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Rob B

Why speedway is failing

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1 hour ago, Pieman72 said:

There are plenty of riders who have the equipment to race and I'd be happy to watch UK riders cut their teeth. Riders have to start somewhere. I suppose after you've parted with your hard earned dosh you might feel used.

You might but this post was in regards to top men being replaced by juniors in a league meeting if injured ..........

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Sad isn't it Sports Stadiums and Pubs are easy prey for greedy housebuilders and property speculators. Cradley Heath was a very nasty one and Grabbats cost the council a fortune in legal fees. It was an iconic stadium with world class riders but still they won. Going to Cradley was an experience not to be missed and never to be repeated. Saturday nights are for take away's now as if we're not fat enough already.

Edited by Pieman72

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Basic question here but what do the Poles, Swedes and even Danes do different to us? What can we learn from them? 

I know there will be some obvious answers but if Speedway is ever going to return to it's glory days in the UK, we have to start looking into why it is so successful in other countries. Of cause to do so the dinosaurs that run the BSPL would have to start living in 2021 instead of 1971. 

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On 9/1/2021 at 6:03 PM, OveFundinFan said:

Doesn’t look like it will be sorted this side of the total collapse of British speedway.

A Nero job then? Many were fiddling ( around ) while Rome burned! We have only only the above to look forward to - before the possiblity of better might arise from the cinders ( and ashes ).  Can we put together 10 teams with NO doubling up for next year? Because that is very likely Step 1.

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Something will rise from the ashes. There is still a lot of interest in Grasstrack and Speedway and there is an opportunity to wean ourselves off foreign riders. Traditionally a lot of tracks ran on Friday and Saturday the transition to midweek racing has been the demise of British League Racing.

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1 minute ago, Pieman72 said:

Something will rise from the ashes. There is still a lot of interest in Grasstrack and Speedway and there is an opportunity to wean ourselves off foreign riders. Traditionally a lot of tracks ran on Friday and Saturday the transition to midweek racing has been the demise of British League Racing.

If racing in UK was regularly Fri and Sat nights it means riders could (not a must) have a 4 day job Mon-Thurs. 

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34 minutes ago, Pieman72 said:

Something will rise from the ashes. There is still a lot of interest in Grasstrack and Speedway and there is an opportunity to wean ourselves off foreign riders. Traditionally a lot of tracks ran on Friday and Saturday the transition to midweek racing has been the demise of British League Racing.

The ultimate demise of the traditional Friday/Saturday race night for "elite" speedway in the UK was the Grand Prix. When the GP launched in 1995 the British League could cope with 6 weekends a season where their top stars would be unavailable. Slowly over time the GP series increased in the number of rounds and with the big bucks of the Sunday Polish league on top of that, the British league system could no longer sustain weekend racing at an elite level. 

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27 minutes ago, JamesHarris said:

The ultimate demise of the traditional Friday/Saturday race night for "elite" speedway in the UK was the Grand Prix. When the GP launched in 1995 the British League could cope with 6 weekends a season where their top stars would be unavailable. Slowly over time the GP series increased in the number of rounds and with the big bucks of the Sunday Polish league on top of that, the British league system could no longer sustain weekend racing at an elite level. 

True...

But instead of adapting and being in charge of their own destiny, the UK Promoters decided to come up with some unfit for purpose half way house, half arsed system which was built around the GP riders' own individual agendas..

Even though it was evident that crowds dwindled whilst these riders rode over here, and when missing (which was regularly), meant guestfest upon guestfest...

Which only then sped up the dwindling levels of punters..

And then of course the GP riders then pretty much all dropped the UK like a stone..

Yet the UK still have the same operating model?..... 

But nowadays just to provide around 70 riders or so with multiple team places...

Not a great plan is it?

Edited by mikebv
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1 hour ago, OveFundinFan said:

If racing in UK was regularly Fri and Sat nights it means riders could (not a must) have a 4 day job Mon-Thurs. 

Most people in this line of work are self employed to pay for the equipment the world has changed a lot.

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4 hours ago, mikebv said:

But instead of adapting and being in charge of their own destiny, the UK Promoters decided to come up with some unfit for purpose half way house, half arsed system which was built around the GP riders' own individual agendas..

The die was cast the moment that the professional league promoters, but particularly the British ones, failed to grasp the opportunities offered by the SGP and allowed the FIM to sell it off to a private promoter with basically no benefit accruing to them. The SGP affects the Polish and Swedish leagues much less - if at all - but even so it's ridiculous that they allowed a prime asset that basically utilises their assets for free to escape them. Very poor vision and even poorer politicking in the FIM corridors of power. 

Once the SGP got a foothold, the British leagues were screwed either way as the speedway-going public were used to seeing the top riders in Britain, so any stand against using GP riders would cost fans, yet by trying to accommodate the SGP they found they had to run on off-nights and/or not on prime summer weekends, and lost fans anyway. 

The GP riders dropped Britain once the wages dried up, not least because the fans stopped coming. I'm quite sure they'd still be turning up if the British leagues paid Polish wages, whatever other excuses they may have given.

But the whole issue of insufficient riders is a wider one, and is another thing that wasn't well addressed over the years. Doubling-up is fine as a development pathway through the league structure, but ridiculous when it's just a way to make up the numbers. It just becomes the thin end of the wedge - reduce opportunities and you ultimately reduce the number of riders competing for those places. 

Edited by Humphrey Appleby
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Whatever happened to the long list of moto crosers and grasstrackers that the BSPA gathered to try out speedway? Didn't they get names and emails from a bike show giving them free try outs? A few years ago now so I'm a bit sketchy on the facts... 

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4 hours ago, The Dog said:

Whatever happened to the long list of moto crosers and grasstrackers that the BSPA gathered to try out speedway? Didn't they get names and emails from a bike show giving them free try outs? A few years ago now so I'm a bit sketchy on the facts... 

Been discussed numerous times…..they never turned up .

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10 hours ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

But the whole issue of insufficient riders is a wider one, and is another thing that wasn't well addressed over the years. Doubling-up is fine as a development pathway through the league structure, but ridiculous when it's just a way to make up the numbers. It just becomes the thin end of the wedge - reduce opportunities and you ultimately reduce the number of riders competing for those places. 

That's my gripe. The BSPA rather than address the roote cause and bring on youngsters, it appeared to me, would rather prevent a new track opening or let one go to the wall. This enabled the pool of riders to appear larger. Sunderland would never get the go ahead for this reason, Weymouth struggled to get permission from Poole to re-open (there were conditions, lower league only was one), Birmingham fortunately got the go ahead from Wolverhampton. It's hard to prove, but I'm sure the points limit has forced some riders to retire. Fortunately from what I am seeing at the moment, there does appear to be a crop of youngsters coming through, that probably wouldn't have got a team place 15 years ago. But tracks are still closing. 

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11 hours ago, Humphrey Appleby said:

 yet by trying to accommodate the SGP they found they had to run on off-nights and/or not on prime summer weekends, and lost fans anyway. 

But we now find ourselves in the position of NO GP riders riding in our Leagues yet we still elect to run on off-nights and on many prime summer weekends there was no Speedway this year!

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