Humphrey Appleby

It certainly didn't help to have its prime race days taken away though. And frankly, the SGP has hardly been the saviour of the sport either. Maybe things would have been even worse without it, but the sport is almost entirely off the mainstream radar now.

I find it curious who people feel that an accident of birth somehow makes a sports person more qualified to represent their country than where they spent their formative years and/or started their careers. Mark Loram was born in Malta but would never be mistaken for a malteser, whilst Jason Crump who was born in the UK could not in any way be described as a Pom. The whole notion of sports persons representing their country has largely become a nonsense anyway. In an ever more internationalist world, it's increasingly common that a sports person is qualified to represent two or more countries, and that's not even taking in account those who take a flag of convenience.

I seem to recall that the Telegraph was really the only broadsheet that provided any sort of speedway coverage in recent years, but if they can't be bothered to report on the sport's premier event, then there's really no hope. That speedway couldn't get it's act together to provide a central feed to the mainstream media really sums up why it's not taken seriously by anyone that matters.

Which high quality product would this be... Top-level speedway might survive without Britain, but it won't without all the national competitions.

Ah, but they don't seed them to the Final itself. It's less of an issue to seed one rider out of 16 for commercial reasons, but seeding one team out of four in the SWC makes a bit of farce of things, especially if that team isn't really competitive.

Assuming the FIM can wring more money out of the Euro Championship, what would they do with it? I'm sure IMG will also be pretty unhappy to have a replica series competing for hosts, sponsors and television money, especially considering that they probably expected exclusivity when they signed-up to an 18-year deal or whatever it was.

Yes, but IMG/BSI are also charging GP staging fees are they not, and as we know the FIM pay out the SGP prize monies. Perhaps that's why there's a European Championship round in Russia which is apparently beyond the SGP? Hopefully a more equitable arrangement will emerge, and one where money from the premier events starts coming back into speedway.

I suspect it would greatly vary depending on stadium ownership/lease costs, how much you'd have to pay riders to come and ride for you (geographically challenged tracks may have to pay more), and what your other operating costs are. When I looked into this more than 10 years ago, Elite League tracks had running costs of something like 400-500K per year, so I'd imagine it's a fair bit more now. I'd have thought something like 50-65% of those costs for Premier League tracks at very rough guess, but really no idea for National League tracks. although some of them might be up near the lower end of the Premier scale.

I don't really see anyone bring rude about them, just generally questioning the need for organised tours in this day and age. You pay your money and make your choices though.

Speedway air fences are starting to be used in karting now...

Sure. They use a variant of the old GP knockout format, but under that you could get not just one, but two dodgy gates.

Let's not even get into 5 and 6 man runoffs...

What happens in three-way tie where each rider has won a head-to-head over one of the others, and/or where riders have identical countback records?

A long way to go for just a week, and if I were going there for work I'd want all my expenses paid. A few hundred quid is not the huge in the scheme of running in the SGP, but somehow I doubt Lewis Hamilton has to take his car to Schiphol when he drives in the Australian GP!

300-odd quid on the ferry to get a van to Amsterdam, plus fuel, plus mechanic wages.

Except riders have got to get their gear to Amsterdam, presumably at their own expense.

Except that if a rider scores 9 points, it also stops the opposition scoring 9 points so the net difference is 18 points.

There have been tallish riders who've been successful, but I think they were generally fairly wiry. I'd have thought that carrying any sort of additional weight is going to be a disadvantage all things being equal, although there might be some trade-off between strength and weight to some degree. I'd have thought most of the successful riders over the years have been relatively small and light though.

Yes, but they all have to be beaten. Nielsen and Gundersen managed it, Knudsen did not, and Pedersen had injuries at inopportune times.

Knudsen often threatened, but didn't seem to have the ability to pull things out of the bag at crucial times. A good rider, but I wouldn't put him the same league as Nielsen and Gundersen. I felt Ermolenko was quite lucky to win the 1993 Final (at which I was present), given that Nielsen was excluded for passing him and he had an engine failure (or was it chain came off) just before a race was stopped. However, he'd had poor luck on other occasions, so I'm sure few begrudged him a World title.

The number of injuries he had would possibly suggest otherwise...

Is it some sort of disease unique to speedway that makes people thankful for any sort of customer service?

The problem is how do you factor in tactical rides (or tactical subs if you reintroduced them)? A handicapped team starting 10 points behind could conceivably use a tactical ride as early as Heat 5 which wouldn't necessarily be fair. You'd need to have a way of adjusting the par score as the match went on - a sort of speedway Duckworth-Lewis method - to determine when a team was trailing by 10 points in real terms. I suppose you could split the handicap points over the programmed rides of the missing rider, and where the points couldn't be split equally, allocate them to the weakest heat pairings (a bit like how you do it in golf with the stroke index). However, I suspect everyone reading this has lost the will to live by now, which demonstrates the difficulty of doing it right.

I believe that was tried a few years ago, but even if you used away averages for a guest, you could still use a rider that rode a particular track well. It just adds ever more complexity to the rulebook, and what's already an unfathomable rule to outsiders even more so. I think serious consideration should be given to a handicap system for teams missing riders, although it's actually quite hard to devise a workable system with things like tactical rides to take into account.

Yes, but some things are more pointless than others...