moomin man 76

That was pretty much my own thoughts on having a mandatory Under 21 rider. They are hoping to create a system that gives more countries a chance of competing and winning at the highest level in one breadth, yet in another, they are handing Poland a significant advantage over the rest.

In an ideal world, I would simply scrap the 'doubling up' rule except for British riders under 21, but to do so it needs a larger rider pool than exists at the moment. To avoid the Kennett and Nicholls scenario, it would make more sense in the short-term to allow British riders to double up, but riders from other countries to be barred from doing so.

On that basis, the following countries applied for places in the qualifiers for the World Under 21 Championship in 2017; 5 Poland; 5 Sweden; 4 Denmark; 4 Czech Republic; 4 Germany; 3 GB; 3 France; 2 Latvia; 2 Russia; 2 Norway; 2 Finland; 2 Australia; 2 Italy; 1 Ukraine; 1 Slovenia; 1 Argentina; 1 Slovakia; 1 New Zealand; 1 USA; 1 Austria. The numbers indicate the number of places respectively allocated to each country.

If Castagna is proposing a mixture of junior riders, to be included alongside senior riders, I cannot see how it will lead to a big jump in participation levels, as there are relatively few countries that have a proper junior development programme.

As I couldn't see an existing thread, I thought I would begin one, to allow anyone to discuss the merits of Finnish riders over the years. Due consideration can be given to achievements not only in speedway but also long-track racing.

Joonas Kylmakorpi rarely rode in the Finnish Championship. I think his best placing may have been third - no doubt FSP could correct me on that. Perhaps it is worthy of a separate thread on best Finnish rider seen?

I never had the chance due to age to see the likes of Reidar Eide, Sverre Harrfeldt etc. To be honest, in the time I have been watching speedway, there have been few Norwegian riders of any real ability, which means that both Rune Holta and Lars Gunnestad stand out. Gunnestad in his prime was at least of heat leader standard. Sadly, Norwegian speedway has slipped to be comfortably the weakest of the four Scandinavian nations. Whether the likes of Glenn Moi and Lasse Fredriksen can regain some of the lost ground remains to be seen.

On reputation, Leif 'Basse' Hveem, but on the basis of riders I have actually seen, Rune Holta and Lars Gunnestad.

A perfectly sensible and well reasoned post - however, as the last sentence indicates this is speedway, so expect little of it to come to fruition.

I think you are either being too positive or exaggerating the quality of what riders we have in this country. For instance, if you can name a dozen British riders better than either Zagar (Slovenia) or Lebedevs (Latvia) you are doing well.

To be fair the allocations are largely in line with what you might expect them to be. The odd FMN's have more places than perhaps they deserve such as the Swedes with six, the Czechs with five, Italy with four and Slovenia with three. As other posters have pointed out on similar threads, you are more likely to get a greater allocation if you are prepared to host qualifiers (GPs, World Under 21's etc). With the current standing of British Speedway, I don't think we can really expect more than four, so three places is slightly below expectations. I was wondering if Slovenia now have more than three active riders, as rider numbers dropped off considerably there? No doubt Castagna also helps the Italians get their extra places, even though they have no riders of their own of any conceivable standard (not counting Covatti who is really Argentinian).

Kaj Laukkanen rode in the GPs in 2004 after riding Premier League in the Premier League for the likes of Long Eaton and Glasgow.

At the moment, all I can see arising is a modified version of the early One Sport pairs competition, where the teams rode as national pairs before it became the trade teams of the past couple of years. Philip Rising might be an advocate of Castagna having passion for speedway and influence in the FIM, but his track record is pretty poor; World Under 21's in Argentina, the World League etc...I hope his ''Speedway of Nations' proves better. It may result in a few extra FMN's entering teams, such as Finland and Norway, but I guess proof will be in the pudding when the nominations close.

I guess it is a sign of the times that there are not sufficient venues prepared to meet the costs of staging semi-final qualifiers, which leaves us with qualifiers straight through to the GP Challenge. At best it will be three-four riders from each qualifier to the GP Challenge. Hopefully there will be no more than one wildcard in the GP Challenge, although I would personally prefer none; especially if it allows a rider who has been already eliminated a back door route to the Challenge.

Greater use of social media is to be welcomed; in fact, the BPA have used Twitter far more readily this year than in previous years. After all, if used successfully it is a virtually cost free way of advertising your business. However for social media to be used effectively, it has to look slick and professional, especially media clips on YouTube. There have been some clips of great races for meetings across the country this year, which have been uploaded onto YouTube and then embedded onto the BSPA's Twitter feed. Unfortunately, Nigel Pearson's summary video didn't fall into the category of either slick or professional. All they needed to do was alter the camera angle, to remove the pub/bar backdrop; hardly the most mentally taxing thing to do! The video might inform the converted, but the converted are getting fewer by the year! The BSPA needs to attract corporate sponsorship, to help put the sport on an even keel, but no corporate backer would consider spending part of their marketing budget on a sport, which appears to be organised/run as an after thought by men down the pub.

Yes - it does look amateurish. All they needed to do was alter the camera angle, so that the speedway backdrop was prominent, rather than a television set in a pub/bar. I spent as much time trying to figure out what action was showing on the television set, as I was listening to what Nigel Pearson had to say. In my opinion, the content of the video was also questionable. There has been justifiable criticism on here and elsewhere about the conference in Tenerife being a 'jolly.' To present a professional image, you don't directly address such criticisms, you should just stick to the message that the conference started on Friday and ended on Sunday, as well as the decisions reached

I guess I like many locally based speedway fans need to answer the question of how much we want to see Workington continue. Unfortunately, too many fans have dwindled away over the course of this season and seasons past. In comparison to many other tracks, the promotion have been pro-active in trying to promote the sport but the Comets have consistently fielded (in my opinion) unattractive teams. On paper, the side assembled at the start of this season was always going to be mid-table at best, as the likes of Jorgensen, Proctor and Roynon were unlikely to improve much beyond their starting average leaving Workington over-reliant on Craig Cook to score a maximum (or close to) week in week out. Since then, Roynon has been replaced by Sargeant, which has proved to be a pretty disastrous signing and with Rob Shuttleworth deciding that reserve pay rates did make ends meet the Comets have been left fielding an unattached reserve week in week out. Both moves have taken further scoring power out of the team leading to poor results and a further diminishment of interest. With Craig Cook being absent on occasions, the Comets have been left without a big hitter further reducing the likelihood of victory and dare I say it interest. The weather has equally been pretty disastrous with rain-off upon rain-off leaving big gaps on occasions between home meetings with further diminishment of interest.

As it is the national championship, I believe that the British Masters is the only domestic grasstrack meeting, for which a facility is permitted for riders who would have domestic speedway fixtures on the same day. Chris Harris is not the first, nor I would imagine be the last rider to be absent for this reason.

The entertainment level so far has been so low, it even makes me nostalgic for the GP Rounds at the Ratina Stadium in Tampere, which Teterow effectively replaced on the GP circuit. Both were gate and go tracks, but at least the rounds at Tampere were in a proper stadium, rather than a track in a field in the middle of nowhere.

The Finnish League does indeed run on a four riders per team basis, with five teams currently operating in the league (one team sits out each round). I'm not sure what format is used in other countries but the SM-Liiga has a race format where pairs ride against other pairs. It isn't a bad format and is certainly the best option for league speedway in Finland at the moment, as it would be unlikely that any club could afford to pay (or indeed have enough riders available) to run a full team of seven riders. If the current decline in riders taking up the sport continues in the UK and indeed around the World, I think that in all likelihood we will eventually see a four riders per team format in the UK; unless we accept the inevitability of less tracks operating.

I fail to see how signing Timo Lahti on his current average is anything other than a good signing for Poole. He's on a false 'lowish' average and his scores for both Rospiggarna and Daugavpils are more than credible. His scores will also be far more consistent that Klindt's, which vary from very high to very low with little in between depending on whether he's got his gating shoes on.

All to sadly true!

Scunthorpe need a big score from Tero Aarnio at reserve to keep this meeting close.

The lineup at Eskilstuna is at least in my opinion stronger than those for the other qualifiers. If there are only four qualifiers for each qualifying round and three wild cards, it seems certain that some good riders will miss out at Eskilstuna. For instance, it is conceivable that Dimitri Berge the winner of the final at Pardubice last year and fifth overall may not make the cut at Eskilstuna.

If the initial allocation still holds true, the other four representatives should be coming from New Zealand, Russia, Ukraine and Argentina.