Steve Shovlar

Pedersen again nearly wipes everyone out!

TRick by a mile!!!! "Slow down Tony and give the others a chance!" Hahaha!!!

The ref is having a nightmare already!!!!!!! Got to be a rerun on that!

She is much better thanks. Moaning as usual that I am watching the bloody speedway again!

OK here we go. Are we going to see Tony Stretch away or his lead clawed back a bit? Personally I hope for a TRick win to prove one again he is the best. Whilst non Tony fans drown their sorrows in the bottom of a glass, we many fans of the worlds best ever speedway rider are cheering him on to a record equalling 6th title. Bring it on!

So you think TRick is going to score less than 8 from 5? Never in a month of Sundays. He will stroll through as usual and then do enough to make the final. Basically that's all he has to do and then step up a gear to win it. Sound easy? It is for TRick at the moment.

TRick will be banging the final nails in Crumps coffin come Saturday night. He is just so far ahead of the rest in terms of points, ability, and anything else you can think of. And he is coming home to Poole in 2006!

My thoughts. Pre meeting around the pubs and in the town=Excellent The Band. Didn't see any pre meeting entertainment so can't comment. Hummer=bummer. Didn't work at all and an opportunity missed to raise the roof before a wheel was turned in anger. Introductions. Almost as bad as Sam E a couple of years ago. Not the way to do it. Racing=excellent after a slow start. Fantastic finish. Fireworks=OK but nothing special. Disappointed after such a build up from Kevin Coombes. Announcer. Excellent, though a bit more subdued than normal. Crowd. Noisy, the biggest yet and it can only grow bigger, certainly not slip back after this GP. Overall the best Cardiff GP yet IMO. Sure there is still a lot of tweaking to do, and a lot more seats to sell, but the general consensus is that it was a great day out.

Oh dear, you really don't know anything about me do you! Thanks to Mr Yates for sticking up for me but I can answer this one myself. A glory seeker? No it's just good fortune that i support the worlds best rider and the UKs best speedway team. I also supported Poole when we were rock bottom of the league a few years ago, and will no doubt still be supporting them when we end up having a duff season in the future. I have never been a glory seeker. I support Swindon Town in the football so how can I be classed as that? One year in the premier, probably never to be repeated! In 2001 I went to every GP supporting Mark Loram. Every one. I was there in Bydgoszsz when Mark lifted the trophy, and what a night that was. But I have been a TRick fan for years. His time at Poole confirmed that I would cheer him on whilst he was still competing in the GP series, and I am still here today doing the same. If he rode for Belle Vue I would still be cheering him on. Would you have a problem then? No of course not because you would be cheering him as well. You reek of double standards. You support Crump, a bloody Aussie for gods sake, whilst I support a European. So go on cheering for your Aussie. His days have gone. Cream always rises to the top and this year it's double cream, with a cherry on top as far as I am concerned. Poole top of the league, and TRick top of the GP series. The view from the crows nest from this pirate ship is just great.

I read through this and all I get is soour grapes because Belle Vues beloved number one croaked out of holding onto his one off World Title. Also makes me laugh when I read about patriotic Manchurians. Sure, cheering on a bloody AUSSIE! Now where is that pic I dig out once a month? Aarhhh! here it is! The noise where I was when Tony won the meeting was deafening. The whole area erupted and gave him a standing ovation, except for a couple of BV fans too busy sticking the v's up and using rough people's language. Crump rode like a turkey and got his just rewards, the loss of his one off crown. HAIL KING TONY RICKARDSSON, 2005 AND 6 TIMES WORLD CHAMPION. Sounds just great to me. Here's to number 7 next year, to prove he is the best speedway rider ever to grace the stage.

The eclusion of Crump when he fell after trying to go around Hancock was completely correct. he could have shut off, but went for the blast around the outside and there was no room when he got there. Exclusion of Crump was the only correct decision to be made. Crump was off the pace all night and got more and more frantic as the heats went by. In the end he tried to go up the inside when there also wasn't the room, and ended up bringing down two riders for another justifyable decision. The fact that he didn't even check to see if either rider was OK stinks and although never high in my expectations, he has plummetted to new depths, and that's without his gutter outbursts on Sky. Fine him and ban him from a couple of GP's to teach him a lesson in manners.

Hahahaa!! The People's Champion? You think Crump is more popular than TRick? Dream on! I would say TRick fans outnumber Crumps two to one at least. The best rider in the world and because he is such a nice guy, with huge support as well. The ref made one poor decision with Crumps first exclusion. all the rest were spot on. I have never read such a bunch of whingers as on the BV site. Makes hilarious reading. Face it. Crump is not in the same league as TRick. It should have been 4 out of 4 but for N Pedersen's charge into Bjarne. TRick well in the lead. I don't reckon Crump will even finish second this year. A beaten man, and his tantrum showed him for what he is. A Ginger Whinger! I thought it was a truly great GP, and the best yet.

I just don't agree with some of these posts. The attendance was thousands up on last year. As for families and hotel rooms, again no way. Most make the trip for the day, then drive home. Cardiff is not the backside of nowhere. Most people can get there quickly. There's a motorway to within 3 miles of the stadium! The attendance will continue to grow till it reaches a full house. Three years from now you will have to get your tickets in advance or miss out. As for Odsal, I thought the attendance then was 28,000.

I thought the Hummer was a complete and utter disaster. At first i thought the top would peel off to reveal the riders once the beast had got onto the track, but no, it went around to a bemused and fairly silent crowd who thought it a crap idea. If they had used the normal method of the riders being towed en masse behind a tractor etc, the roof would have come off the stadium with the noise. Don't know who thought up the idea but it didn't work big time.

38,460 x £35=1,346,100 Less stadium rental=£350,000 Less expense of putting in track=£100,000 Less prize money=£6000, (what a joke) Less advertising, Abba tribute, commisions on ticket sales, Sky adverts, admin etc= £150,000?? =roughly £750,000 gross profit. Not bad wage for Mr Possellwaite! ( Of course its probably less than this but not bad even so) So when the stadium is full in a couple of years, (and I am sure it will continue to grow) the profits will be very nice indeed! 60,000 capacity= around £2.5 million gross+ merchandise!

I think we can all safely say that this GP had by far the biggest crowd, whatever the official attendances in the past say. Benfield do give a lot of tickets away in competitions through local papers the week before a GP. It seems that everyone who enters automatically gets a pair of tickets, whether or not the competition says there are only 20 pairs to win. And not a bad thing either. Those freebees could easily turn into ticket sales the following year, and cost Benfield nothing. I would imagine the 38,400 attendance is for purchased tickets, with a good few thousand getting freebees. All the folks around me in the middle tier had got in for nothing, as they work for Fial Vans, the sponsor. Most had never been to speedway before so I spent a while explaining the rules and who the riders were. They absolutely loved it.

Some good pics there Adam. But perhaps you could do with one of these? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...7521167850&rd=1

Here's the report in the Telegraph. Tony Rickardsson produced one of the greatest races of his trophy-laden career to sweep to victory in the British Grand Prix and take a massive stride towards a record-equalling sixth world title. The Swede's spectacular wall-of-death burst around the outside of the second turn in the final launched him down the back straight yards clear of Poland's Jarek Hampel and two Danes, Bjarne Pedersen and Hans Andersen. The audacity and courage of Rickardsson's move was the conclusive act at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium on Saturday, and may prove to be the defining moment of this year's campaign. With four of the nine rounds completed, Rickardsson has 95 points, 32 more than the nearest challenger, reigning champion Jason Crump. "I ride between 500 and 600 races a season and that was the best corner of my life," said Rickardsson, 34. "I was thinking of the speed you will get if you can ride on the fence. I clipped the fence four or five times, but, in front of 40,000 people, it's amazing the stupid things you do!" Rickardsson took his first world crown in 1994 and his most recent in 2002, and it seems only a matter of months before he joins Ivan Mauger as a six-time champion. He was typically reluctant to contemplate history but admitted he is riding better than ever. He said: "I only live in the now, I'm not very good at thinking about what I've done before. I just want to be world champion this year. But I have more control of the bike than I've ever had, I'm smoother round the corner. I have lifted my whole game up." The path ahead could hardly look rosier after dismal nights for his two main rivals. Crump was left fuming after three exclusions - two highly contentious - scarred his five rides, while 2003 champion Nicki Pedersen also failed to reach the semi-finals. Coventry's Scott Nicholls led the home challenge, winning two heats but then falling while third in his semi-final. Lee Richardson, of Swindon, won one of the races of the night when he came out on top in a riveting duel with Pedersen. Eastbourne wild-card David Norris, harshly excluded for bringing down Rickardsson in his first ride, had his moment of glory later when he cut inside Crump to effectively eliminate him.

So you reckon Rickardsson is a nancy boy who doesn't race hard and fair? You are on another planet.

It was clearly the biggest attandance at Cardiff since the GP moved there. Interesting to hear 38,000, when Benfield had already stated they had sold 40,000 by the start of the week. Whatever the exact figure, it was well up on previous GP's.

Having now watched Crumps first exclusion on TV, I think he was hard done by. A better decision would have been all 4 back. However, from where we were sitting it looked that Crump was the cause and should have been excluded. Ref did a good job overall though and was consistant all night.

Well she is OK now but it warranted me missing the meeting, leaving Cardiff at 6.pm through the crowds. At 6.30 she rang to say things had changed and so I turned around just before the motorway and got back in time for the meeting. Trouble was I had sold my ticket to a guy for half the face value, so thanks to Jason for getting me another one from a tout (very cheaply!) The ticket I sold to the guy didn't use the seat, so after 12 heats I moved back to the seat I had orginally purchased! Oh well wifey comes first. I had resigned myself to a drive home whilst the meeting took place, so it was a thrill to get there and see it after all.

Well I finally managed to watch the GP after the wife went ill and I was heading home. Managed to turn around and get back to the stadium before the first race. And what a meeting! After a slow start, racing got better and better, and the climax a fantastic ride by the worlds greatest rider in a wall of death maneovre to take full points. I have read that some think the ref had a stinker. I totally disagree. I think he didn't make a single mistake all night, and applaud him for his consistency. Crump was a joke tonight and had our ggroup in stitches with his desperate antics. Thought he was Nicki Pedersen in disguise at one point! He got what he deserved with three exclusions. The first was the harshest, but the other two were clear cut. Let's be honest. Crumps time as WC is over, and TRick deserves his 6th title. the guy should have won all 4 so far, and even Crump fans have to admit that TRick was robbed of his win in Sweden. Nice to meet so many of the listees and have a chat. Banditsforeva my mate Jason thinks you are a hottie and if you want a date...... shame its the other end of the country! The crowd was the biggest so far, a good 5000 up on last year. Give it a couople more years and we could see a sellout! Some blinding races. Jonsson over TRick, TRick in the final, Norris over Crump, plus many more but I am tired at the mo! To those of you who sat it out, well you missed a real treat. make sure you make the effort next year. Off to bed a very happy chappie! TRICK WORLD CHAMP 2005! Great!

Actually there are only 4 full coaches coming from Poole. Most down here are affluent enough to use their own vehicles. I will be driving so no booze for me. Still come and say hello. I will be in my Poole jacket, TRick cap and have my camera with me to capture some footage.

As usual it's going to be a Poole invasion tomorrow. Thousands are making the trip to cheer on Bjarne, Antonio, Sully and of course "Poole hero" TRick. See you in the POW mid afternoon.