PHILIPRISING

THOUGHT there was never any dirt on the Prague track!

THAT they are not being fitted properly? Ask riders whether dirt deflectors are good or bad and a fair percentage will base their answer on cost rather than effectiveness. My own experience outside the track these days is rather limited to GPs where the fitting of dirt-deflectors is properly monitored. Of course, some dirt still comes off the track but no where near what was the case before they became compulsory.

IVAN Mauger (think he knows a thing or two) said publicly on many occasions that the introduction of dirt deflectors was one of the best things to happen to speedway. Not only for riders (not that Ivan was behind too often!) but spectators as well. Don't have to be a Michelin chef to know a good meal when you taste it. CONSIDERING that my 'mates' as you call them have reached the very top of the speedway ladder I make no apology in respecting and quoting their opinions.

NOT if they are fitted correctly and monitored...

HOW time flies ... had a late call from the Daily Express (I was their speedway correspondent at the time) with the tragic news. A few days earlier I had ghosted a first ever column with Tommy for Speedway Post, a monthly from the same publishing stable as Speedway Star. It never saw the light of day. Tommy went to Australia and New Zealand with the World Champions troupe formed by Barry Briggs and Ivan Mauger. Agree that he was surely destined for greatness and was a fabulous young guy and a true pin-up as well.

DIDN'T see it ... where was it from?

ONE of the anomalies of speedway ... the perfect track in terms of racing surface doesn't necessarily equate to good racing. The real key is having more than one racing line ... Hyde Road was the absolute perfect example, Bydgoszcz in the same league.

WHAT propaganda? I was just relaying the gist of a conversation with some Polish mechanics over the weekend which went a long way to explaining why there are so many of them in the SGP pit lane. With regard to the TV truck... Tomasz Gasinski (Gollob's manager) told me that the convey of vehicles that travelled from Poland to Togliatti last year had an armed escort all the way. Let's not forget that three Presidents of the local club have been assassinated. No propaganda, just pointing out what a target a multi-million dollar TV truck would be. Have no idea what facilities Eurosport used and no doubt BSI will enquire if and when they decide that a SGP in Togliatti is both viable and practical.

WASN'T that 1975 when Len Silver was out with the hosepipe? Cannot compare some of those tracks mentioned above with last Saturday. The main beef amongst the riders was the narrow corners and the lack of racing lines. And, as said previously, no one deliberately tries to create a bad racing surface. It's not like going to a recipe book and baking a cake in an oven on an exact temperature for an exact time. Said until I am blue in the face that if it was that easy tracks right across the speedway spectrum would be perfect. In fact, they are the exception rather than the rule. Other than the shape, the track at the Ratina for practice was excellent. And that is often the problem with temporary tracks. They are often pristine for practice, the equivalent of two full meetings, but not 24 hours later.

I THINK you actually strengthen my point in that none of the riders you mention are Polish or Swedish.

ANOTHER consideration was getting a multi-million pound TV truck to and from Togliatti without it being hijacked and stripped bare!

JUST seen a couple of pigs flying past my window...

CAREFUL Andy, you can get slung in jail for comments like that these days!

I UNDERSTAND what you are saying but on the one hand it is nice to go to new, fresh places. Personally thought everything about Tampere was great until the tapes went up. The answer was weak and yet when I said to Jarek Hampel, as he walked into the hotel after the meeting, "that was a crap track," he replied: "Was okay, it was me." I cannot argue that even at first glance the track looked too narrow but from what I can gather they worked with the space they had available and thought it would be okay. Now they are looking to try and take the bends out ... cannot come in because of drainage for the athletics circuit. Why didn't they do that in the first place? There is no answer readily available. The stadium scheduled to be used later in the season has staged speedway before so, hopefully, there will not be similar problems. A new track has been laid (nothing to do with Ole by the way) and work on renovating the actual stadium and its facilities is progressing. I hear that the Latvians are very keen to stage a Speedway World Cup Final, which is one reason why the government have got behind it.

THE question was asked and the answer was basically "we obviously thought it would be okay otherwise we wouldn't have done it."

CHATTING to some Polish mechanics over the weekend. They told me that a decent monthly wage in Poland for an average worker (shop assistant, something like that) would be around 600/900 zlotys. That's less than £300. A mechanic for a GP rider would expect a minimum of 4,000 zlotys. Maybe not a fortune but easy to see why there are so many Polish mechanics in the SGP pit lane. One added that a GP rider would probably spend around £6,000 per month on his team which, of course, would also cover costs in Polish and Swedish leagues and maybe Denmark and GB, too. Of course, the top boys will probably cover that in one meeting. Some stories floating around that Gollob's signing-on fee for Torun was in range of the one million euro mark! NO wonder he is still riding... When you consider that riders are paying over £800 for a carburettor, wages seem quite cheap by comparison.

OF course you can ... not talking about achievement but how thrilling they are to watch. Saw Rickardsson in his first World Final and Gollob in his first GP ... as entertaining then as they were years and years later. You've either got it or you haven't.

ONE report suggested admission prices were about £3 ...

YOUR usual dig at me ... I come on here as a speedway fan just like anyone else. If I wish to write something in my now limited capacity as a journalist I will do so in SS ... which I have in the issue out this week. If building a speedway track was as easy as some seem to suggest then there would be no such thing as a bad one. But how many tracks, permanent or otherwise, are perfect day in, day out? That, for me, is probably the most frustrating thing about the sport. Darren Baldwin, the head groundsman for Tottenham Hotspur, and his family are huge speeds fans ... even travelled to New Zealand last month. Look at soccer pitches in old books or mags and compare them with today. Darren has often joked that if speedway tracks could be perfected as have soccer pitches then speedway would out-strip any motor sport in terms of popularity. That doesn't mean to say that things could not be better. NO it isn't ...

THAT will be the same Ole Olsen who built the track at Western Springs (praised by all the riders) last month ... not saying he always get's it right but he doesn't always get it wrong either.

NOT quite. I fully agree that it is what riders do on the track that puts bums on seats, which was my original point. Who is there to replace crowd-pullers like Rickardsson and Gollob for Sweden and Poland? I would actually pay money to watch a craftsman like Hancock at work but we beg to differ on that one. Each to his own. But he and markw40 have also made personal attacks on Darcy Ward. I truly believe that the Darcy of today is very different to the Darcy of a year or two back. I very much doubt that he is an angel 24 hours a day but having spent some time with him in the restaurant at the Tampere hotel over the weekend, found him much more articulate, well-balanced and sensible. Speak as you find...

CANNOT argue with any of that ... constructive comments

AND exactly how long have you spent in his company?

AND we certainly will do in SS this week ...

IN an ideal world BSI could take the Bydgoszcz track with them and lay it, like a carpet, at each venue. The stadiums wouldn't be big enough to contain all the people wanting to watch. Sadly, speedway track construction isn't an exact science ... WHEN has local incompetence been blamed or the organisers passing the buck as ever...