Humphrey Appleby

I don't know what that has to do with Russians resident in other countries being allowed to continue to work. I'm fully aware it's an appalling situation - not least because I was talking to some people in Ukraine most of last night - but that's not the fault of every Russian. All the Russians I know, including my office mate who's lived in the Netherlands for over 20 years, are appalled by the behaviour of Putin. Why should they be denied work or even worse expelled from the countries they may have lived in for many years, unless they're somehow connected to Putin regime? Let's not start any torchlight pogroms which will just play into Putin's victimhood complex and give him an excuse to invade countries on the grounds of 'protecting Russians'. We should never repeat the appalling treatment of Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians, or German Jews who'd sought refuge in the UK during WW2 and had every reason to support the Allied effort.

Yes, that's the way it works. People should be able to do that if they links to more than one country.

The statement as issued by the IOC Executive Board says exactly that, if you could be bothered to go and read it on the IOC website which is surely the authoritative source. I quoted part of that statement verbatim, so not sure what the confusion is on your part, but you can read it for yourself here... https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-eb-recommends-no-participation-of-russian-and-belarusian-athletes-and-officials No, the link that Grachan posted did not say that, because it was an article in the Gulf Times that left out the important detail.

There are many Russians with Ukrainian parentage, or born in the Ukraine, and vice-versa. The two countries were intertwined for decades if not centuries, in the same way that Britain and Ireland have been. That's the particular tragedy of the situation - brethren are fighting brethren in many cases. Whilst there clearly have to be sanctions against Russians representing Russia in sport, I honestly haven't come across a single expat Russian so far who supports the invasion. Should my Russian workmate who I sit opposite when I'm in the office really not be allowed to work, and by extension how are individuals in professional sport different to that?

No, it comes down to their passport(s) for individual purposes.

The IOC are not proposing to ban individuals, and if Sayfutinov & Laguta are also Polish citizens (as suggested on here earlier) then I think it's unlikely they could be banned anyway.

The IOC seems to be saying they can still compete as independent athletes, just not under any Russian banner. The Paralympics is coming up shortly, so the matter is pressing. The relevant text is... "Russian or Belarusian nationals, be it as individuals or teams, should be accepted only as neutral athletes or neutral teams. No national symbols, colours, flags or anthems should be displayed."

If they also have Polish citizenship then that would be academic anyway.

Well it's a difficult one as it would hardly be fair on other riders if there was an established qualification process that one rider could bypass. As it was, he still had to do a certain number of meetings in the Netherlands (one of which was a speedway meeting that I went to), although from memory they were on Saturdays so maybe he didn't need to miss an lucrative grasstrack/longtrack bookings as a result. I seem to remember though, that riders needed to finish in the top 20 of the British Masters to get a licence to race internationally, which strikes me as being nothing but restraint of trade and probably illegal.

I thought that was farcical appeasement given their 'ban' was because of state sponsorship of doping programmes. To then allow them back to compete as a Russian team, however it was dressed up, was no sanction at all. No particular problem with Russians continuing to compete as independent individuals (e.g. tennis players and speedway riders), but teams and individuals officially representing Russia should not be allowed. Life isn't fair. When the UK left the EU, British citizens immediately lost a lot of rights regardless of how they'd voted in the referendum, and that wasn't even about starting a war.

Is Dave Hammond still around?

Every time he opened his mouth he was annoying, especially when he forgot which track he was supposed to be at. I do actually think it's a difficult job, especially in speedway where you've got to fill a lot of dead time and there's only so many things you can say about four riders going around in circles. I didn't find him too bad as a deejay years ago, albeit a bit Smashie and Nicey, but it was better when he just read out the results at the speedway.

This reply is a bit late, but the story is quite well known in the Brisbane area at least, and there's a Bee Gees trail in Redcliffe which is a sort of outer coastal suburb of Brisbane. I cycle over to Redcliffe occasionally.

Well speedway really only has a sizeable following in about 3 or 4 countries, but the BSI didn't really seem to do much in the way of the promotion in the smaller markets. Only seemed to be interested in getting the staging fees from the local promoters and leaving it all to them, or where they promoted it themselves to fulfil some sort of contractual obligation, to do it as cheaply as possible. With Monaco, I'd imagine they were under the impression they could wrangle a sizeable staging fee out of the local organisers, but the Grimaldis didn't get where they are by giving their money away. Especially not on a sport with the sort of demographic that speedway has. There probably was some sort of reasonable attempt in the earlier years to take the SGP to better venues as well as extend the appeal to a wider range of countries, but I think in the end they realised they weren't going to grow it and largely decided to run things at a relatively modest level without pushing the boat out too much. Think a new promotion is long overdue and it'll be interesting to see whether they take things further than ING/BSI.

If I remember, it was to do with team race suit covers which were made of some sort of stretchy material to which you couldn't easily attach different numbers.

Didn't speedway briefly use squad numbers a few years ago? So riders had both a squad and riding number...

Under the 'old' 13-heat format, the order of 1, 3, 4, 5 probably didn't really matter so much provided a strong rider was paired with a weaker one in each heat. With the 'new' 15-heat format, putting your No.1 at 2 or 4 would unbalance what are intended to be heats for weaker riders, and then mean that Heat 13 wouldn't feature the strongest riders as intended. The issue of needing your best riders in the last heat doesn't really apply to the 15-heat format as the last 3 programmed heats are essentially the same riding positions pitted against each other, followed by the nominated which you can put your two preferred riders in anyway.

And even more ignored in practice, despite being supposedly stricter.

Would involve a lot of writing in the programme... For Heat 15, I'd also leave the choice to the losing team, or the away team if the scores are level. However, I think I'd have 6-rider teams with 5 & 6 as the reserves and 1-4 can be named in any order. I'd then pair 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 and have them all ride against each other, separated by a reserves race (5 races). Then pair 1 & 5, 3 & 6 and 2 & 4, and have them ride against each other (9 races). So Nos 1-4 would ride against each other twice, and against the opposition reserves once. Nos 5 & 6 would ride against the opposition reserves twice (including in the reserves races), and against the opposition 1-4 twice. Heat 15 could be nominated. I'd look at a handicap scoring system for replacing a No. 1 or even heat leader, so that guests would not be necessary.

Surely at some point, it would actually be easier to build a basic stadium and then either let it go bust naturally, or be forced out of business by the noise complaints from the neighbours. How much is the current charade costing...?

Sort of... 1 meets 1 twice, 2, 3, 4, 5 twice and 6 (missing 7) 2 meets 1, 2 twice, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 3 home meets 1, 2, 3 twice, 4, 5, 6 twice (missing 7) / 3 away meets 1, 2, 3 twice, 4, 5, 6, 7 4 meets 1, 2, 3, 4 twice, 5, 6, 7 / 4 away meets 1, 2, 3, 4 twice, 5, 6 twice (missing 7) 5 meets 1 twice, 2 3, 4, 5 twice, 6, 7 6 home meets 1, 2, 3, 4 twice, 6, 7 twice (missing 5) / 6 away meets 1, 2, 3 twice, 4, 6, 7 twice (missing 5) 7 home meets 2, 3, 5, 6 twice, 7 three times (missing 1 & 4) / 7 away meets 2, 4, 5, 6 twice, 7 three times (missing 1 & 3)

It's not really possible to give a well balanced format with 7 rider teams over 15 heats. The 13-heat format was a bit better, although the No.2 position was a bit of quirk. It can be done with 6 rider teams, but that causes issues with riders having too many rides too close together, especially if rider replacement and/or tactical substitutions are used. It can also be done with 7 rider teams over 18 heats, as with the old test match format, but that makes for too long a match and the format is a bit repetitive and boring.

As I remember, there was a similar rule before fixed gate positions were introduced around 1988 - albeit the choice was 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. A team 6 points behind could choose gate positions and/or bring in a tactical substitute.

Under the old 13-heat format, the line-ups for Heats 12 and 13 were naturally more balanced even if you arranged Nos 1, 3, 5 and 4 in different way, based on how things would need to be for the initial heats - 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11. With the 15-heat format, Heats 8 and 14 were designed to be weaker heats for the second strings and reserves, based on the fact that you'll usually want one of your strongest riders at No. 5 as that position is paired with a reserve three times. The 15-heat format is a bit of a kludge really, even though the traditional 13-heat format had its quirks.

The problem may be that the floppy is no longer readable if it's more than a few years old and depending on how it was stored.