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coldace

Vertically challenged riders

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Just reading Philip Dalling's excellent book 'Saving Speedway'. Highly recommended but I was intrigued by a photo on page 91, of the Stoke vs. Liverpool line ups.  Number 7 for Liverpool is Sonny Dewhurst who was so much smaller than everyone else.

Been digging and found he was only 4 foot 9 inches tall.  Was he the shortest rider?  And how tall were Peter Craven, Billy Bales, Georgie White and Johnny Chamberlin, all who I remember as being vertically challenged. At only 5 foot 6 myself I have an morbid interest in this. 

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1 hour ago, coldace said:

Just reading Philip Dalling's excellent book 'Saving Speedway'. Highly recommended but I was intrigued by a photo on page 91, of the Stoke vs. Liverpool line ups.  Number 7 for Liverpool is Sonny Dewhurst who was so much smaller than everyone else.

Been digging and found he was only 4 foot 9 inches tall.  Was he the shortest rider?  And how tall were Peter Craven, Billy Bales, Georgie White and Johnny Chamberlin, all who I remember as being vertically challenged. At only 5 foot 6 myself I have an morbid interest in this. 

Ian "Tiddler" Turner was another.

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2 hours ago, coldace said:

Just reading Philip Dalling's excellent book 'Saving Speedway'. Highly recommended but I was intrigued by a photo on page 91, of the Stoke vs. Liverpool line ups.  Number 7 for Liverpool is Sonny Dewhurst who was so much smaller than everyone else.

Been digging and found he was only 4 foot 9 inches tall.  Was he the shortest rider?  And how tall were Peter Craven, Billy Bales, Georgie White and Johnny Chamberlin, all who I remember as being vertically challenged. At only 5 foot 6 myself I have an morbid interest in this. 

Johnny Chamberlain was also 4' 9". Jerzy Kowalski was another under 5 feet, I know, and so was Sam Nikolajsen.

Obviously, there have been plenty of "short" riders, but I'm not sure how many have been exceptionally short (5' or less).

Edited by chunky

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Didn't realise Chamberlin was as short as that. Do you know the height of Peter Craven and Billy Bales?

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3 hours ago, coldace said:

Didn't realise Chamberlin was as short as that. Do you know the height of Peter Craven and Billy Bales?

I've found nothing "official", but it seems that both were around the five feet mark.

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1 hour ago, Sotonian said:

Lionel Levy was exactly 5ft

I had a feeling he would have been on the "short list"...

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23 minutes ago, Chadster said:

Norman Strachan?

Beat me to it!

Paul Gachet was another.

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I don't know how tall Sam Nickolajsen was but when he retired he became a painter and decorator and had to have a special skirtingboard ladder made for him

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Soren Sjosten was  responsible for this 7 year old genuinely believing I would only need to wait a couple of years and I could become a fully fledged Belle Vue Ace, if someone as diminutive as Soren could do it with such style and success then nothing was going to stop me, nothing!

I'm 61 in Feb and I've still never sat astride a running speedway bike, yet I still think I could've been a contender, maybe this will be the year I finally make it to a ride n slide day, if only to put my dreams to bed.

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So many great calls here. Generally speedway riders tend to be on the average to shorter side. But what prompted me to post was the photo on page 91 of Philip Dalling's excellent book which shows Sonny Dewhurst in relation to all of the others. May have had a bigger impact if he had been stood next to Reg Fearman that night!

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