waiheke1

My thoughts: Not really much different to the rule introduced in 1986 that all teams must have one home grown junior, who came in on an assessed to point average. Most teams ended up fielding to, to be able to have a decent top 5 under the then 45 point (inc bonus point) limit. The same season a minimum three rider rule was brought in, meanings these juniors needed to take all the scheduled rides (or if replaced in one, come in as a replacement in another). On the downside, it has to be said that that scheme produced only Sean Wilson and Andy Phillips who did anything of note, and tbf they probably would have done so without the rule. But we are now much more desperate for young British riders to come through, so i think its well worth a shot. In terms of heat format, I’d suggest a return to that introduced in the late 80s, which added an extra reserves heat and the nominated riders heat to the existing 13 heat format. So four scheduled riders, must take a minimum of three. In terms of elegibility, why not just say any rider who is either under 21 who (at the start of the season) has ridden no more than 10 EL meetings or is under 23 and has ridden no more than 20 PL meetings? Said rider must be British, elegible and available to ride for Team GB or however you want to phrase it. I don’t understand why they are being allocated, but it would seem to stop the richest clubs from “cherry picking” the top youngsters, which therefore makes me very surprised it’s been introduced. Perhaps there should be a “standard wage” for these riders, and a draft system along the lines of baseball’s? Personally, I would have allowed the riders to move up into the top5 if their averages demanded it, to try to reduce the artificiality of their averages. But the benefit of this way I guess, is that for team building next season (if averages are used) you could say apply a 50% multiplier to get a team building average. In case of injury during a meeting to a top 4 rider, I’d suggest that they should be allowed to be replaced in their remaining riders by any rider below them in the averages. Once so replaced, they could not ride again later in the meeting, and must have a doctor certify them unfit to reduce manipulation of this system. No rider could be used as such a replacement more than twice.

i stand corrected then, though I'm very surprised. To be replaced with...?

I'd be surprised to see it go regardless. I would imagine most promoters are in favour of some sort of tactical ride, on the assumption that fans want closer meetings, and given that the double point rule is a cheaper option than the old tac sub rule, I think it's here to stay. Also, with the introduction of the two junior reserves, reinstating the old tac sub rule would give them less opportunity and provide a bigger "swing" opportunity to the trailing side.

I'll bet a fiver they will finish higher than eighth.Loser to donate fiver to charity of winners choice?

a national manager who doesn't slag off fans on twitter has to be an improvement , and I'm confident that the next manager - whoever it is - will do no worse from a results perspective at the next swc. Would also be great to see test series reinstated - against Sweden would be an interesting match at the currentv time, so too Russia if visas could be sorted, and although a full strength Aussie side would likely win comfortably that would be a good series too. bspa needs to do what it can to implement this to give the manager - whoever it is - the chance to test different riders at international level.

Surely the issue for bsi is that if they have to pay him "x" and fIm only pay riderssay half of x. If sec onlyv have to pay fim a fraction of x, then they can potentially afford to pay the riders a lot more than what they get in the gp series because of the absence of "fim tax." the risk to bsi is if riders then start prioritising sec over gps. Ideally id like to see sec as an old style knockout championship, or as a gp qualifying series. Either I think would produce top racing, good fields and complement , rather than compete with, the gps .

Sam ermolenko won his title with 12, coming home last in his final ride. I think Hans lost a run off for the title after finishing on 12 also. Both in the 90s, possibly reflecting tougher fields after the swap to two semi finals instead of continental final qualifying route?

Yes, refer to his dating thread

Hi Phil if u subscribe are u able to access it on multiple devices e.g. both laptop and android phone?

MP: OK, at the risk of boring others: (and I'm not going to quote your post here due to length): The 10% is a round figure used for simplicity here, in reality it varied beteen 9-11%. Average was done across majority of riders that rode in moiré than one of thios eleagues, if a rider asn’t in the top say 50 of a league’s riders it’s possible i didn’t include them in the calculation. Cacls were done based on 2013 meetings only, and averages including BP. The thread is here, gives more details on how calculation was done. http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=75014&page=2&do=findComment&comment=2368252 Re your last point. I’ve looked at doing similar rankings historically, planning to start with the 80s (my favourite decade in speedway). For that I was planning to use weightings of 25% each for world Final, world final qualifiers, internationals (tests, pairs, wtc) and BL (inc “bonus” for those in top 3 in BLRC). I don’t have a sufficient archive of information to include the other individual events (UK and in Europe) that would potentially have been a fifth factor for inclusion. There’s also a list somewhere on the forum of riders ho topped the league averages in the same year as winning the world final, not rare but not that common either, though I believe Hans (greatest league speedway rider ever?) did it four times (definitely 86,87,89, not certain on 95).

in answer to a question from MP on a different thread, an explanation on basic calculation method I used. For weightings of different events I used the following: GP weighted 40%, league speedway 20%, SWC/SEC/SGP qualifiers 10% each, junior world champ 7.5%, national champs 2.5%. Riders calculations based on only events they took part in (so someone not riding in the SC and world under 21 champs would have their weighted score divided by .925). However, riders also had a % deduction from overall score based on number of events not participated in. I did the calc for around the top 70 riders in the world, I’m pretty confident I didn’t miss anyone with a genuine claim to be in the top 30. Weighting between different events was the most problematic area, for this I used the scores of the top 15-20 riders in a given completion, which means the rankings are a more accurate reflection for comparison purposes of the top riders than the weaker riders (which is consistent ith my intention to establish and rank the top 20-30 riders in the world, not rank those 50-70th).

I posted this on the wildcards thread, but thought i’d put it on its own thread. Basically I assessed riders performance in the following events, which were weighted in order of importance: SGP League performances across Elite League and Swedish and Polish top flight. Includes all matches up to EL final (not included) SWC/SEC (equally weighted) Gp qualifiers/under 21 world champs (equally weighted) Performances in the competitions were weighted depenent on the difficulty of the completion (difficulty ascertained by comparing the result of the top 15-20 riders in that competition compared to how they performed others). The top 30 riders of 2013 emerged to be (I’ve attached their “weighted average” not because the figure has any real meaning, but to show how close(or otherwise) riders were) 1 Jaroslaw Hampel 10.89 2 Tai Woffinden 10.62 3 Emil Sayfutdinov 10.37 4 Niels K Iversen 10.36 5 Darcy Ward 9.98 6 Chris Holder 9.65 7 Nicki Pedersen 9.43 8 Greg Hancock 9.15 9 Grigorij Laguta 8.61 10 Tomasz Gollob 8.32 11 Adrian Miedzinski 8.12 12 Kenneth Bjerre 8.00 13 Matej Zagar 7.99 14 Piotr Protasiewicz 7.87 15 Patryk Dudek 7.75 16 Maciej Janowski 7.73 17 Michael Jepsen Jepsen 7.63 18 Krzysztof Kasprzak 7.50 19 Artem Laguta 7.46 20 Grzegorz WALASEK 7.45 21 Janusz KOŁODZIEJ 7.44 22 Troy Batchelor 7.41 23 Piotr PAWLICKI 7.39 24 Hans Andersen 7.18 25 Martin Smolinski 7.12 26 Przemyslaw Pawlicki 6.95 27 Peter Karlsson 6.89 28 Danny King 6.86 29 Fredrik Lindgren 6.63 30 Krzysztof BUCZKOWSKI 6.57 While the list ties reasonably closely to what in tuition would suggest it should, a few key points to note. Hampel emerges as top rider ahead of Woffinden, as a result of performances in SWC and league matches. This doens’t mean that Woffinden wasn’t a deserving World champ, and obviously a stats based approach doesn’t reflect the injury cloud woffinden was riding under No other real surprises in the top10-15, confirms the thoughts of many that Holder, Gollob and Laguta are the three most deserving wild card picks. If selected along with a swede, would mean all of the Worlds top 10 from this year, and 12 out of top 15, will be in next seasons GP Peter Karlsson the top swede ahead of Lindgren, though not much between the top Swedes. THJ not in the top 50. Miedzinski's victory in Torun boosts hime from just outside the top 20 to 11th overall. Danny King , by avoiding being picked for SWC scrapes into the top 30. Nicholls is the only other Brit in the top 50. Vaculik’s SEC championship win not enough to even elevate him to the top 40 riders, his mediocre league form and poor GP performances dragging down his “average.” Appreciate peoples thought on whther the above ties reasonably closely to who they would perceive the worlds top riders to be.

hen I did my analysis of top 30 riders in the world for 2013, I used a weighting which had the Swedish League being approximately 10% stronger than the Polish League, which in turn was 10% stronger than the EL, which in turn was 10% stronger than the Polish second flight.

Final list for the 2013 season, reflects the final EL meetings (inc ELRC), and also added the major national indivdual championships (Poland, England, Sweden, Australia, Denmark). No major changes to the above list, though NKI overtakes Emil and Janusz jumps a number of places due to his peformance in the Polish final. Andreas Jonsson ranked 35th, Chris Harris 36th. 1 Jaroslaw Hampel 10.73 2 Tai Woffinden 10.73 3 Niels K Iversen 10.43 4 Emil Sayfutdinon 10.36 5 Darcy Ward 10.09 6 Chris Holder 9.65 7 Nicki Pedersen 9.43 8 Greg Hancock 9.22 9 Grigorij Laguta 8.62 10 Adrian Miedzinski 8.33 11 Tomasz Gollob 8.31 12 Janusz KOŁODZIEJ 8.20 13 Matej Zagar 7.97 14 Patryk Dudek 7.95 15 Kenneth Bjerre 7.90 16 Piotr Protasiewicz 7.86 17 Maciej Janowski 7.63 18 Michael Jepsen Jepsen 7.56 19 Krzysztof Kasprzak 7.55 20 Grzegorz WALASEK 7.48 21 Artem Laguta 7.46 22 Troy Batchelor 7.44 23 Piotr PAWLICKI 7.28 24 Hans Andersen 7.20 25 Martin Smolinski 7.09 26 Peter Karlsson 6.89 27 Przemyslaw Pawlicki 6.81 28 Danny King 6.76 29 Fredrik Lindgren 6.65 30 Alexander LOKTAEV 6.51

No apology needed. I don't think in league speedway manipulation of the tac rules is more common than in the past, certainly the modest net maximum one point gain (in some exceptional circumstances it could two) makes it risky and rarely worthwhile. The swc is a different story all together, as the rules mean u can throw one point to potentially gain six. and of course tac subs were never allowed in thexold world team cup ( reserves could be used, but that wasn't dependent on being behind).

ok so there are 15 riders in the series - the halfcway mark is eighth. a rider who consistently finishes 9th or 10th is an average (or slightly below average) performer at that level. That's not saying he isn't a very good rider - but at gp level he is average at best ( you could havex said the same in the 80s for Jan andersson who I would rate ahead of Freddie).I'm not anti lindgren - I would have been fine with him being picked ahead of jonsson for the Swedish spot.. but there were plenty of other riders who outperformed lindgren in 2013 - I make him just inside the top 30 riders lastxyear - more deserving (imho) of a place.

Because you could replace two rubbish riders with two top riders turning a likely 1-5 into a 5-1. care to explain how u think the new double point rules can give a 7 point gain?

No in the old rule u could throw two to gain eight. now u could throw two to gain three. how many times does this need explaining?

apart from Harris, who can you name that has consistently been in the series with a worse record?surely that is the record of a rider who is "average" or actually "slightly below average" at gp level?

i see your point - though some paper based subscribers would have no use for an online sub, and vice versa. But rather than being "free", perhaps the online could be avilable at a significant discount to those with paper based subs. I'm sure all ill be revealed in the near future. i guess there's nothing to stop current subscribers sharing their paper copy with 9 other people, though appreciate with online subs this would be much easier to do. Possibly some sort of protection which means someone can only access their mag on "x" number of devices. Plenty of other mags are available online, so there must be ways of preventing large scale sharing. I'm sure this ould have been considered by the Speedway Star team before launching.

They've effectively already paid for the right to read the editorial content, therexwould be minimal additional cost to the publishers, so I don't see why they shouldn't have online access included. Obviously the star's call to make though.

i worked in the magazine industry for around 10 years, so am interrested in Phil's reply. My guess though is one or more of the following: There is no automated order processing, so manual admin is required for orders , which would roughly be the same for an annual sub or a one off purchase. If it takes ten minutes of admin for an order (downloading off the site, packagin up, charging the credit card, dealing with any follow up queries) then the profit margin on a single copy is gone tight there. The subscription database may not be able to handle “one off” orders (I saw many different subs processing systems used, and frankly they were all rubbish) – ties back to point 1 above. Possibly the company doing the IT work converting to electronic copy are charging per subscrivber rather than per issue sold? Anyway, this is great news, I’ll definitely be subscribing from NZ. I’d definitely see a market for back issues this way. Even if it was not every issue (initially) but "sets" such as “world final issues from the 80s” etc. I’m sure this could be done in a cost effective way, and if reasonably priced would need only a handful of purchasers to show a profit. i'd assume to appeal to those who would not purchase a conventional subscription, predominantly those who travel a lot or are based overseas. Also, I would guess that long term the margin has to be better on the online version by cutting out the cost of postage? More subscribers also potentially drives up advertising revenue as well as circulation revenue. certainly it seems a reasonable request that anyone paying to subscruibe to the paper version should at least have the option of free subscription to the online version.

largely agree BUT top number 1s like ward and woffinden are worth more than their average because they will take 5 rides each week plus are excellent double point options. what u really want (imho) is a top notch double spearhead who will atcleast maintain their average plus 5 riders below them who will improve.

agreed. and if not them, there are half a dozen poles (janowski, pawlickis, kolodscz,miedzinski etc) more deserving, not to mentionthe likes of batchelor and a laguta. really disappointed with the decision, one swede I agreed with, two no way. neither Jonnson or lindgren are out of place in the seriesBUT there are countless more deserving and exciting options.

I realised u did, but was clarifying in case it wasn't obvious for others