RacerDon

What a difference a year makes... GREAT BRITAIN 60: Scott Nicholls 15, Chris Harris 14, Lee Richardson 11, Simon Stead 10, Edward Kennett 10. SWEDEN 49: Jonas Davidsson 16, Fredrik Lindgren 12, Peter Karlsson 9, Mikael Max 8, Antonio Lindback 2, Magnus Karlsson 2. RUSSIA 27: Denis Gizatullin 11, Emil Sayfutdinov 6, Roman Ivanov 4, Sergey Darkin 2, Renat Gafurov 2, Danil Ivanov 2. USA 20: Greg Hancock 15, Billy Janniro 3, Chris Kerr 2, Charlie Venegas 0, Tommy Hedden 0. Even allowing for the Danes being involved this time around with pretty much the same team as last year GB were slow, seemingly underprepared (perhaps over confident, or maybe just complacent, Jim??) . Painful to watch.

Probably something to do with a certain controversial refereeing decision in the pairs event I'd have thought.

To be fair newbie he never actually said he was right by the finish. Perhaps he was sharing a drink with Mr Flint, as clearly neither of them were watching the race.

I suspect there are still people who will look at this photograph (merely a wheel length win for Lemon) and still be convinced that Doyle crossed the line first. In any case an(other) incompetent ref may get suspended (and if any justice Tim Sugar get his £300 back), doesn't put a trophy in Reading's cabinet though. (and yes we may well have lost the final anyway, but we'll never know will we?)

So reading the referee's comments starting gate positions in GP might be summed up as follows.; The rider in red can only ride one line, this has to be 100% perfect to avoid almost certain exclusion on any coming together. The rider in yellow can ride any line he likes. The rider in blue probably won't gate quickly enough to be involved in any trouble. The rider in white might as well not be there anyway, certainly in Cardiff GPs. (BTW, apart from refereeing, the strangest decision of the night must have been Hans Andersen choosing white over yellow in semi final, can only have been because he didn't want Nicki inside of him for some reason.. meanwhile Nicki could not hide his joy at getting the outside gate) Well if them's the rules god help speedway.

Fans don't usually boo bad opponents, I'm sure Nicki takes the booing as a compliment, as in most part he should. Well out of order for people not to respect his post match interview though. I don't believe he deserved to be in the final but would have liked to have heard what he said. As said many times it wasn't his fault that the referee made two dreadful decisions, I've never yet seen a rider rush to the phone to plead that his opponent shouldn't have been thrown out... The people who will really deserve serious abuse are those who select the referees if they don't immediately announce that this idiot is suspended from officiating at all future GP events. Sadly ridiculous decisions are rather more common in SGP than they ought to be, given the endless camera shots from all sorts of angles.

Have to say the motorcycle stunt guys at start were very good. We could do without having a complete and utter clown in the referee's box next year though.

I suspect they were just preempting what everyone thought would be the right decision. I started to think he was going to exclude somebody when there was delay in announcing his decision, but was absolutely staggered to see the red light go on. The second instance came as no surprise, although an equally poor decision.

Was Leigh cheated twice?, I was at the stadium and haven't seen any replays at home since but from the TV replays on big screen I couldn't see how the ref could have awarded either rider in his heat with Hancock the outright win. Not really a good idea to well and truly screw a Robins rider with half of Swindon on a day out in Cardiff.

bang to rights. Of course I was only testing to see which of you were awake

So who thinks that Nicki Pedersen will refuse to ride in next year's British Final? (no me neither) As to this abject excuse for a top international referee I expect it will be business as usual, even though we should be looking at a GP series with a very exciting 4 point gap between the top two, rather than the 10 point gap Nicki undeservedly holds this morning. Anyone who had backed Bjarne Pedersen at 25/1 should feel especially cheated as he looked certain to qualify for final before Nicki rode into the back of him, and had a real chance of winning this. A great event ruined by a complete buffoon of a referee.

Actually it was mentioned 3 times in his first heat alone, (plus countless times afterwards), compounded with the 5 times Slovenian champion and the man from Mildura being in same heat. Amusingly Hampel even got a mention as having a Polish licence in the final. I knew this would be hard work when I heard Pearson on talksport this afternoon. ps I believe I was Tomacek's home track tonight.

Would that be Holta with the Polish Licence by any chance? God how that Millard needs a slap, repetitive boring twunt. ps I believe the referee might also have been from Poland

Except the rules of the competition for using a reserve/substitute are (supposed to be) rather different to those of football. D'oh

First he was ill, but looked very fit and well 5 minutes later when accompanying his replacement back to his pit area after he was fenced, then they said he was out with a foot injury, just as he appeared running on and giving Gollob the bumps. Whatever I'm glad he has such great powers of recovery, good luck to him.

Nice to see that Walasek's foot injury had recovered well enough for him to sprint out like a gazelle to give Gollob the bumps. Well done Poland.

Don't think Nicholls deserved to be excluded for Hans falling,(and I had money on Hans tonight), but then I thought there was a clearer case for exclusion for Pedersen going down. (and strictly IMO even clearer case for Crump being excluded earlier). All I'd say is when you set a precedent all evening of excluding the rider who has gone down it was a bit strange to take the opposite view in the Nicholls/Andersen incident. Just shows how hard it is for referee to make the right decision, as opinion seems completely polarised on all these incidents. At the end of the day it was probably best that AJ won, given many will consider that Hans was more than slightly fortunate to even be in the final.

Amazing Grand Prix. Not a single mention of Mildura in 22 heats, and just a single seven times Australian Champion. Is this a record ? Well done AJ, even though my money was on Andersen, ( AJ still available at 2/1 before rerun, wish I'd covered my bet, ho hum.)

And Jason Crump also got a few Mildura mentions, god help us when Mr M finds out where Travis McGowan is from

Hmm - I can think of a few riders who might have taken Scott out with his first bend manouvre on the rerun, and probably got a rerun with all 3 back in, in fact I doubt Nicholls would have even risked that move against many other riders. Then his reluctance to close the gate, like Crump did to Pedersen in other semi, has probably cost him 2 GPs, so all things considered nice guys probably do sometimes come last

Unless your name is Greg Hancock

Good GP, but too much bias on starting gate position, for such an event not a single winner from gate 2, and gate 3 a similar pig until late in the meeting, can hardly be satisfactory. As to Scott/Matej then depending on your country/club alliegance you will view Steele's decision as brilliant or inept, since all the ex-riders on Sky were very clear a wrong call had been made I prefer to go with them. However, with no extra points for being a losing semi finalist (dumb decision) then as I see it if you're trailing in third or fourth with no real prospect of catching second place rider then you might as well just ride whatever line you want and if you're lucky then other guy in third/fourth will fall off, get excluded and you'll get a rerun. Worked for Scott, but as they say what comes around goes around.... Few at Reading will have much sympathy with Matej after his pathetic effort on Wednesday then beating Crump and others 3 days later, Unfortunately the biggest loser from the incident was Greg Hancock

If having your front wheel completely taken away as you start your turn counts as a small bump then you have a point I suspect that if Hans Andersen had been the rider passing Zagar then it wouldn't have been the yellow light that went on I'm more annoyed that it cheated Hancock out of a final spot, if Matej had reached the final many questions would have needed to have been asked about why he was riding like a conference league junior at Smallmead on Wednesday..

Miracles rarely happen, shocking refereeing decisions much more frequently