Kevin Meynell

Poxford (sic) wouldn't be a suitable venue for a World Final either.

I think Britain was fairly unique in using our national championship to qualify riders for the World Championship the same season. Our countries (e.g. Sweden) had domestic qualifying rounds, but these were usually separate from their national championship. The majority of countries nominated their WC entrants on the basis of their placings in their national championship the previous season, with the odd direct seeding.

And France is? Sure, but who's going to take the financial risk to stage them?

The way it usually works, is that federations apply for a certain number of places, and these requests are reconciled to the number of available places. However, federations that offer to stage rounds, are usually awarded more places than those that don't. The reason that Britain has less places, or that it doesn't have a qualifier, is probably because we didn't offer to stage a round.

Can't see the point. It's an overly large stadium in a country with few speedway traditions. What track racing there is, is way down in the south-west. IMO, the Amsterdam Olympic Stadium would be a much better bet.

I believe there is a car park underneath, but it sounds like a load of cobblers to me. The problem with staging a GP anywhere, is finding a mug to pay the staging fee and assume the financial risk. The Monaco royal family is not known for its charity, and is unlikely to back what would almost certainly be a loss-making event. Absolutely. Although Daugavpils is not exactly the most accessible place in the world, at least it does seem to have a speedway club in the ascendancy. I'd imagine the GP there will draw as many fans as Monaco would.

They must have surely taken place in the past, because a few riders (most notably Gary Havelock) were caught and banned?

I'd think there would be plenty of grounds to bring a case against the Polish speedway authorities under EU law. Whilst I can actually sympathise with what they're trying to achieve, I'm afraid that sport cannot ignore the rules that Poland signed-up to when they joined the EU.

It's ironic that the Polish chairman of the UEM Track Racing Commission was dead against the international league that was formed a few years ago, and yet the Polish League seems to be becoming a de-facto European League!

Yep. Saw him ride in the US Nationals at Costa Mesa a few weeks ago.

Yes. I think the problem is that riders moving from the BPL to BEL would struggle to achieve their average if it were assessed using a factor of 1.5, whereas it's more realistic for riders moving the other way.

Well perhaps it's a male thing, but certainly not a modern thing. I remember when we used to get through 20 heats by 21.30 (starting at 19.45) at Oxford. Nowadays, you're lucky if Heat 15 has finished by 21.45. I guess pointless delays are less of an issue when it's a warm, sunny evening and you're able to chat with your mates (the ones that still go, that is), but they're extremely annoying when you're standing in the cold and dark.

It's not a bad idea, although there's a danger that being able to replace riders at will would also make it less of a team event. To be honest, I'm ambivalent about the nominated heat. It's okay if you need to make up the number of heats in some way, but equally I think a 'decent' programmed heat would be fine. I totally agree that the delay before the nominated heat is irritating.

I'm not a great fan of scheduling heats according to rider averages, because it takes away the tactical possibilities of pairing certain riders together. It also doesn't take into account the fact that some riders ride better together than others, although team riding is of course largely non-existent these days anyway. I do agree though, that the current heat format is not fantastic, and rather skews averages. The old 13-heat format was actually fairly balanced (although quirky), but it's actually pretty difficult to extend this into a 15 or 16-heat match. I'd therefore be in favour of trying 6-rider teams again. I did devise a 6-rider, 14/15/16-heat format for the Speedway Meeting program where Nos. 1 to 4 ride against each other twice, and against the reserves once. Conversely, the reserves (Nos 5 & 6) ride against each other twice, and against the Nos. 1 to 4 once. As riders in each category (heat-leaders/second-strings and reserves) would ride against each other the same number of times, team managers would be free to nominate their riders where they choose (subject to the reserves having to ride at Nos 5 & 6). For example... 1: 1 & 2 v 1 & 2 2: 3 & 4 v 3 & 4 3: 5 & 6 v 5 & 6 (Reserves Race) 4: 1 & 2 v 3 & 4 5: 3 & 4 v 1 & 2 6: 1 & 5 v 3 & 6 7: 2 & 4 v 1 & 5 8: 3 & 6 v 2 & 4 9: 2 & 4 v 3 & 6 10: 1 & 5 v 2 & 4 11: 3 & 6 v 1 & 5 12: 2 & 4 v 2 & 4 13: 3 & 6 v 3 & 6 14: 1 & 5 v 1 & 5 ---------------------- 15: Nominated ---------------------- 15: Lowest scorers 16: Highest scorers As Then for the second-half (if the 14-heat option was chosen), the heats would be determined by average... 15: 4 juniors (Juniors Race) 16: Home No.1, Home No.4, Away No.5, Junior 1 17: Home No.5, Junior 2, Away No.1, Away No.4 18: Home No.2, Home No.3 v Away No.6, Junior 3 19: Home No.6, Junior 4 v Away No.2, Away No.3 20: Winners Heats 16-18 (Final)

Using a 4TT format, you'd have to pay your riders for all 20 meetings. You'd also have to pay travel and accommodation expenses for 15 of those, but you're only receiving gate money from 5 of them. You'd have expenditure with no income for 75% of the meetings, but with a regular match format, you'd receive gate money from 10 of those meetings.

Much historical context can be drawn from the conflicts between the major baseball leagues in the early-20th century. Their initial approach was to directly compete with each other for players, and against each other within cities. This proved to be ruinous all round, so they sensibly came-up with a cooperative agreement which still governs the sport (including the minor league system) today.

I'd agree there are far too many fixtures at BPL level. The CS was arguably a competition too far in the BEL as well, although it was good from Oxford's perspective! I was looking at some old yearbooks, and National League tracks used to only ride about 30-34 meetings per season, whereas British League tracks rode close to 40-50 on average. Now it's almost the opposite! I completely agree, although I think three tiers would be more than enough. There are around 27-28 tracks now, so that's an average of 9 standalone teams per level. If you went the Euroleague route, I'd anticipate 4 or 5 British tracks riding in that, so a two-tier approach (2 x 12 teams) would be appropriate for the remaining teams. I can also envisage an additional competition for second teams run in a second-half format, but I wouldn't really consider this to be a true fourth tier.

I completely agree, but expansionist plans can be distracting and can divert resources from where they should be spent. These days, so many companies over-expand and end-up neglecting their core business. If I were the BSPA, I'd form a European-wide body with the Polish and Swedish clubs (possibly also the Danish clubs) along the lines of the G14. This should initially coordinate the national league systems to avoid fixture clashes and double-booked riders, but it should also collectively promote speedway. In the longer-term, it could perhaps run its own competitions (e.g. a European League or Cup). However, the main reason for forming such a body (let's call it the G3) would be to put pressure on the FIM. I don't necessarily advocate a split from the FIM, but the countries that employ most of the riders in the sport should have far more say over how it's run. I'd envisage a situation like F1 where the teams got almost total control over the World Championship, albeit nominally still under the banner of the FIA. In particular, it's somewhat scandalous how the SGP was practically given away to a private company, with the national leagues deriving little or no benefit from it. I appreciate the national promoting bodies probably lack the wherewithal to actually run the SGP themselves, but that's what should be happening. BSI have something like an 18-year contract which complicates things, but if the G3 collectively refused to employ any SGP riders, the SGP would effectively cease to exist. If the FIM still failed to see reason, then the G3 should consider breaking away from the FIM and run their own world championship. Incidentally, it's not just about the SGP, but also all the other mickey mouse competitions (e.g. European championships) that keep being created.

Again, I like the idea of a European League, but I feel that teams need to run it exclusively, or not at all. It comes back to my earlier point about how fans would perceive the different levels of competition. With respect to the actual league format, 4TTs are fine for the odd cup competition, but they're unsuitable for an extended league programme. The fact that teams only ride 25% of their matches at home would be disasterous for cash flow, unless of course the leagues were funded through television or sponsorship.

Okay, but that's a somewhat unique situation to the North-East. There are many Man Utd and (nowadays) Chelsea fans who are not local to those teams. I'd agree that speedway doesn't tend to have any 'glamour' sides that fans from the other side of the country will support, but some teams do have regional support. For example, Oxford gets support from Buckinghamshire and West London. At the same time, I think most interest in the SGP is because fans identify with riders from their teams. I personally find it very hard to identify with any individual sport unless the participants have some sort of local connection. Why on earth is there this obsession with trying to break into markets that have no history of speedway (with the possible exception of Italy)? I'd rather focus efforts on raising the profile of the sport in its core markets, or at least the countries where there's some supporters to start with. When the sport is No.1 or No.2 in these countries, that's the time to try and expand. These countries still collectively represent a big market (125 million). Global companies don't want anything to do with the sport because it's run so amateurishly, and also because it's perceived as somewhat 'down-at-heel'. Rugby League is essentially only played in two counties of England, and a couple of Australian states, yet it does much better than speedway in terms of television and sponsorship money. It's far more that speedway needs to get its act together, than a lack of a market.

I think that speedway is arguably better suited to a European League than many other sports. Riders are already paid to travel across the continent to different competitions each week, so it shouldn't be much of a step from that to an organised league. I don't think a 16-team league could be supported at the moment, but a 12-team league should certainly be possible. If you add-up the numbers in the BEL, Polish Extra League and Swedish Elite League, then it comes to about 100 riders. The problem is that it's too few teams to form a viable league unless you have an unacceptable level of repetition. Some have suggested that some tracks run a handful of fixtures in an 'elite' league, and then make-up the rest of the fixtures in a lower-level league. Unfortunately, I think such an approach would be disasterous because it would create a perceived inferior level of competition. Casual fans would simply focus on the 'elite' meetings and ignore the rest. I don't think that tracks running multiple teams is a viable model in the long-term. If you run the majority of fixtures at a particular level, you create continuity and fans will tend to turn-up most weeks. As soon as you start running at different levels, fans will just start to pick and choose their meetings. Whilst the commitment of some BEL and BPL tracks to running BCL teams should be applauded, I suspect it's financially disasterous in most cases. That's why so many tracks are dropping their second teams.

Many would say his later attempts weren't too hot either. Digressing slightly, Bill Gates never really developed any operating system. He bought a CP/M knock-off from an unknown company, which became MS-DOS. Windows started out as IBM's OS/2, and Windows NT was (allegedly) ripped-off from DEC's VMS. Speedway unfortunately has one of the most complicated fixture lists - largely through necessity. It's not simply that tracks ride on different days (and not all potential race nights may be available), but the fixtures need to be interleaved so that each track gets a home meeting more-or-less every week (which also means they'll need to ride away at least once per week on average). Where tracks have the same race night, it becomes even more complicated when they ride each other, as one will have priority. Finally, tracks have certain preferences as to when they ride against certain opponents (e.g. neighbouring teams scheduling their clashes on a bank holiday to maximise crowds). All this is hard enough to factor in if you're planning for the whole season, but it becomes even more difficult if you don't know in advance who the teams will be. I also still think that it would be unacceptable to fans, television and sponsors to not know in advance who'd be riding where during the second-half of the season. In a perfect world that's true, but there are often many external factors to take into account. I once did the fixtures for a local league, and you invariably ended-up having to factor in other events (e.g. cricket matches) happening at teams' grounds, teams sharing the same ground (which meant they both couldn't play at home the same week), and so on.. But that is one of the major problems - there is no structured coordinated international calendar. This said, no matter how coordinated it is, if you pack it full of GP and other international events, there simply won't be enough dates available to run domestic league matches. I'd agree that British speedway should run without riders if they can't commit to a full season, but it's not acceptable to track them for some meetings but not others. That would be even more detrimental than not including them at all, because there would be no continuity and supporters would pick and choose their meetings. I don't think that is in dispute. I never suggested it should - quite the opposite in fact. It should run without SGP riders and those that cannot commit to ride in every British fixture. If that means losing a few of the so-called top riders, then so be it. But it used to be more. Many people have given-up because meetings are chopped-and-changed at a moment's notice these days. In any case, it isn't just about the fans. Television and, to a lessor extent, sponsors need to know the fixtures in advance as well. It's a fallacy to believe the top riders are always the highest paid. Often the second strings are on as much money, and they'd of course be scoring more in a 'weaker' league. The points limit does little, if anything to reduce costs. There would still be competition for the heat-leader standard riders in an enlarged league, and the points limit would largely be irrelevant as a cost control mechanism. I still also think there would be a lot of mismatches in the regional leagues, as there were the last time there was one big league. I think this is perfectly sensible, but it could equally be applied in a two or three-tier structure. Well that's fine, and it's what (I imagine) BSI have been trying to do. However, I believe the limitations of the SGP format is why interest has not developed beyond a certain level. I equally don't believe you should promote a competition at the expense of domestic speedway (which develops the riders and pays the bulk of their wages), unless domestic speedway benefits from it. After 10 years of operation, I'd have to say the benefits of the SGP are neglible, and possibly even detrimental to the rest of the sport. You develop them! There are plenty of riders around, so it's a matter of bringing a few up to top-league standard. You could quite easily mandate that teams include a certain number of developing riders (as they do in Poland), and you could even alter the heat format to give them slightly easier races. Provided the top-class riders are shared around fairly, it shouldn't really matter. I'd argue that a league competition has more potential. Football is the most widely watched sport in the world, and that's entirely based around team competition.

I didn't say that. In fact, I don't think that British speedway necessarily needs the top riders at all. However, what is unacceptable is an external competition that regularly takes riders away from the leagues, yet provides little benefit in return. It's acceptable with the likes of test cricket, because that provides the revenue that keeps the county clubs afloat, but not in speedway where the bulk of the rider wages are paid by the league teams. When riders can make a living by riding in the SGP alone, that should be the point that it longer has to compromise. Far from it - I'm looking at the bigger picture which would mean that Oxford probably wouldn't be seeing the top riders every week. I'd turn the argument around and suggest that it's the BPL fans that generally think the SGP is a good thing, because it doesn't affect their league. If you had to put up with an irregular fixture list and missing riders, then you might have a different opinion. I think many of the current series sponsors were signed-up when the SGP only six consisted of six rounds, and in any case, many are on a per-GP basis. It's a reasonable suggestion, but the problem would still be that the extra riders would need paying. Clearly a line-up of 24 riders was not cost effective last year, which is why the numbers were cut (and that in itself shows that the SGP is not the success that many believe). I have nothing against the principle of the SGP, but I believe it should be run for the benefit of the national leagues, not a private individual. I've nothing against that individual who saw an opportunity to make some money, but the current setup is not sustainable for speedway as a whole. I also think that the current SGP is not particularly well promoted, and is far too repetitive, but that's another issue. Errr.. but how exactly has the SGP improved things? It has one prestige round (at Cardiff) that draws 35-40,000 fans. That's still fewer than the last World Final held in a big stadium (Munich, 1989), and not a great deal more than the 1991 Final (Gothenburg). The other rounds, with the exception of Copenhagen and Wroclaw, draw 10-15,000, which is no better than the latter-day World Finals or pre-BSI GPs. The only major advance is that it's now on pay-per-view television, and there's perhaps more media exposure (although not a lot) than before. Well that's great, but is that translating into higher attendances or more sponsorship for domestic tracks? There has never been much interest in rugby union or cricket at a club/county level. The national teams are everything in those sports, whereas club competition has always been more important in speedway. That might be true, hence the idea for a European League. I honestly don't think the SGP will ultimately cut it, because it doesn't offer enough variety, and it's fundamentally at odds with speedway's existing infrastructure (which is based around team racing). Quite simply, costs and logistics. There are unfortunately several problems with your proposal... The first problem would be completing all the regional league fixtures on time, so that teams could split into 1st and 2nd divisions. Given speedway's record, it just isn't going to happen, and invariably teams will end-up riding meaningless fixtures weeks after the cut-off point. The BEL has proved incapable of finishing the regular season fixtures before the 'playoffs' for the last three seasons, so what hope for getting the preliminary programme completed after only half the season? The second problem is that it would be fixture scheduling nightware. Having to plan half-a-season worth of fixtures at short notice would be next to impossible in a sport where every team rides on a different day and other external factors need to be taken into account. Furthermore, fans need to know in advance when meetings are going to be held (particularly during the holiday season), so they can plan which ones to attend. The third problem is that many of the poorer teams would simply end-up spending more to try and compete with the richer teams. Either that, or matches will end-up totally one-sided with obvious consequences for attendances. The fourth problem is that basic pay rates would increase substantially for the former BPL teams (remember the home team pays the away riders as well). That would be enough to push many of them over the financial knife edge. It would, but it would not be financially sustainable. It would be better to work on expanding the BEL, and to try and get more teams into the BPL.

I'm certainly not suggesting that a television-only competition shouldn't exist to cater for fans who aren't near local tracks - far from it. I simply disagree that the SGP is necessarily the best format. Having said this, speedway has never had universal support across the country (just as rugby league and shinty don't). I'd think that most fans only follow the sport because they happened to have spent their formative years in areas where there were tracks. That's not to say that you shouldn't try to appeal to a completely new audience, but I suspect that you're more likely to succeed where there's some history of the sport. As for the extremities of the country, it could be argued that London is one of the bigger markets without a track.

Would you love it so much if half your team was missing every two weeks because they were riding in a GP? If anyone had the answer to that, the sport wouldn't be in the state it's in. This said, the SGP is not the answer either - it exists to create cheap programming for armchair television viewers who'll never go down to their local track. Even that would be fine it were a self-contained series, but at the present time it's adversely affecting domestic speedway which is the lifeblood of the sport. It depends on how it's marketed. The Ashes series was only five matches, and that attracted a major sponsor. The problem with the SGP, is that it's something and nothing at the moment. Running more GPs and with more riders has not proved to be financially successful, so that's put paid to any plans (if they ever existed) to run a standalone series with regular rounds. Furthermore, even the current nine rounds provide far too much repetition, which is I think why the SGP organisers have never managed to build-up audiences beyond a certain point. The SWC was a good concept and has the potential to be much better, but unfortunately it's been appalling promoted. We're therefore now back to a format that's little different to the old days. IMO, the SGP would be a lot more interesting if it only had six rounds. I guess you could stretch it to eight if you added a couple of non-European rounds outside the European season, but it should certainly be no more than that. I've long thought this would be a better way to promote the sport, provided television and sponsors could be brought on board (see http://www.meynell.com/speedway-articles/euroleague.html). A 4TT format is not really suitable for an extended league programme because it means each team is only riding at home once every four meetings (with obvious consequences for income and expenditure). However, the principle of a European League is fine. One possible format would be to choose the four financially strongest tracks in (say) Britain, Poland and Sweden/Denmark (for a 12-team) and have them ride exclusively in the European League. You could divide them into national divisions (British, Polish and Swedish), and have them ride home and away twice against the teams from their own division/country (12 matches). Teams would also ride home and away once against the teams from the other divisions (16 matches), so that long-distance travel would be minimised. You could further minimise travel by having teams ride two foreign teams per trip, so that would actually only mean 4 long-distance tours per season. At the end of the regular season (28 matches), the winner of each national division would qualify for the Semi-Finals (the 'playoffs'), along with the runner-up with the best record. The winners over two legs would race-off in two-legged Final for the Championship. Such a format would be a bit different to a straightforward league competition, but it's designed to maximise the number of matches against local opposition, and to reduce the amount of travelling necessary. In addition, the divisional format would ensure that every country would have a team in the 'playoffs', as well as a providing a climax to the season. This would be essential to keep television and sponsors happy, particularly in each national market. I think there needs to be at least two levels of competition in Britain. I could envisage a scenario where the BEL is watered down a bit so that it's attractive for the more successful BPL teams to join. Equally, I could envisage the remainder of the BPL being merged with the standalone BCL tracks and pitched at a slightly lower-level than now. Another scenario might be a handful of BEL teams joining a European League, with the remainder joining an enlarged BPL. However, I think one big league is non-starter on financial grounds.