Good-bye To Wembley, - Again

[britmet 233]

It's good-bye again to Wembley speedway in Johannesburg, South Africa, as today's Wembley Raceway goes up for sale for site redevelopment.

Joburg's original Wembley Stadium was initially built for dog racing but changed to staging dirt-track speedway post-war when track betting in the Union was prohibited. It was the scene of many internationals, MRCs and league racing, replicating the UK scene and featuring the likes of world champs Briggs, Moore, Fundin, Williams, plus Nygren, Crutcher, and locals, Henry Long, Buddy Fuller and Fred Wills, etc.

Wembley Stadium was demolished in 1978: Wembley Raceway was constructed c.1990, primarily for Oval car racing but with speedway bikes in composite meetings, run throughout the '90s and early '00s until the track was tarmac'd over.

This Wheels24 article carrying the news wrongly attributes South Africa's speedway heydays to one single site: soon both will be gone! Speedway-SA

[Bavarian 768]

I have just read about it on speedway-sa.com

 

Sad news, even though speedway was no longer part of the Wembely Raceway meetings in recent years. After tarmacing the main track some ten years ago they initially had built a smaller dirt oval on the infield for speedway, but that wasn't used very often.

 

 

Anyway, as long as the Wembely Raceway with its oval track for motorsports was still there, there was always the possibility for a revival of speedway there at some time, but once it is gone, are there any other potential speedway (or stock car) ovals to be found in Johannesburg?

 

Walkerville, south of Jo'burg, has been operating as a bikes only track so far, but I fear that this my tempt the promoters to open their doors for the cars there as well (and push the speedway bikes further into oblivion) if the Wembley track is sold for redevelopment?

Edited July 18, 2015 by Bavarian