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iris123

Hoskins 1933 in North America

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Another new piece of speedway history for me.

Apparently after the 1932/33 Australian season Hoskins along with a group of riders set out to conquer America. A decent group including Frank Arthur, Billy Lamont, Jack Ormston, George Greenwood and Ray Tauser initially wanted to start off in Toronto, but couldn't find a suitable track. They then headed off to New York where the same situation met them, But apparently a US style speedway was going on at Coney Island, but the touring group found they had to ride at a slow pace to make a decent match of it with the locals. On the other coast things were different with 10 tracks running and a good standard of opponent

The tour wasn't a great success, but Hoskins said they broke even. Yet again, Madison Square Gardens were said to be interested in the sport.Plans were for a group of US riders to head out for Australia and Hoskins and his group would head back to the US the next year

Not sure if anyone can add to this, but it seems as far as I can tell neither of these planned tours took place. A US team did make Australia in 1935 though

What happened to Hoskins UK career at this time? He left Wembley and took over at West Ham sometime around this period. Seems all the riders took a break from UK speedway this season ?

Edited by iris123

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From what I remmeber, 1933 was the year when speedway racing (Class C) really got going in the USA (East Coast and West Coast). That was the time when one of the local Mafia bosses in New York City got the idea that there was money to be made with this speedway thing. Hoskins had a meeting in one of the Skyscrapers in down town Manhattan with that man, and afterwards decided that this was not for him and got out of New York pretty quick. 

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See a couple of years later 4 Aussies spent the season in the US . Ernie Evans , Clem Mitchell in San Francisco Bill Rogers and Bert Spencer in Fresno, The same promoter had them under contract and would swap them around the tracks, But at the start at least the locals were too good. Byrd McKinney who later rode for Wimbledon the stand out local

Edited by iris123

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17 hours ago, iris123 said:

Another new piece of speedway history for me.

Apparently after the 1932/33 Australian season Hoskins along with a group of riders set out to conquer America. A decent group including Frank Arthur, Billy Lamont, Jack Ormston, George Greenwood and Ray Tauser initially wanted to start off in Toronto, but couldn't find a suitable track. They then headed off to New York where the same situation met them, But apparently a US style speedway was going on at Coney Island, but the touring group found they had to ride at a slow pace to make a decent match of it with the locals. On the other coast things were different with 10 tracks running and a good standard of opponent

The tour wasn't a great success, but Hoskins said they broke even. Yet again, Madison Square Gardens were said to be interested in the sport.Plans were for a group of US riders to head out for Australia and Hoskins and his group would head back to the US the next year

Not sure if anyone can add to this, but it seems as far as I can tell neither of these planned tours took place. A US team did make Australia in 1935 though

What happened to Hoskins UK career at this time? He left Wembley and took over at West Ham sometime around this period. Seems all the riders took a break from UK speedway this season ?

Think it was after this tour that Hoskins and Frank Arthur formed a company to run speedway and cars at the Sydney Royale. Jack Ormston took 1933 off to run the family butchers business, returning to Halls Green the next season. Ray Tauser was recovering from a bad injury I think. 

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I also read that Tauser wanted to return, I think Hackney wanted him, but then ‘foreign’ riders were banned in 1934, due to the 'English Ministry of Labour', rather than speedway administration decision!!! In this sense ‘foreign’ didn’t include Commonwealth riders, so the riders affected were Hansen at West Ham and Roth at Plymouth

But it is interesting in 1933 that these riders decided to do USA and Grosskreutz, Case etc were in Germany and Scandinavia  

Edited by iris123

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See Ernie Evans stating the tracks wer very hard and took some time to get used to. He also comments that the locals were more interested in chroming their bikes than tuning them !!!

Edited by iris123

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Seen a report from the US mentioning the Aussie riders have left and weren't very impressive. The feeling was they might not have been trying too hard.......now it doesn't give a year,so I am guessing it might be referring to this tour, and that maybe as the earnings weren't up to expectations, they riders didn't put themselves out too much. Then mentions who was going to win the national championship and the favourites were Miny Waln or Cordy Milne, which could well make it 1933, as I am not sure Waln was still a favourite to win the title in 1934

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