mikebv

I bet the Americans sanctioned it looking at his performances...

What a ride.....

Jack....... Ooooooops....

Yes... Behind the temp stand and the pitches... Housing are built on the old place...

When he can be sure he gets his name right....

I will be hanging around just in case they do... Got a great upgrade last time.. The camera covering the start line will show a lot of empty seats if they dont move people around, and that will be one of the most used cameras . Personally, I would have shut the back straight for the semis and let everyone sit in the GS, but I believe the Aces now have a food and drink concession on the South Stand so they wont consider it I would think..

Maybe asked to sit there in case a Mexican Wave gets started? The tractor lads and the start marshalls may be doing the same to keep it going...

A great experience... Watching a "proper team sport" with much (pardon the pun), riding on each meeting given the rewards and losses that take place depending on who are successful and who are not.. A real "tribal" atmosphere... With not a "guest" in sight!!!

It is all a team event... Hence Team GB... All medals get tallied for the country for the "league table".. You also have several cycling team events, relay in athletics, several rowing events, gymnastics have a team discipline, and obviously football and soon to be cricket!! And probably a fair few I have missed..

The Olympics... Russian participants under no national flag...

Most of the priority signings, ie the top two, are made the previous season... Hence Brum would have been going to "top riders" still available, and either getting quoted significant sums due to the advantage the riders held, or getting told "not interested, (but see how my season pans out)" by others... How many would they get if "really successful"? 1100? or so?, hardly enough to bank roll an expensive rent and team.. Bottom line is... Not enough people in Brum (as also in other locations), see Speedway as being worth the money for the racing served up, and/or worth the emotional investment you make for following a sporting team... The promoter there must have money to burn, and fair play to him for taking on such a project with history so stacked against him..

They were in a position where they had to put a team together when everyone else had started well ahead of them.. The averages given to their top two at the time were more to help them look competitive, and get decent guests, than actually reflect on their actual capability... Getting Brum to the tapes at the start of the season was the major priority for all, and they were never going to say "this team is wooden spoon material" in press releases, even if most followers of the sport could clearly see they were.. Birmingham simply doesn't have enough people interested in Speedway enough to turn up each meeting, similar to a fair few other places... Fair play to all involved for giving it a go and keeping it going...

I would have said so... Many predicted it.. Bartek riding there I presume made those in charge of the event think that it would stimulate some interest.. However. You get to see him ride every week on Polish TV, and once a fortnight in the GP's, so hardly any "mystique"... Too many meetings in one place means not many will visit from elsewhere for all four due to the overall costs, and to expect Aces fans to fork out for 4 meetings is folly... Wroclaw had the same issue with a lack of crowd for the qualifiers... Should be two meetings, one final over two days... Charge £60 for both days, £35 for one.. I reckon 6,000 or so would have paid sixty quid... And only one night in a hotel if travelling from elsewhere.. Some decent marketing would have helped though... Did all the money go on a stand that won't get used till Saturday?

Hard to sell something not many have any interest in.. Would have been better seeding GB, Poland, and Aussie to the final and running a qualifier somewhere else and then running a two day final with 7 decent teams. The vast majority of fans there were alwaays going to be Aces fans given you have four meetinngs in a week.. Some local marketing may have helped too...

I am surprised... You couldnt move in Manchester for SON advertising...

Joey Tempest...?

But apart from that?

No Kabbadi to show. ?

And end with... "We need to keep the regs as ambiguous as possible so we all can interpret them as we would like when we need to make changes, that way we always get to do what we want"... "PS. And no one takes what we do too seriuosly anyway, do they? So, just as long as we get reasonably competitive meetings on each night, all is ok"...

Get some sawdust down... The lads out in boiler suits... And the Captains doing a few laps each to spread around the slop, and we would be all good to go by half three...

A new beginning for Speedway coverage...

Thank goodness the "GP Stars" are back... What would we have done without them?

Freddie would be down as the Rising Star.....

Poole have a winning team and the crowd turns up... They don't have a winning team and they stop going in the same numbers... The racing standard doesn't seem to be so much of a factor as to crowd size, unlike at many other tracks....

I have said many times... Literally tens of millions of pounds will be, and have been, spent in the top two divisions in particular, on riders who clearly haven't grown the sport in the past two decades by their presence... Yet, a pittance on marketing, which may have delivered better results... And also there has been a complete reluctance to "try something new" when "same old, same old" clearly wasn't (and still isn't) working... The (previous) NDL seemed to be the most successful and best ran league by a considerable distance... Maybe someone should reflect on why that was....