ouch

Cracking GP with plenty of good racing. The Brits weren’t to disappointing and the “Ace” Crump finished 2nd whilst still not looking as awesome as he does in his league racing. Some riders were lucky when taking to the grass and not being excluded. Crumps luck came when Adams broke down, if Crump is going to have the luck this year then it will be all over bar the shouting pretty soon. I know he’s been unlucky over the last few years but I’d rather see him take the luck off Ricko and Pedersen, as these are the guys who’ve gained most from Crumpie’s misfortune. Crumps race with Adams and Pedersen were true class from all involved. I don’t think you could get a razor blade between them. Such trust in one another’s abilities. Before the start you have to look at a Crump/Trick battle, so if they finished 1st and 2nd then Crump would be 5 points up. As it is he is 4 points up, but had the confidence boost of easily beating Trick twice in a GP. I think the battle for 2nd this year will be wide open, and I like to see Adams (for all the effort put in over the years) or one of the younger lads like Lindback step up.

I have a transcription of the audio taken during the riders meeting with Tony Steele at the recent U21 World Final. All the time this took place an FIM offical stands with a loaded revolver at Tony Steels’s head. Tony. “Right lads the track is too dangerous for any more racing, so the meetings abandoned.” A rider. “What’s the result then?” Tony. Errr, let me see. Who’s got the most points then.” A rider. “Can we come back next week or the week after?” Tony. “Sorry no. I’ve got the in-laws coming for tea next week and then I’m on holiday, so I’m just looking to see who’s won.” An official. “Errr Tony. Two riders have finished on eight points each!” Tony. “Right then we’ll have a run off.” Thomas S. “You just said the track was too dangerous to race on.” Tony. “Bugger. So I did. Well maybe just one more race then.” Thomas S. “Well lets run heat 13, if you say we can run one more race.” Tony. We can’t run another heat, because it’s too dangerous. A run off is like half a heat, ‘cause there is only half the riders.” Thomas S. “Is the track safe to ride or not.” Tony. Under his breath. “This blokes getting on my nerves with all these questions.” “I feel the track is unsafe to ride with four rides, but ok with two. So there.” Thomas S. “We’ll I’m going with your first comment that the track is unsafe and I’m not going to race on it again. We will just have to re-run the whole meeting” An official. “He’s got you there Tony.” Tony disappears to the loo for 30mins and on his return gathers the riders once again. Tony. “Even though I wanted you to race on a track I said was dangerous to race on, and due to my unavailability for the next two weeks I propose the following. Pick a card. Rock, paper, scissors. Toss a coin.” Thomas S. “Well seeing as we have all invested a large amount of cash, time and energy in a season long pursuit to become World Champion, I’d have to say toss a coin.” FIM. Just after the momentous coin toss. “I quite like this way of doing things. It a lot better than running with those messy heats and stuff. I can see more tournaments being decided this way. You could have a meeting to decide who the greatest tosser is.” I THINK WE ALL KNOW THIS ALREADY. Flippin’ (clean version) Incompetent Morons.

So British fans from Premier and Conference tracks don't come to Cardiff then, only Elite fans. Might be worth BSI putting a Brit in just to get some new fans in.

Nicholls- The British GP is the biggest on the calendar. He will be one of two Brits seeded. Lindback – Two GP’s in Sweden = Three Swedes in the series. He’s in. Hampel - Two GP’s in Poland = Three Poles in the series. He’s in. He is actually the most deserving after his injuries this year. Andersen – Danish. Ole Olsen GP director, Danish. He’s in. Richardson - The British GP is the biggest on the calendar. He will be one of two Brits seeded. Rullivan – No Aussie GP. He’s out replaced by Zager. Chrzanowski – Cannot seed the rider that’s finished last. Will be replaced by Kasperzak due to the Polish two GP round rule. The only deviation from this would be Andersen out and another Brit put in, due to the success of Cardiff. That Brit would be Stead.

Well I really enjoyed the last individual world championship we’ll be seeing for a while. We move on next year to the GP open (?) series run on an invite only basis from 2006 onwards. It’ll be strange not having a World Champion to salute come next September. Subedei you must surely be posting in jest. Exciting racing is exciting racing, however it is produced. If I had a pound for every time a rider returned to the pits and said “the guy in front didn’t make a mistake but I managed to pass him”, I’d have not much at all. If however a pound was give every time I heard, “I tried to force him into a mistake to allow me to pass”, or “he went off the line and I was able to get through” or “he didn’t make a mistake and I couldn’t get by”, then I’d make a good few bob out of it. Try and put yourself in the position on someone new to speedway. Would they prefer riders dropping the clutch and riding flat out with space in between all four riders? Or would they prefer riders close together, jostling for position and being passed due to the mistakes they made? It can only ever be the case that a rider doesn’t win a race because of the fact that he has made a mistake, on any track. If you don’t win you have made a mistake either with your gating, your first bend, the line you choose, etc, etc. There were similar comments made on the “favourite tracks” thread, where tracks that caused rides into errors were somehow marked down, including my track Belle Vue. Well, give me close racing, riders passing and re passing and riders showing great skill to get the best out of the track and conditions they are presented with. Actually Subedei, typing this makes me understand you are not posting in jest, merely standing up for the kind of speedway you enjoy, which is just the opposite to mine as described above.

Nice touch with Cardiff ref Marek Wojaczek carrying out the trophy presentations. ouch!!

Thought I’d run this by you all and see what you think. Instead of having the junior races tagged on at the end of the meeting when a large majority of fans leave, how about running them during the main match? Run the heats as follows, one race before the main event, and before heats five, nine, twelve and fifteen. The advantages to this would be the main guys being around and no doubt observing the youngsters and offering guidance if they want and have the time. The juniors would be riding in front of a decent crowd who would I’m sure cheer them on. Moving a junior heat if necessary could fill any delays in between heats that result in the fans standing about, and the race before heat fifteen would help fill that long gap. I’ve watched to juniors many times and find them to be as entertaining as the main lads and as the fifteen heats are usually finishes between 9.00 and 9.15 at Belle Vue it could easily be accommodated. If rain or any other hold up threatened before tapes up then the option to move the juniors could be taken if need. If it helps bring the young British riders along any faster then even better.

Well I’ve just read through this lot and please don’t jump on me for thinking happy thoughts but…… The Poles were always going to win the final, no question. I did feel we could have got silver or bronze, which, with the make up of the team and the Poles being so dominant I’d have been happy with. In reality we were very much on a par with the Swedes and the Danes. Only Scotty’s E/F forced us into last, and Screeny would have been replaced with someone more effective had injuries not kicked in on the lead up to the tournament. If we had had the smallest of changes in fortune and finished second, would the general tone of the posts be any different. I think so. Now looking to next year. Poland will only ever win the SWC in Poland and we this year were evenly matched against the other nations on show. Hopefully without injuries we should be stronger next year, so why can’t we be optimistic about achieving something next time? Also on the incidents…. I’m absolutely amazed how it can be said the Gollob/Stead and Jonsson/Stead incidents could not seen to be anything other than dangerous. The ONLY thing that made these appear ok was the fact that no one came down. That is no defence. So Gollob only impeded himself by running into Stead. How could the ref know that Stead’s bike wasn’t bent or damaged from the impact or the rider himself not phased by the incident? A damaged bike won’t ride the same and would/could have affected his riding. Stead’s rear mudguard was smashed on impact. It wasn’t intentional by Gollob, most incidents aren’t, but that no defence. Gollob would have passed Stead anyway during the race as he was on top form, but that’s no defence. The Jonsson/Stead incident was about five inches short of a Pedersen/Hancock re-enactment. To focus the mind the only thing you need to do in relation to these incidents is watch in your minds eye, Stead go down. Then play referee and tell me who in all honesty you would exclude.

Did you see the TV coverage of the Hampel/Rickardsson incident? Rickardsson clearly, absolutely, took away Hampel's arm. NO Ifs, buts or maybes. Did Hampel make the most of it? No of course he didn’t! But Rickardsson made contact, he didn’t admitted he made contact and no matter how you look at it, if a rider makes contact and the opponent falls, then the rider who made contact is excluded. He wouldn’t give an interview straight after the incident, but shown the replay, might have said, "well fair enough I did touch him".

16 minutes to be precise

So thats Kasprzak-8.19 Pedersen-8.03 Lindback-6.73 ? ? Walasek-5.10 Junior----3.00 The two ? can only equal 11.45. This, with a 3 pointer at seven and using the green sheets as they stand now,before your massive upturn in form (and therefore averages) that you say will see you top the league next month. With the league due to finish next month, its almost as if you in Poole know more than the rest of us about the rules re team building next year.

Actually you got me there. Those bloody Aussies, speaking English, driving on the left with the Queens head on the bank notes. Bloody foreigners. Now give me those famous anglophiles from Sweden and Denmark any day of the week. We agree at last. Just thought, Crumpys even worse, he was born in Bristol for Christ sake.

Yep, if Trick could but even more daylight between him and Crumpy to seal the championship mid season, that would keep the interest high and enable us to attract sponsors and media attention more easily. I’m looking forward to more GPs run with the same success at the Aussie GP the other year. We need GPs as close as this year so we can hopefully grow the series world-wide….blah blah blah So I’m whinging again. Need to knock this habit of wanting what’s best for speedway.

Balderdash Sorry, just trying something out (Rubbish) whereby you completely disregard the post you are replying to (Utter Tosh) by posting a few random words (Balls) or go onto make another point as though they are somehow related. (Arse) Nope, doesn’t do it for me. (Bernard Crapper, Colin Pratt, oops, it’s not as easy to stop as I thought.)

Balderdash.

Many reply and two question within it. You’ve not answered them. Thanks for that. Balderdash is good though, certainly moves thinks forward. I’ll gladly agree to disagree with you and end the “debate” now. Cheers Ouch.

Crump is more popular than Trick, British fans applaud him on a weekly basis. Same cannot be said of Trick. You would say TRick fans outnumber Crumps two to one at least, because you ALWAYS get it wrong. The best rider in the world according to the offical FIM records is the current World Champion. The Peoples Champion, Jason Crump. It’s not yet been officially taken from him. Nice insult with regards the Aces fans and site. True to form. Waste of bandwidth though. Face it. Crump is not in the same league as TRick. Correct, Crump rides in the Elite league. The SO popular TRick has turned his back on his adoring British fans. Bit of a kick in the teeth as I see it. It was an interesting GP, and like I said the crowd was good. I had fans from Brazil, Sweden and Denmark all near me, judging from their flags. Strange coincidence that the national dish for all three nations is whelks. I think so anyway as they were tucking into them at every opportunity. Kept getting dirty looks when cheering for the BRITISH born rides in the meeting. Being a Belle Vue fan it’s just what we do, very patriotic us Aces fans.

The problem with his last race wouldn’t have occurred if not for the first two dubious exclusions. If you’re only highlighting that race to suit you’re argument then it shows you really feel the same. You’re seriously suggesting that if Crump had gathered together 10 points, then finished second in a semi final and was lining up at tapes in the final he wouldn’t be “glad”? Crump has many times said in interviews how he is happy with his overall result, even when not winning a GP. You must have seen this?

He would have gladly taken second place in each of his races, if allowed to finish, and would only be unhappy about being second in the final.

Nobody can seriously say this ref was anything other than CRAP. We all know it anyway. The television proof was shown when he excluded Jonsson for tape touching when it was actually Lindback in an earlier GP. With this in mind he should not have even been in charge for this meeting. Most of the time it’s personnel opinion if a ref is right or wrong, but when you have indisputable proof he is incompetent then the authorities need to take action. For me he spoilt what could have been a good meeting. I’m sure he’ll get withdrawn from the referees rosta, but it’s a bit late now. On the Crump and Hancock topic. I saw him as being to far up on Hancocks back wheel to cut back, and if he had shut off, the bike would have lost speed, straightened and he would have hit the fence as he was only a few inches from it at the time. He tried to ride it out, and it was nobody’s fault that everyone had moved out and out leaving no room. All four back.

Great GP! Meeting held under the control of well known incompetent Marek Wojaczek, who continued to dumbfound everyone with his nonsensical decisions. The British riders flopped. The winner (and 2005 World Champion) snubs British speedway. Ditto the runner up. The Peoples Champion is wrongly excluded twice by the aforementioned referee and thus the series is now over. (I bet BSI are over the moon with the anticipated lost revenue and are working on next years scoring system as we speak). Great GP?????? Fireworks and crowd were good.

Average of two points a race in all the races that the ref wasn't involved. Bettered by only three other rides. 14 other GP riders would hope to achieve the same level of offthepaceness as Crumpy, I'd wager. Seems theres a load of deluded soles such as Crumpy, if reading the various forums is anything to go by.

That post is “class personified.” Second in the WORLD standing before and after Cardiff. Second best rider in the Elite league averages. I can think of over a hundred riders who would like to be “off the pace” like Crumpy is at present. Just to put you straight, Crump was angry with the ref, and deep down, angry with the ref.