Hamburg Lokstedt Dirt Track

[iris123 20,962]

The facts of the 1933 season as far as I have gathered from local papers.

It seems Dick Case, Max Grosskreutz joined up with A.J.Reynolds, who I have an idea was involved at Wimbledon, so maybe that is where he got familiar with Case ( not sure) started up the track for 1933 and according to the press the first meeting was very well organised and a crowd of 10,000 though not brilliant was a promising start

All the Australians won a heat, with Grosskreutz winning all 5 of his and Case winning 4 out of 5. Herbert Drews was the best German on show. Sebastian Rth and Alfred Rumrich having bike trouble

A week later and it was a Germany v Australia team match as the highlight, but only 3-4,000 turned up. Who knows what the reason was ? One local journalist was dumbfounded. He was full of praise for the promotion and could only speculate that the entry price was to high. I wonder if the relatively poor performance of the German riders in the opening meeting xomared to the strength of the Australians was too much to bear with the political atmosphere at the time.....

Resuts are here

 http://www.internationalspeedway.co.uk/gervaus.htm

Only to add that Grosskreutz fell on the last bend in ht 8, but was already well beaten by Drews and Germany had a surprise 27: 23 win and collected 2 pts, so it seemed there were a series of internationals planned for the season. The next and last meeting had a Germany v Denmark match, so maybe a 3 way series or maybe one or two others were to be involved ? Evans makes no mention of this.

A couple of match races in which Grosskreutz beat Roth and Müller beat Evans. Then a nasty accident when Müller and Ahrens clashed and fell in front of the following Australians, who thanks to skilful riding managed to avoid the fallers. But unluckily Müller broke his leg and Ahrens received internal injuries, which would put them out of the following meeting. Dick Case beat Grosskreutz and Glass in the main final of the night with Sebastian Roth trailing well at the back using somebody else's bike

3rd and last (as far as I know) meeting of the season and ever at Lokstedt

A Germany v Denmark match, but strangely a shorter format than the week before again saw a win for the home riders

 http://www.internationalspeedway.co.uk/gervden.htm

Sebastian Roth broke the week old track record that Grosskreutz had set finishing almost 3 seconds ahead of Drews and Knudsen !!! There followed a handicap trophy, which in the final Case just won on the line overtaking Baltzar Hansen, who had a 20m head start, then Grosskreutz and Drews followed in behind. Then in the final trophy of the night Alfred Rumrich won a great race to beat Grosskreutz, Case and Drews in that order

So nothing that really comes close to Grosskreutz and Evans descriptions of events

The next meeting was planned for 31.05.1933........if the Aussies went to Sweden + Denmark as stated I am not sure. But it would be great to find out about Sweden at least. Really know nothing about pre-war speedway there

  

 

[iris123 20,962]

One or two other interesting bits have turned up about the 1933 season.

One funny tale, again making the mistake in saying Hitler's birthday was a holiday, was that one rider was trying to make his way to the Stadium during the 3 day holiday for Hitler's birthday and there was a parade with 250,000 people that was ending just by the stadium. He was stopped a couple of times by police, but they had no English and he could speak no German. Eventually as he was getting nowhere he shinned up a lamp post to get a better view of the parade. All of a sudden a storm trooper started prodding that bit of his anatomy that was to be seen from ground level with a bayonet and started saying something. The rider said ' He might well have been telling me to get down, but I just climbed further up the post'

As with a lot of these tales, who knows how much truth there is, as there are big holes in most stories about the venture

[iris123 20,962]

Some comments from Dick Case, to put his side of the story, which might clear up the whole puzzle

Firstly he reported back 'Speedway racing has certainly got Germans going, and Max Grosskreutz and I are running meetings at Hamburg and Chemnitz and are opening at Cologne shortly. We have the enthusiastic support of the government press. Hamburg saw team racing for the first time a few days ago and the crowd got so worked up that 70 of Hitler's stormtroopers had a busy time trying to keep order. The local champion Rumrich has beaten both Grosskreutz and myself, while Roth, who comes from Stuttgart is another top-notcher'

So he has a different opinion on the press to the Evans/Grosskreutz version. He gets it wrong on Hamburg seeing team racing for the first time, as international matches were held earlier and I am not sure about Chemnitz running in 1933. I know they had meetings in 1930.....

Another report from Case, I think gets to the bottom of why they left early

 'At the close of the '32 season in England he went to Germany to find out its dirt-track possibilities. After a few months reconnaissance he decided to go ahead and with M.Grosskreutz as a partner, promoted a meeting at Hamburg. It drew a crowd of 14,000, and was a big success. 2 German riders in particular, Roth and Rumrich showed real championship class, and prospects were good. But the Nazi papers stressed the fact that all enterprises in Germany should be controlled by Germans, and the next meeting was not nearly so successful.

To get down to tintacs, Case went to Berlin. An official of Capt. Goerings (sic) department was quite frank. They had nothing against the sport, he said, but they, the foreigners, wouldn't be allowed to take their proceeds out of Germany'

That for me is the crucial point and probably as near to the truth as we will get. That no matter how much of a success they made of the venture, they wouldn't be allowed to profit from it. So it made no sense to carry on

[iris123 20,962]

Report 

https://www.shz.de/deutschland-welt/hamburg/artikel/hamburg-historisch-ndr-areal-war-frueher-eine-motorrad-rennbahn-44512504