Humphrey Appleby

Not a huge surprise I'd suggest, as they're responsible for running the competition. The question mark is whether established procedures were deliberately not followed in order to engineer a certain line-up in the SGP, but it's hard to imagine why the FIM or BSI would want to conspire to get Harris back in.

It can work both ways. Sometimes I deliberately don't want to renew something and get irritated by people calling me to ask why not (usually because the renewal price is more than what they charge new customers). I think a better approach is to have more reliance on electronic means - making it easy to renew online and sending reminders via e-mail or whatever. At the end of the day though, it comes down to making an interesting publication so that people are keen to renew. The Spar's move to electronic publishing has got me back as as subscriber for the next year, so the challenge is to try to keep me!

Well yes, but how fair is it to seed riders directly into the SGP at the expense of riders who've done the qualifiers? I don't know who's responsible for calling up replacement riders, whether the FIM or host FMN. If the FIM, then it's possible they needed to fill a name on the start list fairly quickly, and just assumed someone wouldn't be interested in travelling from Germany at short notice. If it's the ACU (as host FMN), then they're just generally pretty clueless about speedway, and might have just wanted an easy life and not go around the houses.

I've no idea what the actual facts are in this matter, and I usually take the view that cock-up is more likely than conspiracy. However, I don't think he's ever taken a position that's contrary with anything put out by those involved with the SGP organisation, and is certainly selective with what gets communicated. Fair enough, in this case a fairly plausible explanation of the procedure has been provided, and there does seem to be a degree of independent verification. Harris turned-up where others didn't or couldn't and took his chance, so whilst it's a rather depressing state of affairs, you can hardly blame the rider. Of course a sporting body should be publishing their rules, and particularly for their premier competitions should have clear protocols as to who qualifies in what circumstances - precisely to avoid arguments and debates like this. Yes, the FIA does actually publish all its sporting and technical regulations online, and certainly for the F1 sporting regulations I have quite a good understanding of them. However, even if I didn't, I could easily go and look up the relevant regulation if necessary. His company has some commercial relationship with the SGP organisers, so whilst I agree it's useful to get the (semi-)official position on things of interest, it cannot be considered an entirely impartial source.

Not since they 'allowed' the FIM to sell off the rights, but the BSPA and other speedway authorities could obtained the rights probably for little or nothing in the past. Even if they'd then outsourced the SGP organisation to a more competent commercial entity, they could still be making a few hundred thousand more quid than they're doing now. But you know this very well and I've never once seen this discussed within the pages of the learned journal. Who makes money from speedway these days? I'd have thought the ambition of most promoters is not to lose too much money. Of course tracks are all individual businesses, but they are not effectively in competition with each other except on-track. Speedway is not the same as football which always has a plentiful supply of teams to replace the fallen, so it much more needs a wider cooperative approach if it's going to survive into the future. Yes, it's true that promoters individually gain little from trying to develop riders, but a significant reason for the sport being in the mess it's in is because it simply hasn't collectively been developing riders as much as it should. This problem has been exacerbated by a ridiculous transfer system that encourages looking for ready-made riders abroad who are effectively free to sign, but whom they might charge a transfer or loan fee for in future. Total nonsense. I can well understand why under the current system, promoters would want to use any largesse to try to offset their inevitable losses. However, unless there's a change in the approach to rider development and the transfer system, they're dooming themselves to an inextricable downward spiral. The most successful (and profitable) professional sports actually take a very collective approach to running their overall businesses - whether through draft or farm systems. This is what speedway needs to be trying to emulate, but it can't just be the responsibility of the BSPA because someone still needs to be running the development tracks and teams.

Double points in the last race isn't really the same thing as a tactical ride. All the F1 drivers have the opportunity to score double points, not just those who are 10 points or whatever behind. I don't really see a problem with it in F1 if it keeps things interesting to the end, although it would be better if the last GP was somewhere like Interlagos where you usually get decent racing, and not Abu Dhabi.. That is silly though.

All the more reason to do stuff online. It was very easy to take out an online subscription to the Spar, although the Apple store only offers a maximum of a 6-month subscription as far as I can see.

Why then did they put up most of the money, but relinquish their rights to share in the profits?

I don't think much, if any of it, was his money and it wasn't 'millions'. The parent Benfield Group appear to have been the primary backers of the venture, although one can only speculate at the reasons why a re-insurance group should wish to be involved with speedway. I actually work for, and always have worked for non-for-profit organisations. Commercial organisations are better at doing many things, but not-for-profits are appropriate for industry collaborations, particularly in sport. It does not mean they cannot or shouldn't make money, but that money should be used for the benefit of their industry stakeholders and not disappear off to shareholders outside of that industry. The national speedway authorities are primarily at fault for not seizing the opportunity of the SGP, but upon their failure to do anything, the FIM should have insisted on a profit-sharing scheme in return for selling off the rights. The FIM has a duty to represent the interests of its stakeholders, in this case speedway, but the revenue it derives from speedway-related activities does not in any way appear to benefit speedway. This aside, I've never had any issue with an individual or company seeing an opportunity and being rewarded for taking the risk. However, the SGP is entirely about the riders, and if I were the stars of the show and saw the shareholders and FIM pocketing more than six times the amount being paid out in prize money, not to mention the CEO being paid multiple times more than what the world champion took home in prize money, then I'd certainly be asking questions about what's a fair split of proceeds. Now I appreciate the SGP did not always make money so there might be an argument about the SGP being a sponsorship vehicle in the early days, but that's become increasingly spurious. As an example, tennis grand slams pay out around 25% of their revenue in prize money, which would be about 2.5 million quid (or 400% more than now) if you applied the same equation to the SGP.

Only speedway would get sponsored by a dying industry. Just about every house in the UK has central heating, so speedway goes and gets sponsored by a coal company. LOL

He probably didn't mention he'd be the biggest earner though... And they never will if there's no exposure in Russia. Surely part of the role of a rights holder is to do some promotion and generate some interest?

I'm not sure it's the case the rules haven't changed in other sports. Rugby union is forever tinkering with the number of points for a try, as well as scrum, ruck and maul rules even though hardly anyone understands them anyway. Rugby league has had massive changes with things like the four and then six tackle rule, zero tackles, 40/20 kicks, unlimited then limited interchanges, and if you go back far enough, the introduction of the play-the-ball rule actually created a new sport. Even football with its relatively stable laws has probably more changes than people imagine - banning of back passes, abolition of the goalkeepers' steps rule, tinkering with the interpretation of offside, different numbers of substitutes, penalty shoot-outs, and 'away goals count double' - all to ostensibly make the sport more entertaining. The basic rules of speedway probably haven't changed in decades. It's the team formation and match formats where most of the tinkering has gone on, but whilst some of the ideas are a bit farcical, you can find similar analogues in limited overs cricket - 60/55/50/45/40/20 overs, fielding circles, powerplays in various formats, supersubs, free hits, wides called down the leg side, white balls and coloured kit, and so on.. Some of these have been good innovations, others don't particularly add much as far as I'm concerned (e.g. free hits), whilst others (e.g. supersubs) were a complete joke. So it's not by any means unique to speedway, although admittedly few sports have a double score rule when a team or player is behind... In fact, I think most tournaments even have a tiebreak in the final set these days, and aren't super-tiebreakers increasingly used in the place of the final set in mixed doubles? They're not having the desired effect as Red Bull are miles ahead of everyone, and the likes of Marussia are barely in the same race. I think most technical changes are to rein in speeds and in principle reduce costs, although there's still vast differences in F1 team expenditure.

I don't see that complexity is necessarily a problem anyway. Speedway is an inherently simple sport, but it would quickly become one-dimensional if it was just about four riders riding in circles for four laps. I was actually drawn further into the sport by the different types of meeting you have, the tactical options, and the fact that riders came from what seemed like all round the world (which was largely not the case in football at the time). Cricket is a far more complex sport than speedway (try explaining lbw to the uninitiated - even the name is humorous), but its hardcore fans revel in its complexities and nuances. That does not though, stop people enjoying watching the sport at a superficial level, which is basically about hitting a ball around a field.

Some of us just gave up in despair, and the only thing left is to look upon speedway like a Greek tragedy.

That's not even taking into account the short-season leagues that college players try out in after graduation, or the winter leagues that some go to play in during the close season.

Yep, but how different is that to football? In fact, in how many sports are the competitors not expected to change from match-to-match? I'd agree it's more annoying in speedway because of the programme and heat format, but a lot of that could potentially be resolved with an electronic scoreboard or even smartphone apps.

Which possibly made it no longer financially worthwhile to ride in the SGP...

Yes, but before the days of microphones being constantly shoved under the noses of riders, how many riders would have known the score at any given moment? I'm not sure that it's attributable to riding for multiple teams. Yes, that's the way the Premier League and its fans appear to want it. How many times on here do we read PL supporters saying they shouldn't be expected to bail out the EL etc...? The reality is that the EL and PL should be interdependent, and the health of one is dependent of the health of the other. They should not be in competition with each other, but one accepting they have a symbiotic relationship.

In terms of riders doubling-up between British teams, then I think that was more a well-intentioned attempt to address the issue of a lack of riders wanting to ride at the top-level. although it's probably not worked out as planned. I think there are multiple reasons for this - the possibility to make reasonable wages in the lower leagues without progressing, the effectively abolition of second-halves that provided the opportunity for up-and-coming riders to compete against established riders, and the number of imports being brought in for various reasons. Even the sport's golden era though, there was always some doubling-up with the No.8s, and it's preferable to using guests so I don't see it as being a problem in principle. With respect to foreign (and British) riders competing in multiple national leagues, then undoubtedly it does restrict the opportunities for upcoming riders. I think the problem though, is that the amount the British leagues could pay started to become insufficient for riders to make a good living from it alone, which is why they started to look for additional opportunities elsewhere. There's not really a lot that can be done about that though, given the current economic circumstances of the sport. I think in a perfect world, there would be single European League with 12-16 teams from Britain, Poland, Sweden and maybe 2 or 3 other countries. A rider would ride for one team during the season and that would be it, but there would also be a global SGP and maybe regional GP feeder circuits to make-up the fixtures. Lower order riders could potentially double-down or guest for teams in one of the national leagues (which would probably be sort of BPL level), to gain experience or make-up their earnings, but that's as far as riding for multiple teams would go. I don't know about the riders, but Peter York quite often used to forgot where he was presenting.

At least two bikes have to be between you and finish line to not be offside in speedway, and you can only pass backwards...

'Away goals count double' claim the commentators, erm... except they don't. Can't score a goal (even own goals) from some types of free kicks, but you can from others. What a daft sport.. Erm... I'm not sure that's true...

Why is it farcical? Not everything is like football, and playing for different teams is not entirely without precedent in other sports, or even within football for that matter. Cricketers can play for several teams during the same year - county cricket, provincial/state cricket, IPL, grade cricket, before you even take national sides into account. I believe table tennis players also go around playing for multiple teams in different national leagues at the same time, and happens in motor racing as well (also less than it used to). Even in football there are examples of players competing in summer and winter leagues for different teams, albeit not at the same time, but you can certainly find players in the lower echelons of non-league football who'll play for Saturday and Sunday teams. Riding in multiple competitions is a practical necessity in speedway to make a living, and until the sport can pay sufficiently for a rider to commit to a single competition, then the situation is not going to change. Even before foreign leagues came along, riders took guest and open bookings or disappeared off to the longtrack/grasstrack scene to supplement their earnings. Until speedway really wants to run a serious Champions League-type competition, then I don't really see the problem.

And that unfortunately is why speedway dooms itself...

In all honesty, who really turns up for P&P day beyond the local press, and given how much they've cut back these days, they probably rely on someone from the promotion to do the write-up anyway. All the team information could be presented in an interactive way online, and it would potentially reach a much wider audience. How are you with heat formats...?

The trouble with a speedway version of Scalextric is that on an oval circuit, the outer tracks will always have to travel further than the inner ones. That's why slot racing tracks are either configured as a figure-of-eight or have a crossover. I suppose you could also implement crossovers in a speedway version, or have a TCR-style track that allows bikes to change lanes. Even better if the track was cambered to give the outside line a bit of an advantage.