll know the war is all but over with this move!

Just wondering....Have Russians actually been banned from any other sports leagues? As far as I have seen, they continue to play in the likes of Football and Ice Hockey teams, even in Poland.

If the visa process is underway, it may be that the UK authorities currently have his passport, so he couldn't travel. Also interested in the second part...Surely he should have required a visa for those meetings?

The more I think about it, the more I think that in the GP series Emil and Artem should not be involved if the current fighting in Ukraine continues. It's hard on them, but anything else just seems to be unacceptable whilst the fighting continues. I know that speedway is close to being completely ignored by Russian federations, and their exclusion probably won't even create a ripple in Russia, but a stand really has to be made... As a fan of GP speedway, I can honestly say that I hate the thought of having to watch Jack Holder and Dan Bewley rather than Artem Laguta and Emil Sayfutdinov in a GP, but if that has to be, it's the fault of Putin....I would love to hear all Russian speedway riders shout out about their hate for what Putin is doing, regardless of how irrelevant their voice is compared to some other much bigger sports stars, but it doesn't seem to be coming.