ladyluck

Swedish? No Swedes in the top eight as it stands. It's all Poles (including a Norwegian), Australians and Danes in the top eight. The Swedes are not that far off being in as bad a shape as Britain. You don't have to look too far to see why. Both Sweden and Britain have leagues that are dominated by imported riders. If you look at the top Swedish league most teams have two or three Poles as standard.

This season's qualifiers could turn into a real disaster for BSI Speedway. As things stand, all three Danes are currently in the GP top eight, along with all three Poles. The final is being staged in Vojens and the last time it was there Pedersen B, Iversen and Dryml qualified, with Bjerre just missing out. This time around the Danes look weak, but NKI is still in with a shout and I can see numerous Poles making Vojens - already a couple from Togliatti and likely to be more from Ostrow and Lonigo. There could be a big squeeze on the nominations, especially if Sayfutdinov doesn't manage to claw his way into the tope eight on his return.

To be honest, if I were a rider I'd have made my excuses (whether real or not) and bowed out unless I thought i had a better than realistic chance of qualifying through. It's just not likely to be cost effective. Probably cost two or three times as much to ride as the FIM are paying you. The problem here is that the FIM pay a pittance. It's the same in the GPs and riders like Harris and Holta moan but ultimately accept it.

If the FIM want to stage such meetings in Russia, then they will have to be more proactive in the organisation - seem to remember lots of question marks over the Champions League final a couple of seasons ago, but Uefa sorted them out easily enough. The FIM just seem to want to allocate meetings and then leave it to everyone involved to manage it themselves. For a GP, BSI Speedway would presumably sort everything out for the FIM.

Tomasz Gollob also passed the 5,000 point mark in Polish speedway during the meeting, so I think it's fair to say that he had a good day.

The whole dynamic changes, of course. The rules would be known in advance by the riders, so they'd make plans accordingly. And three nominations would still exist, so the sixth place rider in your scenario would possibly take one of those nominations, unless, of course, the Briton who finished in fifteenth place was deemed more deserving.

Top ten is too many, for me. It was okay when the permanent field was twenty-two strong, but now with only fifteen that would be two-thirds. I would say that a cut would be better; say top five with seven qualifying and three nominations. Anyway, the FIM have little say in the matter. It all comes down to BSI and what they want, ultimately. And BSI would probably prefer more nominations. They don't want the likes of Zetterstrom, Walasek and Ulamek spoiling their party.

Nomination after failure rarely does a rider any good anyway. How often did Nicholls take advantage? Or Harris? Or, for that matter, Hampel. Hampel had a gifted nomination, if you remember. Hampel drifted around for a bit in the GPs and was finally left out at the end of 2007. Now he has had time away and returned on merit a much-improved rider. He is a genuine contender. Andersen returned a genuine contender after he was omitted from the 2006 line-up, although he seems to have returned to drifting and to nominations. Bjerre has never had a nomination, as any nominations heading Denmark's way also went to failures, such as Bjarne Pedersen. It would do Lindgren no harm at all to find himself omitted if he fails again this season.

Your recall is far from total. Harris entered the series in 2007 and we are only in 2010 now, so that can only be a total of 4 nominations. Lindgren, as has been said, entered the series in 2008 and I don't think he qualified then so he's only one nomination behind Harris. Moreover, Harris can point to a GP win.

Turning into the corner - the back ends of speedway bikes tend to go outwards when turning on the slide. Jonsson recognised that Gollob had him beaten and that he was in the middle of nowhere on the track. He had to yield or hit the fence and chose the latter. As for the referee, didn't he exclude Gollob in similar circumstances at Lonigo a couple of year's ago?

Possibly, if we were talking about a rider like Chris Harris, you'd have a point, but we're talking about a rider with the almost supernatural gifts of Tomasz Gollob: I don't recall too many people complaining Gollob was out of control and there was contact with Nicki Pedersen, but Pedersen stayed up. Jonsson was in a poor position on the track, out in no man's land, while Gollob had a perfect inside run to the corner. How anyone can question the correctness of the decision to exclude Jonsson is beyond me.

Getingarna will ride.

Not necessarily, with rider numbers and the standard heat format.

Shouldn't have been. Anyone with a basic grasp of speedway would have known which riders were due out in which heats. It would have been easy enough to check and get it right.

Jurica Pavlic will be the wild card.

Vojens, with the semis in Gorzow and King's Lynn.

Wanda Krakow granted a license for the 2010 season, as speedway returns to Poland's second city: http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/2009/12/...s-na-transfery/ Could Warsaw be next? Activists are planning an ice meeting in the city for February and hopes linger that the "black sport" could find itself alive and kicking in Poland's capital: http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/2009/11/...sem-ekstraligi/

What's going on in Ostrow, where the club seem to have banned Harris, Nermark, Pawlaszczyk and Zabik from competing in all speedway leagues for up to two seasons?

Apart from Gary Havelock, obviously.

In Ulamek's case, based on finishing ABOVE Harris in the 2009 GPs, or didn't you spot that from your Brandon bunker?

Because he's not good enough. Zagar has, at least, finished in the top eight once. Harris never has.

Hasn't he already ruled himself out of the GPs? A bit silly naming someone who has already said he's retired from the GPs.

Gizatullin 2007, Gafurov 2009.

As the Longtrack season was over weeks ago, it now becomes last year's event. But thanks for the explanation; it all makes sense now. Seeing as the field has already been announced I don't know why I thought there were qualifying rounds. Doh.

What is this Longtrack challenge? Because it sounds like it's an overall final, and the date seems to confirm that, but last year there were only the five rounds?