Bavarian

... and three Regional Solo Championships: Canterbury - 3 February 2018 - Moore Park: 1st Andrew Aldridge, 2nd Jake Gillespie, 3rd Wayne Drake Auckland - 4 March 2018 - Rosebank: 1st Jake Turner, 2nd Ryan Terry-Daley, 3rd Dylan Hancock Southland - 10 March 2018 - Oreti Park: 1st Jake Turner, 2nd Andrew Aldridge, 3rd Jake Gillespie

Czestochowa is the venue for POLAND v DENMARK

Discovered this unique Speedway Videoclip from South Africa on YouTube - It is from Johannesburg, South Africa, and features Mr. Bobby Hack, a former Rhodesian speedway rider, now living in South Africa, where he is a promoter of flat track and quad bike oval track racing events. A few years ago he even attempted to revive speedway bike racing at a couple of venues in the Cape Province of South Africa - with little success, though.

Not quite sure what beacme of it, but it definitely gone now and the grounds have been built on with probably houses or a super market, I can't remember exactly what it was. But for certain this speedway track in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) does not exist anymore.

Above is a picture of Ove Fundin and the rest of the Belle Vue gang in the streets of Leningrad during their Russian trip of October 1967.

The above photograph shows the touring Belle Vue riders lining-up at Leningrad, along with the local Russian riders, prior to the individual meeting on October 8, 1967. On the previous day, October 7, the Belle Vue Aces and Barrikada Leningrad had contested a teams match at the same track.

Victorian Sidecar title results: 1st Andrew Buchanan / Denny Cox 2nd Trent Headland / Daz Whetstone 3rd Mark Plaisted / Ben Pitt 4th Warren Monson / Andrew Summerhayes New South Wales Sidecar title results: 1st Darrin Treloar / Jesse Headland 2nd Andrew Buchanan / Denny Cox 3rd Hamish Golding / Liam Cox 4th Stephen Saunders / Clarissa Saunders

... and there are a lot more nations who will take part in this brand new FIM pairs team competition, in fact it is now 15 compared to the 12 we had in the SWC ! Slovenia and Finland return, and Slovakia is a new entry !! Isn't that great ? I wonder why Castgana thinks that this SoN will help the smaller speedway nations, especially those struggling badly in Southern Europe (Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) and Overseas (Argentina, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand), to find new riders. Why would youngsters there suddenly be eager to take up the Sport, just because we now have a SoN pairs instead of the Speedway World Cup. Most of the above mentioned countries did not take part in the SWC, and most of them dont participate in the new SoN either. There should be a development programme by the FIM to help these smaller countires with logistics and knowledge, and if possible money and equipment, as is done in other sports such as Football, Rugby and Cricket. The Speedway of Nations will achieve nothing at all, it is just blurring the sad fact that many countries are no longer able to track a national team of more than two or three riders.

I don't know much about Stan Paulsen, but wasn't he from Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) ? By the way, in the mid 1970s (1975/6) a rider by the name of Dennis Paulsen took up speedway and rode in the meetings held at Salsbury's Glamis Stadium. I wonder if Dennis was perhaps Stan's son? Of the Southern Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) riders of the 1950's I guess that Bev Bird was the most successful. Bird rode in a Test Match for South Africa against England at Bulawayo in January of 1957, and indeed he top scored for the Springboks with nine points. Of the 1970s Rhodesian speedway riders I always fancied Zak Koekemoer, who was one of the leading riders in those days. Also, the two brothers Squack and Pip Harris come to mind, and that Salisbury tobacco farmer Ian McMillan. Then Chris Prinsloo was another good speedway rider, and so was Ray Barcley. In the last season of speedway racing in Rhodesia, Mike Ferreira and his brother rode together at Salisbury. Does anyone remember Mike's brother, the name escapes me at the moment ?

No Peter Prinsloo? Come on, man, You must be joking ! But with Peter Prinsloo replacing the unknown Stan Paulsen, this Zimbabwe/Rhodesia Top Five looks quite good !

Will Great Britain or England be riding in Test Matches again ? Otherwise there is only the "Speedway of Nations", now that there is no Speedway World Cup anymore.

There's a couple of intersting YouTube Videos showing ice racing (and even real speedway-on-ice) in the town of Suifenhe in the People's Republic of China ! This demonstation was done in January of 2016 by a touring troupe of Russian Ice Speedway riders and officials of the Ussurijsk Speedway Club. Ice Racing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX5nljBdpio Speedway-on-Ice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oe73te35P4

Maybe it is of interest to tell You about the very first time an ice speedway meeting was held in China. It was in the year of 2005. The initiative came from Russia. They optained permission to rent the stadium (with a capacity of 65,000 !!!) in the 3-million town of Harbin, the capital of China's Manchuria Province. The Russians themselves had to prepare the track for ice racing, since the Chinese had no idea how to do this. Work started weeks in advance, as it took many days and nights of constantly flooding the ground with water until the whole infield of the stadium was thick enough frozen and covered with solid ice. Track preparation was successfully completed in time, helped by the constant frost with night temperatures falling as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius. The Russian ice speedway promoters were hoping to attrract a big crowd, maybe 10, 20, or even 30,000 as they would present some of the world's best riders at China's very first ice speedway event. Sixteen riders from Russia, and two Swedes (Posa Serenius and Stefan Svensson) travelled to China. Well, only fifteen of the Russian arrived, as one of them, Sergei Baltachev was without a passport and never got across the Chinese border. During the week, the riders did public practise sessions in the Stadium. It was agreed that some Chinese motocross riders would be there to try ice racing and to be given expert advise of how to ride an ice speedway machine. Indeed, a few Chinese motorcycle racers came to see what ice racing was all about. They looked on, not in horror, but with apprehension. In any case, none of them wanted to try this new kind of racing. There was only one motorcyclist among the spectators who was brave enough to sit on a bike behind rider Nail Galiakberov and went out with him on the track. Galiakberov had to stop riding when the Chinese sitting behind and clanging on to him constantly tried to put the breaks on by putting his feet on the ice. Galiakberov then let the Chinese sit in front of him, and the Chinaman grew bolder, and eventually went round for a lap on his own - slowly, in first gear. After two days of riding just like that, it was time for real racing, over two days, with sixteen riders in twenty heats. There were only a few hundred spectators in the huge stadium, which was a huge disappointment for the organisers. On the first raceday, when it was very cold and the ice cleaning took a long time, it was decided to end the meeting after sixteen heats. Andrei Shishchev from Ufa was the leader at this moment with eleven points from his four rides. But he did not keep his lead on the second day, when another twenty heats were contested and the 35-year-old Eduard Ivankov from Blagoveshensk took first place ahead of Ufa's Nikolai Akimov and Andrei Shishchev. Over two days Ivankov was the victor of the first ever ice speedway meeting in China. Shishchev finished second in this historic event.

DAY 2 of the European Championhsip is now live on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQu8sdO-SjY Scoreboard: https://live.baansportfansite.nl/event/276/ek-ijsspeedway-finale-2-vyatskiye-polyany.html

POLAND keeps up the tradition to race International Speedway Test Matches, while the rest of the speedway world sadly neglects this proud tradition of our sport. National Team Manager Marek Cieslak will gather Poland's White Eagles for three International Tests in the month of May, and one special end-of-season challenge against a Rest of the World Select at the great Slaski Stadium in Chorzow. All four Test Matches will be broadcast Live on Polish TV, with Promotion Company OneSport being tasked with the organisation of the series. 2018 POLISH SPEEDWAY TEST MATCH Fixtures are: May 2: POLAND v DENMARK (venue t.b.a.) May 13: POLAND v AUSTRALIA (venue t.b.a.) May 31: POLAND v RUSSIA (venue t.b.a.) September 29: POLAND v RoW (at Chorzow)

The Poles have always been dominating at under 21 level, but very few of their talented Juniors ever reached the very top of world speedway at senior level. Good quality riders they have a lot, indeed, but World Champion material they have very little - in fact only Tomasz Gollob, following that 1973 exception of Jerzy Szczakiel. The current bunch of Polish Youngsters is exceptionally good, but behind those we currently alreayd know I can't see any more superstars on the horizon. Among their sixteen to nineteen year olds there are no exceptional talents.

Don't worry about Härtel, he is a good one ! I have seen him ride here in Bavaria since he was a schoolboy. He won the German U21 title three years in a row, and was a world U21 finalist. His progress was held back by a few unneccessary crashes in the last couple of years ago, but he is now back on track and I expect him to become a top class international performer. As a 20 y/o Härtel is already a world class rider in long-track, he was runner-up in the World L-T Championship last year. In Speedway I'd currently rate him roughly the same class as the Riss brothers. He will need a little bit of time to adopt to British Speedway in his first year, but Härtel is certainly a good signing for the WItches !

There is an easy solution, if it is a 3-3 in the final. The pair that has scored more points in total over the two days (42 heats) should then be the winners. That would be a fair and acceptable tie-breaker. It would give the overall top point scoring pair something of a bonus going into the final, knowing that a 3-3 would give them the title, while the other pair with a lesser points total knows they have to beat their opponents in that final heat by 4-2 or 5-1 to win the championship.

Has this new tyre been used in a speedway race by anyone anywhere so far? If not, it is weird that the F.I.M. are going to introduce them at Grand Prix level first, without knowing how or if at all it will work!

The Stadium, as is planned, may be o.k. for the needs of greyhoud racing, but is not suited very well for speedway spectators. The viewing will be poor, not enough seats available, and there is going to be problems with not enough car parking. All this will spoil the enjoyment for many to attend a speedway meeting at Swindon. People will slowly but surely dift away, until attendance figures will fall too low for the speedway promoters to keep it going, and the Robins will be history.

Do we really have to justify having the grid girls in Speedway. They are popular, a vast majority of the fans want to see them, so who on earth could forbid us having grid girls in Speedway? BTW who cares what F1 does !

... and to break the Polish domination of the SWC they stage the 2017 SWC final at Leszno, the proposed 2018 Pairs Speedway of Nations final at Wroclaw, and the 2019 SWC final at Gorzow (this contract is already signed).

Stupid regulation not to let such an exciting young talent ride in the UK.