HenryW

Pearson is signed up for the Leszno U24 squad. Not sure about Brown. Does Hook not require a visa to race here? That might be the difference, if he can race without one.

He looks really good on his home track in the French league but seems to struggle a bit when away. The difference between his home and away scores is quite large.

Sarj is 4.08 with Brit reduction (4.18 on final averages list without reduction) As Soupy suggested, Castagna is 5.52.

With those averages, Sarj would be one of the blanks and a new foreigner as the other, I would guess.

If we are counting the UK nations separately, I think I have 21 for Edinburgh (22 if I cheat a little bit!) Argentina Fernando Garcia Australia Sam Masters Austria Alfred Sitzwohl Czech Republic Jiri Stancl Jnr Denmark Frede Schott England Les Collins Estonia Rene Aas Finland Kalle Katijisto Germany Kevin Wolbert Hungary Jozsef Tabaka Italy Stefano Alfonso Netherlands Theo Pijper New Zealand Wayne Briggs Norway Reidar Eide Poland Dariusz Fliegert Scotland William Lawson South Africa Byron Bekker Sweden Tomas Jonasson USA Mike Faria Wales Glyn Taylor Zambia James Hayhow Zimbabwe Dave Steen EDIT 1 - Oops...Hit submit a bit quick there. The cheat one is Glyn Taylor as he really had Aussie nationality, but was born in Wales, as far as I know. Riders on the list were just randomly selected when multiple from the same nation had ridden. No suggestion that these were the best from each nation I may have forgotten someone or got a Nationality wrong EDIT 2 - I forgot Rene Aas.

An offer has been made for the stadium. Nothing been said about whether that has been accepted or not, as far as I am aware.

I've lost track of what space is left in the team. Does Nikolaj fit to what is left?

I suspect you are just trolling, but let's pretend you aren't. Did you actually watch this meeting? If you did then you would know why they lost. I'm also not sure why Poland v GB is relevant when discussing the strength of leagues in these Nations as they aren't exclusively populated by home nation riders. You mention a weakened GB without Woffinden...who races Polish league but not British. Lambert and Bewley are now the same. So the GB team helps show the strength of the Polish league!! Grudziadz may look awful in the Polish league, but the likes of Pedersen, Pawlicki, Kasprzak and Jakobsen could certainly not be described as throttle jockeys, as you suggest the Poles are, and all have proven their abilities on GB tracks in the past. So Fricke, who is racing Polish lower league, is better than a rider that was at the top of the British league averages. OK. That's another interesting argument to prove the strength of the British League. I'm also not convinced you can blame the Polish rules. Both could have raced in the UK but chose the Swedish league which you completely dismissed...interesting again.

I believe he is. His father is certainly called Anders and used to race.

I'm maybe missing something, but I thought Wölbert was already signed up in 3 leagues, so wouldn't be available for the UK anyway. Or is this just purely about hypotheticals?

He did. He was a permanent member of the GP series in 2018 having won the GP Challenge in 2017. Unfortunately he didn't have the best of seasons, ending in 14th place. His average in the Ekstraliga last year was just marginally lower than his brother's. They have both failed to consistently deliver on their undoubted talent.

I've always found it strange that, in a league that has team building so tightly dictated by "averages", the race format gives such wildly different standards of opposition to riders based on which number they are racing at. So many riders left with "unrealistic" (both too high and too low) averages based on them being essentially out of position in a team's line up.

I put it on for a while but gave up as it was running so very slow. Lots of falls, stoppages and delays. There also wasn't much in the way of interesting racing in the time I was viewing either.

Based on the time stamps of the relevant messages, you had posted to the speedway friends group complaining about problems, THEN came on here and said that everything is business as usual, in reply to someone saying that there were issues... That timing just seemed strange to me.

"No problems" and "Business as usual", yet I see this post

That was their initial ruling in 2019, with it going to only one other league from 2020. Danes do not have to race in the Danish league, but Nicki has some high value sponsors linked to being with Holsted, so it's unlikely he'd stop racing there.

Maybe not ALL Australians, is it not just the Newcastle ones

Didn't you have several of those in the BV team you posted?

As does Nicki, despite how badly he seems to be regarded by many on here.

Kaiser Kev really WAS class...and still is when you see him racing in Poland... He's got some skills, for sure.

Really? You seem to have missed Antonio Lindback starting racing in the early 2000's and going on to appear in the Speedway GP series in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2020... Also, not sure about the "person of colour" categorisation...I might be out of touch with preferred terms....Would that include the crowd favourite at the Speedway of Nations this year, Philip Hellström Bängs?

And, unless I missed something, only ONE person has picked him since your comment months ago. I know that the thread is about "favourite" rather than best, but it's hard to work out how someone as amazing as Tony was on a bike didn't get more picks. For me, he had it all...He could gate with the best, but he could also make some amazing passes when he failed to gate and, possibly more important for a thread like this, had a good bit of personality which you would have thought would have got him into more top 5's than he apparently did! He'd definitely be in mine (he says hoping that he didn't post something before without him). Rickardsson, Gundersen, Protasiewicz, Pedersen and Penhall.

I've definitely got a lot fatter, seen my hairline recede frighteningly far and what is left of it has gone much more grey than I would have hoped for 25 years ago On the speedway side, I think that the Edinburgh promotion need a lot of respect for keeping things going after Powderhall was lost, and the fans need a lot of respect for the amount of money that they have contributed to keeping the sport going. Sadly, it seems unlikely that the Edinburgh council will ever welcome the sport back into the City boundaries, but I can keep hoping...I currently live within relatively easy walking distance of all of the venues that used to host league speedway in Edinburgh...and it's sad that the team are currently racing so far from the City.

Not sure that Edinburgh is a good comparison. Despite the name, they race in a town of around 12,000 which is 25 miles from the City.

Today is the end of an era. I started properly watching and following the series around the same time that Valentino came into 125cc, and I have been with him all through his career. It has been a glorious journey with him, even as someone that has only been a TV viewer of his races... Sad as it may sound, I am fairly sure that I will shed some tears at the end of the race and his career... He has brought me so much joy and entertainment over the years...and he has been instrumental in lifting his sport to a higher level. Grazie Vale....You are leaving the sport in the best position it has ever been in, but it will never be the same without you.