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Well done Zmarzlik - thoroughly deserved and clearly the world's best rider at the moment. Well done BSI. In a year where the international sporting calendar has been ravaged, they pulled together an excellent series in difficult circumstances. Finally, happy 25th anniversary. To those STILL banging on about a return to one-off World Finals. Here's to 25 more!

I'm Polish, but the Polish domination of the sport doesn't really seem healthy. Unfortunately, there are a lot of selfish "patriots" amongst those managing Polish speedway on organisational level that some ideas promoting foreign riders can't really pass with them steering it. They didn't let Latvians into Extraleague. They won't agree for one U21 rider to be a foreigner. Polish clubs like Sparta Wroclaw act really selfish marrying Chugunow to a Polish wife so he can get nationalized. That rid Russians of probable medal at U21 World Championship yesterday. This year is kinda weird, because Poland was actually one of the few stable European countries during post-lockdown phase of the pandemic, where you could host events comfortably on the regular with crowd attending (with some minor exceptions). But I'm really afraid that it's a step towards shrinking of the sport. Not sure what the future brings. Something really needs to be done before speedway becomes a travelling circus like F1. Also, I saw Speedway in Britain doesn't really attract younger crowds, why is that?

An individual meeting, you can represent any country as long as you hold a licence. But you can't represent a team without holding a passport.....an old subject that confuses many

But he has already ridden for Russia, got a gold medal or is it two. I have a problem with sports people changing “nationality” as a matter of convenience. To dodge between one and the other is pushing too much IMO.

Interesting that the new system stretched out the field, particularly the top three from the rest. Last night, it meant the championship wasn't decided until the first semi-final instead of earlier in the meeting. But it could very easily go the other way. If you look at this year's European Championship, it went down to the last race. Had points been awarded on finishing positions, it would have been over as a contest after three rounds and Madsen would have won easily. I still prefer the old system. Had Bart finished on 8 rather than 9 points last night, then Woffy and Lindgren (both already qualified on 10 and 9 respectively) would have been looking at ways on how they could have eliminated Bart from the semis. Under a system where every point counts, that kind of manipulation was much harder. But we were one point away from it happening last night.

Some awesome riders discussed here, but I can't believe nobody has mentioned Erik Gundersen. Three titles, and who knows if he would have taken more but for his career ending accident. A wonderful rider, and an incredibly nice guy too.

Well done Bartoz, well deserved winner, also like to say not just tonight but well done to polish speedway for showing the rest of the world it’s needs to man up and get on with life

YOU know there is a pandemic doing the rounds? All the riders are already in Poland. Where else could they have held it

Lets hope the gp challenge next season is after the last grand prix

Well they could have put the Man U highlights on to compensate this

YEP

So you saying only top 6 qualify, plus Sec champ, plus 3 challenge, so you want 5 fresh ones every year. You, and other wishful pickers, could well be in tears. Is there really 5 others each and every year good enough to come into the GP.? Who , for instance would you put in next year, 5 of them, that would be more then also rans.??? Who, outside of the GP’s this year have been lighting up the track week after week?.?

Perfect then... a neutral venue for once, to determine worthy winners

it all proved pretty academic in the end as Bartek finished 16 points clear of Tai where under the old system he would have finished 18 ahead. What it did add was real jeopardy in the final round making it more akin to a one off world final than a GP series. What it did show was that nobody really knew what was going on and who had to score what as the commentary team showed when trying to explain what would happen if Bartek didn't make the final, that it would depend who finished where in the semi-finals and then look back through the programme to see who had beaten who in which heat on count back, those of us watching on TV had the luxury of somebody trying to explain it to us... I bet if you were in the stadium you wouldn't have a clue who had actually won... fortunately Bartek made the final and won a well deserved 2nd title.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total Pts +/- % Old Rank New Rank Rank Diff Bartosz Zmarzlik 11 14 20 14 17 19 12 14 121 133 12 10% 1 1 0 Tai Woffinden 12 15 12 11 12 16 13 12 103 117 14 14% 2 2 0 Freddie Lindgren 10 11 14 17 9 15 11 16 103 117 14 14% 2 2 0 Maciej Janowski 17 19 8 9 6 10 16 17 102 107 5 5% 4 4 0 Leon Madsen 13 7 12 15 9 9 9 10 84 89 5 6% 6 5 1 Jason Doyle 5 3 12 16 13 12 9 9 79 87 8 10% 7 6 1 Artem Laguta 20 13 7 3 13 6 9 14 85 84 -1 -1% 5 7 -2 Emil Sayfutdinov 11 6 6 13 11 7 11 10 75 81 6 8% 9 8 1 Martin Vaculik 11 4 13 12 13 11 10 5 79 78 -1 -1% 7 9 -2 Max Fricke 2 8 4 8 8 7 16 4 57 64 7 12% 10 10 0 Matej Zagar 6 4 8 5 4 7 8 3 45 46 1 2% 11 11 0 Patryk Dudek 5 7 3 1 7 6 5 6 40 39 -1 -3% 12 12 0 Niels-Kristian Iversen 3 11 6 3 5 3 0 2 33 32 -1 -3% 13 13 0 Mikkel Michelsen 5 7 5 2 7 3 2 2 33 32 -1 -3% 13 13 0 Antonio Lindback 1 1 2 3 2 5 1 7 22 22 0 0% 15 15 0 Gleb Chugunov 6 8 14 16 2 14% 16 16 0 Jack Holder 6 7 13 12 -1 -8% 17 17 0 Anders Thomsen 4 6 10 10 0 0% 18 18 0 Vaclav Milik 0 2 2 1 -1 -50% 19 19 0

I'm inclined to agree with you but you have to ask yourself what was the reasoning behind changing to top 6 from top 8 if you're not going to include the likes of Lidsey, Chuggers, Holder, Loktaev etc.

I’d have preferred a one off meeting/event this year, said as much in the spring. No different. Wouldn’t have agreed with that either if I’d been born / old enough! Have to agree with others, take out Prague and there has been some decent racing.

Piotr Pawlicki is very professional at falling off after a slight touch. I was quite impressed with the Latvian Rider Lebedevs in the swc a couple of years ago. What has he done lately since winning the SEC? On another note i would like to see riders in the GP field barred from entering the qualifying rounds held in the same season so they can't sneak back in through the back door for the next season. This would open the door for more riders on the way up rather than having riders in the series who rarely threaten to make the top 6 (formerly 8) but keep getting back in through the GP Challenge.

For someone who watches his speedway at Poole every week. Mr Shovlar has a strange outlook on what is good and bad racing. I would have thought any racing would look good compared to the utter crap that that is served up at Wimborne road on a regular basis. Even the home riders in the past have a good moan in public about it!!!!

I think we have been lucky to have seen some fantastic racing this year. Look at heat two tonight. Out of this world and there were plenty more. I thought the whole think has jumped up a notch or two this season. Especially the top end of the field.

Unfortunate to all of us in the rest of the world, Speedway wouldn't have a future if it wasn't for Poland. The sport has been in free fall for years until Poland reminded us what we had been missing. Arguably the NSS in Manchester is the best track in the UK and in reality it is a carbon copy of a successful formula in Poland. I would love to see the sport thrive and have GPs all over the world but lets be honest, at the moment only Poland can sustain multiple GPs at a profit. The racing this year has been, at times, excellent and a credit to the sport. We need to use such events to re=engage public interest in the sport.

I hope this is done properly, Eurosports live broadcasts can be a bit patchy, what happens if tennis or some other sport over runs, do we arrive at the speedway with half a dozen heats gone.

Full- throttle has very kindly asked me to donate the winners prize to the Ben Fund- which the winners have all asked me to do over the past few years.

Not sure home advantage was all that, Bart won 4 GPs including the only 2 outside Poland. He only won 2 of 6 in Poland. This kid is going to be around for many a year.

I think it's time to up Nigel's medication!

Ginger....

FIRST question from Kiri whatshername ... Bartosz, you are World Champion. I will take a wild guess that he knew that.

8 rounds, no matter the scoring system, he deserves to be World Champion

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.

Heat 2 doesn't really have that much significance if the main contenders all accrue enough points to get to the semi finals. This is one of the weaknesses of the new scoring system. A speedway Grand Prix should evolve like a story, the points gained in the meeting and the World Championship table should evolve side by side as the meeting progresses. Every point scored should count . Last year at Torun the World Championship table evolved after every heat, win for Madsen had to be matched by wins for Bartosz and Emil, every heat had something on it particularly when the main men met each other, beating your main rival was huge. Now realistically we have no idea how many points each rider will score until heat 20. The people that represent speedway at the F.I.M need insist to the top powers that speedway has a unique heat formula unlike other motorsports under their umbrella, we don't have one race per fortnight we have 23 individual heats, they all need to mean something. The GP has searched endlessly for a scoring system over the years, which is the fairest and rewards the best rider over the whole meeting, it found it and then had it ditched by people who do not understand the sport, get last years scoring system reintroduced for next year as a priority. I dare say the F.I.M will know better and carry on as they are as they normally do. Doing the math's, last years scoring system would have Bartosz 111, Freddie 103, Tai 102 , game on , pressure on in Torun tonight !

The lad did well. Looks about 12 though!!

I said the same a few weeks ago after his big crash in Sweden,his reactions are not the same when racing.Should have taken more time out IMO.

That's because he is so full of himself and his own importance! Always has been. Ridiculous that someone who has won as few actual races as he has this year, finishes second in the championship! Just another example of how ridiculous the new scoring system is. Well done Bartosz, truly deserved winner of the GP series, head and shoulders above anyone else at the moment.

I think that the punch up may have been in 1971? Rayleigh were, I think, the only team to win at Arlington during Eastbourne's Championship winning year? As you say a long time ago now. I remember well the 1972 drawn match as it took an age to locate the stadium as we drove around the Sussex countryside and arrived after about four heats had taken place!

Why didn`t i back Ljung under 8- I have seen all his meetings and he is just not right !!

Do a broadband Speedtest, do a search for “ookla speedtest”, that will show you accurately what you getting now, it’s the down load speed you mostly interested in.

Yeh thanks for that, I need to check out what speeds I've got at the minute. No good going cheap if its rubbish. Life seemed much less complicated and less stressful back in the day lol

Bydgoszcz safe- Daugavpils relegated

My first ever visit to Arlington against Rayleigh way back in 1972, ended in a massive punch up. Last seasons shenanigans against Glasgow, just kept up those traditions!

All of this does beg the question, why the number of automatic qualifiers was reduced from 8 to 6. Even when it was 8, it was usually the case that numbers 9 & 10 got a pick. With only 6 qualifiers, it makes it even more likely that nos. 7 & 8 are going to be two of those picks.

Fricke made 2 semis, turned 1 into a GP win, and missed the cut for three other semis by one point. He was poor R1 & R3, but has been a lot more solid overall than a number of comments in this forum would indicate. His less than great extraliga average may not help his chances of a WC but. The idea of new blood is wonderful, especially given that NKI, Lindbaek, and MM have proven not competitive, but there is little to suggest from the speedway year results that any of the young prospects or recycling options are likely to do better than this years top ten. Nikki on form, even without considering past exploits looks to me one of the better options for the 15th spot.

Spot on.. Tremendous entertainment.. I hope Eurosport can deliver the interest that the sport at this level deserves.. When done well, (and properly), this sport has few peers for raw 'wow factor/take your breath away' entertainment..

Of course, from 1936-1994, 100% of the rounds were held in one country!

well deserved, congratulations Bartosz

Zmarzlik the greatest rider ever.

Still an fantastic effort tho & it's his 1st year on the 500 cc

Fricke had a poor start to his season,but he has that touch is class that good riders need, he has ridden well in most of the GP’s and IMO deserves a Wildcard if needed .Lingback and Iversen have had their day in GP’s.Tough choices for Wildcards but no doubt Politics will come into play.Lidsey winning the U/21 would be case on his form this season.IMO

It is what it is but, poor Jan Kvech scorers 13pts and will go down in the record books as finishing 5th!! I hate the fact that a rider (Petr Chlupac) Can score 7pts and still have as much chance of winning the meeting as ( Jaimon Lidsey 14pts ) I know it's all about keeping in line with other sports, but personally I will never accept it as a fair system. Just like the senior GP's series. Bartosz Zmarzlik has been head and shoulders above the rest of the riders, yet one bad meeting tonight and it will mean nothing. If thats a fair system I'll eat my hat.

Average number of smoking related deaths each day in the UK - 213 Also a further 11 per day attributed to passive smoking Remind me when was smoking made illegal? Oh it hasn't- why not then given those numbers? Lost tax revenue is the often used arguement but that surely cant be so anymore given the cost so far (and continuing) 'dealing' with the current situation