Nottingham Speedway

[Ashie 0]

Interesting extract from the new book about Nottingham speedway, taken from the Nottingham Evening Post last week.

 

Live TV coverage has boosted the popularity of speedway racing yet again. Seventy years ago incidents at Nottingham's White City Stadium changed the way the sport was conducted for ever, as author PHILIP DALLING reveals in a new book

 

Speedway is back on live TV again. Sports fans in Notts thrill to weekly clashes between teams like Manchester's legendary Belle Vue Aces, Poole Pirates and the Coventry Bees. But the new generation of fans are probably unaware the sport has a long history on Trentside, dating back to the 1920s.

 

It is nearly 70 years since the city had a speedway team, and a decade since racing ended at Long Eaton, when the venue was sold for redevelopment.

 

The history of the sport in the area is covered in a new book, Nottingham and Long Eaton Speedway, 1928-1967 by Philip Dalling (Tempus, £14.99).

 

A match notorious in speedway history took place at the White City Stadium, Colwick, on June 5, 1933.

 

Glamour side Wembley Lions were the visitors but Nottingham got off to a flying start in the first heat, when local boy Fred Strecker knocked a fifth of a second off his own White City track record. But problems began in the next heat.

 

Two of the riders were disqualified for false starts, to the anger of the crowd. Then, in a later race

 

Nottingham's pairing of Strecker and Australian Jack Chapman, and Wembley's Lionel Van Praag, all jumped the start.

 

The two team managers wanted a re-run with all four riders, but the steward put his foot down and the three culprits were excluded.

 

Wembley's Ginger Lees coasted around on his own, to howls of derision, for the four points that would win the match for the visitors.

 

The real trouble came during the interval and involved a female Nottingham fan. She asked a visiting rider for his autograph and was dismayed to find he had ungraciously signed it to '`Pudding'.

 

According to reports, the fan made a retort which caused the rider to dive over the railing, resulting in a free-for-all.

 

The Nottingham management reacted furiously, announced that the track would be closed, and that the next home match against West Ham was cancelled.

 

And the controversy led to a change in the rules, which eventually saw the introduction of starting gates similar to the ones seen at tracks today.

 

Promoter Fred Parker said: "I run the sport for the public, who pay to see races, not to see one man ride around when the rest have been disqualified."

 

Philip Dalling's book takes the story from the pioneering days of the Olympic Speedway at Trent Lane in 1928 to the development of White City.

 

Speedway at Nottingham always had a distinctive flavour and fans could catch a ferry along the river from Trent Bridge to the wharf alongside the White City Stadium.

 

Long Eaton initially opened for business in 1929, mainly using Nottingham riders for meetings. When speedway's post-war golden age left Nottingham on the sidelines, the focus shifted the few miles to Station Road, where the sport was to last on and off until 1997.

 

Ironically through my job I was chatting to a lady who this week whom I have known for a couple of years and she lives up north, never spoke about speedway to her before and no idea how the subject of speedway came up but it turns out her dad used to be one of the co promotors of Nottingham at Long Eaton.. small world.

[25yearfan 476]

interesting that one of speedway major aspects, the starting tapes was instigated at a track long forgotton in a city that hasn't seen the sport for such a long time.

 

If the stadium owners could be persuaded, Nottingham greyhound stadium would make an ecellent venue for the sport in an area where their is currently no speedway.

 

With the planning application at Long Eaton being turned down, the extremely high cost involved anyhow (£6 million to build a new speedway stadium on the grounds of the old stadium site that was sold for about £900,0000) and with no more applications being put in then the chances of speedway ever being staged again in Long Eaton are extremely slim.

 

I'm sure a lot of the former Long Eaton Invaders fans would support a team in Nottingham, a big city with the potential to attract an even bigger audience. Probably some Long Eaton fans did come from Nottingham.

Long Eaton ran as the Nottingham Outlaws in the late 70's and their junior team of the early 90's also went under the Nottingham Outlaws banner.

 

Nottingham Outlaws in the PL running at Nottingham greyhound stadium - could it work?

Edited May 20, 2007 by 25yearfan

[norbold 7,106]

And the controversy led to a change in the rules, which eventually saw the introduction of starting gates similar to the ones seen at tracks today.

 

Yes and quickly too. The match took place on 5 June 1933 and on the 20 June the Control Board ruled that starting gates had to be in place at all tracks within three weeks.