Grand Central

No matter how good the racetrack it cannot make up for a crap concept like this.

Well done Steve You've taken the pressure off Pearson and Tatum !

What is the Polish for Woosh!

Well the 'opposition' rider Laguta played such a perfect inside line anchor role. He rode just as if he WERE a team mate. All without prior arrangement i assume.

Looking at tonight's meeting itself ... What are people's thoughts? Surely there are three teams going out without much doubt ... Finland, Italy and France. with one of them lasting until heat 22 before being KO'd. You would think that Sweden, Australia and GB may all get (easy?) 5-1s in those nine races against the lesser sides as well. The rest will decide who gets the two straight final places and who has to fight it out with the Czechs in the race off. The big races must be heat 10 Swe v Aus, heat 17 GB v Aus and heat 20 Swe v GB when big points can be dropped. But it really could be all down to the Czechs and heats 4, 8 and 15 when the three favourites meet them. It would seem to be 21 races to work out which of the top three have to race against the Czechs in heat 23 and then win and go through anyway ? I know I am going to be proved massively wrong ... But at least it makes a change to talk about the meeting rather that the commentators or officialdom.

And the sponsors they have brought in are actually members of the BSPA. So really quite 'easy to find', one would have thought.

I commented on the lack of complaints about never having final race in the SWC. I was quite specific. I made no comment on the joker which we all know raised plentiful complaints.

Here. Or in Speedway Star, perhaps. And most probably relayed to us by your goodself.

Except in the SWC. 15 years plus without a final. All of them televised. And I don't remember one single complaint, from anyone, about the lack of a final race. Lets not invent a problem that hasn't really existed.

Yes. And if they are so far ahead after forty odd races then they really should be the winners. ACTUALLY , I don't know what the obsession with a final is all about here anyway I know TV demands keep being touted but the SWC operated successfully as a Speedway event and a TV spectacle, packed with drama, and it never had a 'final'. And the TV folk didnt seem too bothered AFAIK. Lets hope that the lunatics now running the asylum don't bring the SWC back next year with that added 'final 'nonsense tagged on the end in some daft way, and spoil something else.

You could go around and around on this one about what should take precendence; heat wins as against second/thirds. I am personally firmly in favour of heat wins ... Speedway is about winning above everything else. But I do undertsand the arguments of the other camp. I think one of the problems KT and NP faced in commentary is that they had to explain the version that they dont really believe in. But that is what they have been given to work with ... so they over-compensated with blather. Like it or not, the idea that second and third wins over the heat winner is a disaster to have for TV and a 'final decider' It is just daft that we have got to this point and noone (that matters) seems to have noticed.

You could be right. I will be cheering for GB nonetheless, as always. But part of me still hopes that the Poles will storm it. If certain people in power ended a world class competition because the Poles were deemed likely to win again. And then set about creating an inferior bogus replacement competition structured so as to reduce the Poles' chance of winning Then that deserves to fail.

I have not spent a moment criticising KT and NP. Their working conditions were entirely due to BSI making poor decisions. And they had the power to make those better, at Teterow or elsewhere. They are the ones at fault. From beginning to end. To make helpful noises for the comms by blaming Teterow's poor facilities is to misplace where blame should be apportioned. BSI.

That's quite cute. When you prefaced your comment by saying you weren't making excuses for Teterow, but continued to go on and do EXACTLY that. That's when.

Bit by bit ...we are getting there. By October will you actually admit that they have got EVERYTHING wrong. And that was obvious 6 months ago. This is an utter balls up.

Yes but yet again, BSI know this. And they chose it, nonetheless. Stop making excuses for people equipped with making better decisions. But either dont, or simply can't.

Yes it shows. SGP graphics are poor this year too. Tbh it looks as if someone has taken their eye off the ball in many respects recently. Whether that due to personnel in Chiswick, Denmark, Geneva or Italy and the decision makers involved, I dont know. FIM/CCP and/or BSI seem to have lost whatever focus they had on strategy particularly but also organisational and presentation. We may only be a few meetings into 2018. But already 2017-2018 is going to go down as a quite of a low point for all the off-track folk.

NO !!! It is just as likely to be a second and third takes it all final. Even more of a farce.

ALL of the problems were foreseable before the event. Almost ALL were created by the FIM and the organisers themselves. Pretty much all were detailed here on this forum ad nauseum. Unfortunately people just ploughed on in denial.

There is no 'point' at all. In Speedway terms. People have put forward the reason as the SWC had 4 meetings and TV contracts etc may 'demand' a similar number of meetings in this half-arsed replacement. Who knows. Just prolonging the embarrasment I would have said.

So the losers win ... as we were saying all day, despite denials here. Mediocrity is now the way forward. Dreadful.

Gate selection ... who came up wih that polished performance for the world's media?

That doesn't really work as an advertising slogan... " Come on Tuesday ... it will be better than steaming poo."

Now we add in an idiot ref (and KT) just to make things better still.

Team riding at it's finest