Humphrey Appleby

Is it any great mystery? The last time round, I think the Aussie GP organisers paid for shipping the riders' equipment from London, but the riders had to get it there are their own expense. Normally travel expenses for a rider and his crew also have to come out of the prize money, but obviously the crap prize money wouldn't hardly cover the air fares out to Australia. I seem to recall that some additional allowance was paid last time around, but again there were whinges this was insufficient.

Errr.. no, it could happen in any sport unless you award more points for winning a single round than you could gain by accumulating all second places, and I'm sure most would agree that would be farcical. It's admittedly unusual to win a series without winning a round, but I'm sure it must have happened at some point (and there have certainly been F1 champions that have only won a single GP in a season).

No, the website is pretty poor at the best of times, and there's barely even a mention of the cancelled GP mixed in amongst other trivial news items. Piss poor really. The BSI corporate website is also pretty superficial and hasn't been updated in yonks either.

But it's a bit 'if' isn't it? How much notice did the organisers have, and how quickly could the machine be shipped out there?

It's because BSI they don't promote the other GPs themselves. Those are licensed to local promoters who pay BSI a fee for the privilege, but who then get to keep the gate and programme money. They'd therefore no doubt expect to be compensated by BSI for those fans they let in for free.

I know you don't want this to descend into a general rant against the Spar, and to be fair I haven't seen this week's copy yet. Nevertheless, why are you surprised? The Spar lost any journalistic credibility years ago, merely parroting what the BSPA and BSI want the great unwashed to hear. It's nothing more than a trade magazine these days, which is hardly surprising as it's largely owned by the establishment.

Well there's only the Speedway Star in Britain as the main newspapers are just not interested in speedway. And the Speedway Star long since sold its soul to the 'powers-that-be' so don't expect any critical journalism from that quarter. It's more fun to make up conspiracy theories on here anyway.

Autocratic is all very well.. so long as you do a good job.

That's as may be, but it's down to BSI to negotiate enough time for proper track preparation, especially at the GPs they run themselves. No doubt time is constricted by what BSI are willing to pay to rent the venues, but again that's really only down to them. They are slick for a very good reason. Olsen believes hard slick tracks produce closer racing for television, as they are more consistent and easier to ride. The fact it's almost impossible to pass and leads to boring GPs doesn't seem to occur to him, but there you go. In fairness to him with temporary tracks though, I suspect it's close to impossible task to lay a good racing track in a short time. I'm not sure it would help to bring in track curators from countries that only stage a handful of meetings per season. No disrespect, but they're unlikely to have the same experience, particularly with doing things in a limited timeframe. There are decent track curators in the major speedway countries who know how to prepare proper race tracks, but they won't get a look in whilst Olsen is around.

That would be a bit of a long way to go for a GP to be rained-off in an indoor stadium.

BMI are a perfectly respectable airline - I'm not sure they'd appreciated being blamed for last weekend's fiasco.

I don't think it's fair to make the comparison. Odsal's capacity was cut to 27,000 after the nearby Valley Parade fire, and the 1990 World Final was a sell-out.

Odsal also got close to 27,000 for its last World Final, which I'm sure BSI would be pretty happy with at most GPs!

You know nothing about me, and what I do or don't do. Furthermore, unless you're John Postlethwaite in disguise, I don't see you running the SGP either (and if you are him, you're not even doing that now ). As far as I can see, your only contribution is to unquestioningly defend the amateurish organisation that is BSI, but if that's making something happen in your book, well fine. Well in fact they did have the vision, which is why created the SGP and sold it off to BSI. Unfortunately though, their vision did nothing to benefit main speedway nations who actually allow professional riders to exist in the first place. Or erm... the Munich Olympic Stadium? In fact, the 1993 World Final was originally scheduled for the Berlin Olympic Stadium, but the plans for that and Gelsenkirchen demonstrate the problem with having a big speedway event in Germany. With the best will in the world, there simply isn't enough German interest in speedway to support such things.

I could be wrong, but wasn't Hampden closed for redevelopment in the mid-1990s, and of course the RFU won't let their precious turf be used for anything other than egg chasing. Twickenham wouldn't have been suitable anyway, as it's a compact square shape where the turf can't be lifted. The simple fact of the matter is that roofed stadiums suitable for speedway didn't exist in Europe until the latter half of the 1990s. I suspect that BSI also got the Millenium Stadium rather cheap, as it was known to have a paucity of events after its expensive redevelopment. In addition, it had the advantage that the edges of the pitch were on pallets that could be lifted out.

There are two separate issues here. Firstly, if it weren't for the GPs, some of the riders would be working for their employers during those weekends. The fact is that tracks can no longer run on one of the most profitable days of the weeks because the GP has the pick of them. Secondly, if I were involved in work for a third party which stood a good chance of me getting injured and being unable to work for my main employer, they'd most definitely have something to say about it. In my particular case, I'm also required to be available for work as and when necessary, and not to undertake work that directly conflicts with my employer's business. That's not the point. In the past, the World Final profits went to associations and promoters who actually ran speedway on a day-to-day basis, not some third party taking the money out of the sport. The simple fact is there would be no SGP without the national leagues paying the bulk of the wages, because they certainly couldn't live off the SGP prize money. Firstly, I'm not against the SGP per se, just the way in which it was given away by the FIM to a third-party that actually isn't that good at running it. Your question though is impossible to answer because the SGP existed for a few years before BSI came along, and then only after the World Final had been run into the ground. However, as I tire of pointing out, Cardiff and Copenhagen aside, BSI have actually done little with the SGP, which is largely still held in provincial backwaters in front of small crowds. The Polish GPs get decent crowds, but then they always did before BSI came along. Even the attendance at much hyped Cardiff isn't much higher than that of the 1992 World Final, supposedly at a time when the World Final couldn't fill medium-sized stadiums any more. The rot set-in with the World Final when it was taken to a succession of backwater venues outside the main speedway countries. If it had stayed in Britain, Poland and Sweden, then I don't think it would unrealistic to maintain crowd levels around those of the GPs in these countries today. No-one would deny the people running the World Final in the latter years lacked vision, but had somewhere like the Millenium Stadium been available to stage the World Final with the hype that British GP gets, then I don't think it would be a greatly different situation. Of course, neither the Millenium Stadium or Parken (in their current incarnations) were built then, and so it's all a moot point. There were too many qualifiers, but the latter rounds were often some of the best meetings, and the crowds even towards the end were often as good as some of the GPs today. You also can't compare the television situation then, with the situation now. There wasn't the plethora of cable and satellite channels with airtime to fill, and I suspect many of the qualifiers would have been televised in this day-and-age. After all, they even show racing from local kart clubs on Motors TV these days.

The symptoms of a company in trouble, one suspects...

That's pretty incompetent in itself.

Again, I'm amazed that anyone caught by this weekend's debacle is prepared to fork over even more money to BSI.

There's an old saying about fools and their money being easily parted. After being treated the way you were this weekend, you're happy to give the BSI shower even more of your money?

Which is why one wonders, they got involved with speedway in the first place? Money of course, is an object with the whole thing. And surely all the track laying practice in the world won't help if you do something as basic as leaving the shale out to get wet? I agree. The lack of vision and foresight is why the speedway promoters allowed the SGP concept to be hijacked by outsiders in the first place.

Not necessarily. I remain to be convinced the SGP does as well as people think, so it may eventually die a death of its own, particularly with fiascos like this weekend. Nevertheless, the power to change things lies with the national leagues who ultimately hold the balance of power because they're the ones paying the living wages to the riders. If all the main leagues stuck together and made it a condition of contract that their riders only exclusively rode for their teams, I think you'd find the SGP would die a pretty quick death. The SGP doesn't generate enough money to sustain a full-time circus, so even if IMG/BSI have the rights for the next 18 years (or whatever), they'd be pretty worthless without the top riders. I'm not especially against the concept of the SGP (although I do think it's overblown), but it's ridiculous that the rights were sold to a third-party for them to make money without having to return a thing to the sport. I doubt Gelsenkirchen will be a nail in the coffin of the SGP any more than Gothenburg was, but it's certainly punctured the myth of BSI being a professional promotional organisation.

Hope that philosophy doesn't apply to your lifts.

After that debacle, I think many fans indeed never returned.

I have been to a few GPs, and besides the one at the Millenium Stadium, they've not been massively impressive. The track is often rubbish, the extra entertainment third-rate, and very little promotion of the event in the locality. Better than the average speedway meeting I'll grant you, but then that isn't really that hard. The great achievement of BSI has been sell a television product at relatively minimal cost to themselves, but they're no promotional geniuses, and only look good because the rest of speedway is so poor. It's a great business model for them, but the cost to the rest of speedway has been incalculable, and now as we've seen, even the SGP isn't so wonderful either. The SGP is basically built on a pack of cards - one way contract that guarantees speedway nothing over a long period, yet gives IMG/BSI a get out clause when the SGP doesn't pay anymore. It also allows the competitors to be picked-up a below market rates, gives the organisers pick of dates, and to hell with anyone else who actually pays the real wages.