E I Addio

Lewis only did about half a season on Jawas , and did at one point have a good GM. I forget who he bought it from but according to his mechanic it was a “ beastie” . When he was at Lakeside he had a manager that I got to know quite well and who was a moderating influence on him, but the old Lewis eventually came to the surface. I like Lewis, and always have done. Would like him to do well, but I kind of feel the way he rode at Lakeside was the upper limit of what he can realistically achieve, and coming back is not easy so he might not do so well. It depends what’s expected of him. In what is now a weak league he might do a decent job in a second string role but I wouldn’t expect too much. I hope I am wrong.

As I am sure Norbold will confirm Ronnie cams back virtually world class after a 6 year retirement , but as far as I recall he is very much the exception that proves the rule. Others have come back with varying degrees of success , but I struggle to think of any ( apart from arguably Todd Wiltshire) that really came back as a force to be reckoned with. Ian the context of Lewis , my mind continually goes back to his final comments when he last retired. He said the kneck injury he suffered in a fall a Berwick meant that he would wake up in pain every day for the rest of his life. That might have improved by now but one awkward fall is likely to knock a hole in his confidence, then it will,probably be all down hill. I actually like Lewis.He is a good rider and has been generally a good servant to the sport , but I can’t see any way a comeback is going to succeed , apart from beating juniors and reserves in a weakened league.

Lewis has always favoured small tracks . He couldn’t cut the mustard at Peterborough. It’s difficult to see him making a splash at Kings Lynn. He has the experience and talent to hold beat second strings and reserves in a weakened league, but I find it difficult to see him making much of an impact..

I think Bridger is well and truly retired by now. For one thing he retired with a nasty neck injury that will probably trouble him for the rest of his life and he knows another knock could be very serious, and secondly his heart was never really in the sport during his last 2/3 years when he was distracted by his turbulent personal life. As we all know speedway is dangerous enough as it is but even more so if you can’t commit 100%. I like Lewis, but he is his own worst enemy, and I hope for his sake he stays retired.

What has he lost ? How does he prove his loss ? How can he prove he wouldn’t have crashed on the first bend and been out for the season ? The three essential parts of a contract are offer acceptance and consideration (ie paymement). But whichever way you break it down the season ends on 31st October all contracts lapse. Speedway has been around long enough that even the thickest of promoters (ie Rob Godfrey) have all these things tied up in standard contracts.

An example. A few years ago Lakeside signed the ageing Bjarne Pedersen. A few weeks before the season started Lewis Bridger came out of retirement and was a much better prospect than the past-his- sell-by-date Pedersen, so before a wheel was turned Pedersen was sacked and replaced by Bridger. Nothing Pedersen could do about it. His only remedy was to sue for loss of earnings but as he hadn’t raced he hadn’t earned anything.. Tough on Bjarne but he cant claim loss of money he never had in the first place.

Contracts signed in 2020 lapsed when the season officially ended on 31 October. 2021 starts with a clean sheet. Whatever is in writing the contract does not legally exist until the rider rides his first races and qualifies for payment.

Yes. I should have thought about them , especially as I’ve read Kelly’s biography. I suppose that sort of answers my question. Who was the rider Kelly Shared a flat with, who was on the way down when Kelly was on the way up ? I think it was Chris Pusey. It seems he was off his head with booze all the time, and was supposed to have been a bad influence on Kelly. As if... Both Morans seem to have wasted both their talent and their lives with the stuff though. It seems Michael Lee was not exactly a stranger to it either.

Yes but illogical decisions and turning on riders on the straights are not going to win world championships. I can understand that certain irresponsible looneys take the stuff in any walk of life but does it actually enhance a riders ability on the track ? I would have thought not.

Or, as Andreas Jonsson laconically put it “ He’s a bit wild “. Quite

On a slightly different point , is there any evidence that drugs actually enhance a riders performance on a bike ? I get it with athletes that use the stuff to build muscles during training, but what would it actually do for a rider in a race? The point is Speedway is a funny sport and a lot of it is mind games. If one rider does something or makes some modification to his bike others will copy even though it makes no difference, they just convince themselves it does.

Don’t these inspections have to be carried out at ACU Headquarters or somewhere designated by the ACU now ? I remember about 10/12 years ago at a televised meeting at Poole a visiting rider ( I think he was from Peterborough, but not certain) , was accused of having an over size carburettor but instead of testing in the pits the carb had to be sent to the ACU for checking. I seem to remember no fault was found.

How does that work ? If the capacity is the bore x stroke the capacity is always going to be the same for a given piston diameter surely ? is an engine is a short stroke engine the bore( and therefore the piston diameter ) must be bigger. If it is a long stroke engine to cylinder bore will be narrower and a short stroke piston wouldn’t fit. Does anybody ride long stroke engines anymore ? I thought they went out with the J.A.Ps in the sixties / early seventies.

Hi Sid, Sorry I overlooked the question at the end of your post. I don’t know what others think , but yes I certainly think in my case I became biased towards those riders I was a fan of. I think most of us are like it. I think the riders we become fans of when we are young are always the best because we don’t know any better. Other riders come along and somehow they never seem quite as good as the ones we grew up watching, but to a new generation coming along they know as much about Briggs and Fundin as we knew about Tommy Price or Bluey Wilkinson, so they think perhaps Bruce Penhall or Hans Neilson were the greatest , and so it goes on. But I think as we get older and have these sort of discussions on here or with other fans we mellow a bit and learn to acknowledge each other’s opinions, and that to me makes me feel,privileged to have seen over the years some fantastic riders, and that really is what it’s all about.

I think you have to look at the level of opposition as well. For example I would have rated Rocky Marciano as the greatest Heavyweight boxer ever on the basis of his career record of 49 , fights, 49 wins and 43 of them by KO before retiring as undefeated World Champion, but looking at some reports the other day it seems that most boxing writers and magazines put him around the lower end of the top 10:greatest ever, on the basis his era didn’t have many really hard punchers that other eras had and some that he did fight were past their prime at the time. Not his fault of course , because you can only beat what’s in front of you but he never had to fight, for example , Ali , Frazier, or Foreman in their prime. That’s the view of the experts, I stress, so don’t jump on me those who disagree. Now , let’s convert that to speedway. Jason Crump had the misfortune to be around at the time of a truly great rider- Rickardson- at his prime. If Rickardson had not been there Crump would likely have had six World titles and we would be ranking him alongside the absolute all time cream of riders. There is no doubt in my mind that there have been very few riders in the history of the sport with Crumps talent but he just happened to be around at the time of Rickardson. The same might be said about Nordin, and arguably even Harrfeldt , but they both happened to have a relatively short time at the top, and look who they were up against, three of the true greats- Fundin , Briggs and Knutson, also to a lesser extent Ronnie Moore who was injured for part of the time. Now we come to the Big Five. Although it could be reasonably argued that in many ways the average level of competition was not as professional as it is now each of the the Big Five still had to beat four of the other true greats. Imagine a one off world Final and you find yourself facing all four of the others at some stage ! What if, Fundin had never ridden speedway , how many titles would Briggs have won ? What if Ronnie more had not spent two years car racing and six years in premature retirement before returning still as a world class rider ?What if Peter Craven had not lost his life in that terrible crash in Edinburgh? What if Knutson, five or six years younger than the others had not retired still a young man ? Any of them might well have the best record ever if not for the great what ifs. I know this will be controversial but I think Knutson , only a year or so younger than Mauger, could well have had some of Maugers titles, and perhaps we would be regarded far more highly than he is, because, quite honestly , who did Mauger face who had the year in year out conststency of the Big Five,. If the “ What ifs” teach us one thing it it is don’t compare. They were all great. Just be grateful that we had the chance to see some of these wonderful riders in a wonderful era before the sport nose dived into its present decline.

I used to quite like individual meetings Sid, but in the days before it was regularly televised. In those days you might only get to see the top riders once or twice a year so it was something special to see them. Now that they are on TV every few weeks it’s not quite the same. I used to like the qualifying rounds for the old one day world final so you could support your home riders to see how far they got.

I don’t disagree with either of those posts, and I have always been able to go to a meeting as a neutral and thoroughly enjoy it, but there is no denying that the tribal element of supporting your own team and then favourite riders within the team adds extra sparkle, to the meeting. Sooner or later I will probably find another meeting to go to but it is the team element, the team support that keeps the crowds coming back on the regular basis that the sport needs to survive, rather than casual attenders. And yes I agree the people you meet are a big part of it. It’s great when you turn up at a meeting, find yourself chatting to the bloke next to as if you’ve known him for years, but there seems to be less and less of that as crowds get thinner, but also because lethargy is like a disease and it spreads. I am not one of those that want to go back to the old days but the sport has lost some of its magic for me, not the racing, as I said but when it’s run in a way that makes feel the administrators couldn’t care less if fans turn up or not, it somehow takes the incentive away

Pretty much my feelings. Despite what the critics say, the sport itself - by which I mean the actual racing- at its best is fantastic at its worst is utterly boring but the key ingredient is having a team to support. You come back after the boring meetings because it’s your team and it’s in your blood and you support them whatever. It’s never been any different, and by and large the good meetings outnumber the bad . However , I feel I’ve had enough of the corruption and rule bending. Like you Marks, I havent been to a meeting since Lakeside finished. I thought I would but don’t feel motivated. It’s not so much that Lakeside closed, its the bitterness I still feel about the way the MC and in particular Rob Godfrey went about it, first of all accepting Lakesides proposed fixtures into the fixture list then, halfway through the season pulling Lakesides and Workingtons fixtures out of the list, costing their respective promotions thousands of pounds, all because Godfrey suddenly realised they were ahead of him on league points when his teams No1 rider was injured. All of them, but Godfrey especially , are contemptible and for me the happy face of speedway will always wear a sinister and corrupt mask. They are simply to thick to realise that those fans that go won’t be back. At least I saw the sport in its best years.

They’ll probably be lucky to get that many through the turnstiles. If the weather looks dodgy it will probably be a lot less. I can’t see many wanting to travel far for it.

Holta turned 48 I think , a week or so back

I think Noaksey was meaning who would pick up the losses the owners were incurring if they didn’t sell. I used to talk to the people who ran the cafe and they were saying most stock car meetings were badly attended except for a few big meetings each year which kept them afloat. I was looking some DVD’s the other day of meetings around 2009/10 and the Speedway crowds were still pretty decent at that time. 2009 was the year Jonas Davidson went through the whole season without a single last place or e.f. and Kauko Neminen was going up a gear and beaten some big names. Things like that keep the crowd support up. Even in 2016 the crowds weren’t bad . With sponsorship I think the club were breaking even in 2018 until Rob Godfrey , then vice chairman of the BSPA pulled the plug on Friday meetings that had already been put in the fixture list months before . Coupled with that the BSPA wouldn’t Lakeside run some meetings at Arena and some at Rye House, it had to be one or the other , and that’s what ruined the crowds. So a decent promoter , Stuart Douglas , and a load more fans lost to to the sport, thanks to the intransigence of Godfrey, and Bluster Chapman.

That’s what speedway is all about really. Watching it on the telly is never quite the same.

Yes , I miss the people as well. I can’t explain what it was but there was a sort of cameraderie among the fans that I never experienced at Hackney for example. There was just something among the fans that seemed to gel. I though Coventry had a nice feel to as well and I miss going there.

I am not sure if there actually was a compulsory purchase order . There was certainly talk of planning permision but one of the problems was pollution on other parts of the land. The main problem with the speedway track was that the stock cars were not bringing in money. They depended on a few big meetings but the smaller ones were said to be poorly supported. Once Chick Woodruffe died the family, who weren’t really enthusiasts, only saw it as a business and once the income started to dry up they just wanted to sell. The place is badly run down now , after two years of not being used and I think it would cost too much money to re open especially with the state the sport is now in.

Your avtar is one of Hull Vikings. Slavery was an important part of the Norse economy I those times. Similarly, are we going to ban Poole Pirates because the Barbary Pirates were slave traders ? How far are these analogies going to go ?These are Speedway teams for goodness sake not political rallies. People’s political , religious or racial outlooks are not governed by which speedway team they support.