Vince

Had to laugh at Split Waterman complaining about the bad impression of Speedway riders the film gives!!!

In the good old days it was the team captains responsibility to ensure that every one of his riders took advantage of the 3' depth of dirt to make at least 5 passes in every race. Any less and the captain had to make 7 passes in order to make the meeting more entertaining for the 50,000 crowd at a southern league meeting.

You just ruined 100 pages of conspiracy theory by bringing up facts, should be ashamed of yourself

Think the biggest issue is riders doing so many meetings now that getting a set of kevlars clean and dry via the washing machine is more practical than leathers which are a pain to maintain. The protection thing isn't so cut and dried as with kevlars riders wear a very good undersuit with built in armour where under leathers it used to be a minimal back protector. Seems to me there is an increased risk of abrasion injuries but they are probably at least as well protected for everything else. Having said that I wear leathers because I 'feel' better protected but that is a personal preference and I never ride several times a week. My opinion is that the riders are in the best position to decide on what protective clothing they wear and should be allowed to make that decision. The silencers was always going to happen and doubtless will happen again before too long.

Garrity is just coming back from a really serious injury and will be lacking in bike time and confidence as well as probably hurting a fair bit. Not looking interested to fans isn't necessarily the same as not being interested. Surely a rider the Rye fans were raving about a few months ago deserves to be allowed a bit more time to get back into things?

I have seen Robert Lambert practice quite a lot and he is definitely a talented lad. Quite possibly he was fast enough to ride against adults at 13 or maybe even 12 so just where do you draw the line? As soon as there is any flexibility there will be parents arguing their kid is a special case. Just suppose Robert had only ridden Speedway and never been in competitive races then I bring my lad along who at 14 has only just started Speedway and isn't as quick as Robert but has 7 years of racing Motocross against 39 other riders at a time. I argue that my lad is safer because he is used to being in a race situation although he's not actually as good on a bike, difficult to argue against and with pushy parents where there's a queue they will be looking to jump it. I still fail to see that one year later on a 500cc is very detrimental to a career, if you need racing there is an U15's Championship, win it easily get some experience and when you are just 16 you can be up against some of the Worlds best every week.

These two would be worth a try, no point in trying the total MX one as they will cover mx bikes on a Speedway track but specifically exclude Speedway bikes, shame as it's the best cover I've found. Also be worth trying CICA (Combined Insurance Company of America) as I do know somebody who got cover since the rumour that they wouldn't do so any more started. http://www.income-assured.co.uk/income-protection-sports.htm http://www.moris.co.uk/

There will be quite a few kids who can do NL times on their own but lack the physical strength to cope when things go wrong in a group of riders. You have to think of the risk to the people they are competing against as well as their own well being. Go to an amateur meeting and you will sometimes see riders who are fairly quick but just can't cope with a crowded track. Speedway isn't a career that is all over in 5 years so I can see no reason to risk having 14 year old riders competing against adults. At the moment there is one rider unhappy with the situation but who has the opportunity to progress in exactly the same way but 12 months later. There would be (has been at times with 15 year old riders in the NL) plenty of complaints about older riders if they put a 14 year old through the fence and hurt him by hard riding.

No he hasn't SCB has it wrong, the minimum age for a moped is 16. However I think that the SCB have it right with their refusal to make exceptions on age limits for riders to compete against adults. 15 is plenty young enough and as soon as you make an exception, say for Robert then the queue will form for others to be excepted. Robert might cope but how can you decide who can? Is the cut off a half second a lap slower than Robert or 1 second? Whatever it was somebody would be upset at being refused. He's a young kid who let his mouth run away with him a bit, not the end of the world and no doubt as he matures he will learn just like most of us did.

Great start to the GP season, will never understand why anybody would rather have a one off meeting to decide the Champion when the potential is there to have this several times a season. Don't have any idea what's wrong with Chris Harris but would love to see him pick his game up and prove people wrong. Smolinski was brilliant, took a well deserved win and justified his place to anybody who doubted him. Nicki Pedersen looks like there is another World Championship in him and appeared the most relaxed I've ever seen him at a GP. Thought Crump was brilliant, will welcome Nigel Pearson back rather than yesterdays commentator. One thing I did like was that when Nicki swore they didn't have a heart attack and apologise but laughed it off. If you really don't want swearing on the TV then don't have cameras in a Speedway pits, especially when riders are angry.

That is so true, Jack Burnicle was a commentator I couldn't stand even when he did MX of which he has a vast knowledge. Once teamed with Jamie Whitham on the Road Racing they became a brilliant commentary team.

Dirt Track Riders Association is looking for some help in two areas Commentator - Have you ever fancied yourself as Murray Walker or maybe you are already better than Murray was. Either way we are after your help at our rounds this year. Alex Ragby our usual commentator is busy at many of our rounds, we would like to develop our own presentation with someone who is enthusiastic about our sport. Press Officer - we would like more people to hear about what happens at our events. Do yo have some spare time to help promote the news from our club. Contact: info@dirttrackriders.co.uk Details of what the DTRA is all about can be found here, could be a great opportunity for somebody with enthusiasm to create something they believe in.

Try the classifieds here and also there are some Grasstrack pages on facebook, one run by Ben Ilsley that I know of.

That's still a lot less than the weekly attendance for Speedway! Whilst I agree that the core product has to be right the success of darts is surely as much down to changing the way it is promoted and making it a good night out as it is to the increased standard of competitors. It's not really all that long ago that the likes of Lowe and Bristow were more famous than any current dart player and darts was on terrestrial TV. Of course if the racing is great the other stuff doesn't matter. However the racing can't always be great and on those nights you need people to feel that they have still had a good time and that's when the presentation, music etc could improve the atmosphere enough to still make it a worthwhile night out. One thing that could be done that I believe would improve attendances almost instantly would be to install modern, immaculately clean toilet facilities. Might not seem a big deal but I think that a lot more men would be accompanied by wives or girlfriends and therefore kids if that were to happen. Then again if you like a lads night out at the Speedway that could be the worst idea ever

The idea of pits being busy places is one I hadn't thought of. It's very true that while meetings are often run at a snails pace from a spectators point of view equally often things are hectic throughout the same meeting in the pits. I've been guilty of getting others to deliberately slow a meeting down in order to get a bike repaired without any thought of the spectator experience as will every rider and mechanic at times. I guess the only real answer to that is for Ref's to be less tolerant of delays but I'm sure I would be the first in line to criticise them if a rider from my team failed to make the gate when 'another few seconds' would have made the difference. That few seconds could be minutes but it depends on which side is struggling :-)

Also check the washer on the back of the basket.

One sided because under the old system starts were very unfair and it was very rare to get 4 riders leaving at the same time, something that happens far more often now in my opinion. My solution to stopping rolling and therefore lessen the mistake of good gates being penalised is simple. Once the start marshall has positioned the riders anybody moving backwards by so much as an inch is sent back to the penalty line. Then nobody can get a roller and if the tapes aren't touched the start has to be good.

I'd hate to see them allowing rolling and tape touching again, led to more one sided racing than anything else in the sport and huge frustration on the part of the fans if my memories of the times are anything like accurate. The current way is not 100% perfect and when a rider gets a perfect start and is recalled it's as frustrating as the old 'flyer' however it happens a lot less often.

I'm guessing it because if your helmet touches the tapes you didn't necessarily jump the start, not the case if the bike does.

No, for some reason I seemed to remember Iwade having trouble with a neighbour and restrictions being put in place but more than likely got it wrong.

Of course one of the problems with a serious concussion is that you often don't realise that you have one or that it's still causing you problems. Then you start to lose confidence so try harder, do worse and lose more confidence. Before long it seems an impossible to get out of downward spiral so the temptation is to think your career over. Suddenly after some time out the concussion goes and you start to feel better, have a spin on a bike and it feels like old times and only then do you realise how much the concussion was to blame. No idea if this is what happened to James but it's a possibility and could explain why such a talented rider started to struggle. To my mind there is no doubt that he is/was one of the most talented British riders of his generation. Doubtful he was ever proud to ride with concussion but one thing you can be sure of is that if he hadn't there would have been fans of his team very critical of his ability to get over injuries fast.

Isn't Iwade pretty restricted to the times it can run?

The Distance - Cake. I forgot the music, generally poor, I am an old fart but even I think the music is soporific. Don't stop me now - really?? Riders having dust ups gets a big thumbs up from me, can turn a non event into a meeting that is talked about for years. One proviso however is that riders can scrap with riders but if anybody else throws a punch at a rider they should never be allowed trackside again. Mechanics and track staff can all fight each other as far as I am concerned but nobody except a fellow rider should be allowed to hit a rider. On the same sort of subject fines should be x number of points not a fixed sum, a £300 fine for a NL rider is two maximums while for an EL rider it could be a second place - that's not justice. Ref's can have a huge part to play in running good, enjoyable meetings they need to use common sense to make that happen.

It is easy to have razzamataz for one off meetings but whatever you do in that vein will very quickly become boring if seen week in and week out. I do think a good, enthusiastic announcer / commentator is a must and things like rider introductions could be improved at a lot of tracks without going over the top. I know that a lot of tracks want to keep people on site for a good amount of time in order to take some more money off them via the food and drink outlets but would much prefer that the meeting was run at a quick pace with a long but filled interval rather than drag the meeting out. I struggle to think of any reason why apart from injury that it should take more than an hour to run 15 heats of Speedway. The interval could be fairly easily and cheaply filled with something like the local Trials club putting on a demo trial with an made obstacles. Something that could only work at some tracks which I think would be an excellent time filler would be to have a cycle Speedway track on the centre green and run their heats between the motorcycle version. In the interval you could run some kids races which would get them along. You can't underestimate the importance of giving the kids something to do each week. At Weymouth they used to have a running race around the track and there several kids who dragged their parents along so they could take part in that and eventually the parents went to watch the Speedway. Again for kids you could have lucky tickets with small prizes. You could do the same with adults with one of the prizes being the chance to watch a race from the centre green (something every Speedway fan should do at least once). The best thing of all would be to have well prepared tracks and a short practice session before the meeting so that both teams started the meeting with well set up bikes. At the end of the day if the racing is good fans will go home a lot happier.

Sponsors names aren't a lot of good on the back of the rider, how often do you see photo's of a riders back?