Ian

Apparently he was fined the equivalent of almost £4000. It makes you wonder what the penalty would have been had the little lad actually done something naughty.

No trick intended. Clearly my knowledge of West Lothian from the air doesn't match your own. Thanks for the answer though.

The picture which goes with that article - does anyone know which stadium it depicts?

Iris is right though, Tsunami. In the fifty years I have been watching speedway the only changes I can recall to track surfaces are that they have become generally slicker and that they no longer seem to use sawdust on wet tracks. There may, of course, be a perfectly good reason for the latter - I don't know. I apologise if I have posted this before, but somewhere out there must lie a solution to the wet track problem. After all, it can't be beyond a species which managed to send men to the moon and back to come up with some more weatherproof surface than we have now. My best suggestion is that the BSPA, or FIM or whatever, offer a research project to a number of technical universities aimed at finding a better surface material. It wouldn't cost that much, and we'd have some of the country's finest brains working on it. Alternatively, we could all be defeatists and just sit back and hope for the best that next summer is a bit drier than this one has been, which I suspect is what will happen.

Probably the reason is that air fares fluctuate wildly inside and outside of the school holidays. For example, I just looked at tickets between London and Dubrovnik around 31st October, which is over £400 with British Airways. Five days later (after the English half-term holiday) the same flight is £50. Now that's on a short 2.5 hour flight, so scale that up to the 24-hour haul to Australia and the cost differences can be dramatic. This seems to happen with riders every year. It's unprofessional, but you can see the reason for it.

To some extent it was the survival of the fittest, and I believe that Wimbledon won the National leaugue (which was the first tier) for a significant number of consecutive seasons. Was that a problem? Not really. Wimbledon fans seemed happy enough to watch large home wins every week, and the attraction of such a strong visiting team ensured a good payday for the other promoters. The real answer is to allow team-building to a fixed average, but to give discounted averages to riders based on how long they have stayed with the one team. I cannot see the attraction of supporting a team which changes riders every couple of weeks.

From the top drawer, most likely.... sorry Nige.

This really is the most unwarranted attack. Tsunami's not all that old.

He'll be wearing a pink cushion next!

So, to summarise. The plain fact is that you actually know nothing at all, and your entire post is constructed from hearsay, gossip and speculation. Is life in the Borders really so dull that you have to resort to this sort of nonsense to keep yourself amused?

I have to agree with this. Speedway likes to bill itself as a "family sport". Nicki Pedersen' s choice of language is at odds with that description. Some years ago one of his fellow Danish internationals described Pedersen to me as "a great rider, but just a yob". Sadly he seems to go out of his way to prove that too many times.

Old Meadowbank wasn't all that big - 363 yards (332 metres). However, it had very wide sweeping bends which made it look big, and the short straights meant that riders generally weren't too spaced out. Glasgow's White City was exactly the opposite, with very long straights and hairpin bends. Compared with these West Ham looked huge, but I never thought much of the racing there. Perhaps that's because speedway is a bit like fags and booze in that you get hooked on a specific brand and nothing else is ever quite the same.

Ivan Miller, eh? Does the DVD cover the race against Berwick where Miller knocked Willie Templeton off and brother Doug wrestled him from his bike? If it does then I'll happily buy a copy. To this day that's one of the funniest things I ever saw at a speedway meeting!

My Slovenian is also limited, but I can tell you that "Kranjec" means a Slovenian. Croatians call them "Kecec", after a cartoon character.

I recall them being Bears during the 1960s. I think the use of the Teeside name came about following name changes in local government.

I'm sure Bert must be as popular in the United States as he is here, Bryn. I'm not sure haggis is banned in the US though, although it's not legal to import it. I used to know a town in New Jersey (damned if I can remember the name if it) where there was a significant Scots population. The local butcher made both haggis and black pudding. It's strange how you find those little outposts of civilisation in the most unlikely places. PS Just remembered - it was called Kearny.

Eric Boothroyd was certainly in the team. So, I think, was a very young Eric Boocock. I think a third member of that Middlesborough team may have been Slant Payling.

It seems to be widely believed nowadays that some of the old second half races were a bit of a sham, with riders agreeing to split the prize money etc. I have no idea whether that was true, but I recall with great pleasure the weekly Rider of the Night finals from Meadowbank. I remember local heroes like George Hunter and Dougie Templeton facing the likes of Monk, Mauger, Boothroyd and Squibb. If they weren't actually "racing" then they certainly had me fooled.

I once had a long chat with Bryan Seery after a match at, I think, Oxford. This was back in the pre-pocket-calculator days and he used arithmetic to compile "Seery's Statistics". If I remember he was a former maths teacher. Is he still around?

Yes, I was there Bob. Along with maybe a couple of thousand Monarchs fans! This must have been one of the most controversial meetings of all time. It was run using a new format which resulted in FIVE riders qualifying for the four-man final. This resulted in a riders' sit-down protest led by Edinburgh skipper Doug Templeton. Incidentally, the new format was the "brainchild" of Speedway Star's Eric Linden; the following week's edition carried the headline "It's not all my fault"! I speak only from memory, but I think you may be wrong on two points about that final race. 1. George Hunter didn't fall - his bike packed up when he was leading Mauger. He also had bike problems in his first two races when his bike "died" at the start and he did really well to make up the best part of a quarter of a lap on each occasion to bag a third and a second respectively. At that time George really was the form rider in the PL - Mauger or no Mauger. 2. I agree that Hunter, Mauger and Kitchen were in the race, but I don't think Wayne Briggs was. I think the fourth rider was Poole's Ross Gilbertson. Incidentally, as a measure of just how good George Hunter was, his sensational performance came just a week or two after the fateful crash with Peter Craven. One Sheffield fan that night started shouting abuse at George, including the word "killer". I'm not especially proud to admit that I hit him very hard. If he's reading this forum then I apologise. When you've watched this sport for the best part of 50 years there are many memories, some for good reasons and some not-so-good. Above all of them, this one stands out for me. Fabulous racing, a huge crowd with great atmosphere, drama; you couldn't choreograph it better. As an occasion it's up there with the Russian test matches, the 1967 World Final and all the other wonderful times. It even outstrips all the thrashings Monarchs have given the Tiggers at Ashfield, and that's saying something! A couple of years ago my good friend Merlin wrote a thrilling account of this meeting. I'll call him tomorrow and ask if he could post it here.

I'm not sure how many (if any) races Wayne had before lining up for Edinburgh, but it wasn't many. I also was under the impression that Murray was the eldest brother, but I'm not sure. As for THE Briggo, he's a remarkable man. It's hard to believe he's actually 75 years old. As you say, he was breathtaking. I might quibble with you about him being the greatest (my having been a Fundin fan) but there can be no doubting the huge role he has played in the sport's history. I mentioned to him that last time I was in Christchurch I was struck by the thought that there was a time when that city could have won the World Team Cup, spearheaded by Barry, Ronnie Moore and Ivan Mauger. You could have added pretty much anyone else to that lineup (Trevor Redmond and Geoff Mardon, maybe?) and they'd still have been far too good for anything the rest of the world could have thrown at them. Wouldn't you agree?

The difference is that you're speaking about two different sports - speedway and grasstrack. Do you generally compare apples with oranges?

I don't think that's right, CM. I was chatting to Barry Briggs a few weeks ago at Scunthorpe and asked about Wayne. According to Barry he has been living in Spain for quite a few years. He is still married to the lady he met when he first came to Edinburgh as a sixteen-year-old in 1961. Her name is Theresa and she's a hairdresser. When I asked Barry what Wayne did for a living he joked that he was never quite sure what Wayne did! Wayne really was an overnight sensation when he first arrived, despite hardly ever having ridden a bike in New Zealand. When I first went to Meadowbank in 1962 he was already banging in maximums and I think he may also have taken the track record. Had his career not been so badly blighted by injuries he would probably have gone on to become a very fine rider.

Cheers Tsunami. I was pretty sure it was a Silver Special.

Thanks very much guys. I remember Viktor Trofimov quite well. He must have been one of the tallest riders at that time.