The Cheese

Featured on BBC Spotlight yesterday evening, said £14k is still needed in the next month.

The relief at seeing Janowski just miss out qualifying through the SEC didn't last long then.

I know not everyone agrees with the play-off system but when you get drama like that there's nothing better. You see riders like Joe Thompson who suddenly have the meeting of their career and nearly become the hero, Leon Flint had a poor night until effectively saving Sheffield in heat 14 when a Leicester heat advantage looked nailed on. And that's before you get to the final two races. Hoping we get something similar in the final!

Fair enough. Didn't realise it had to go through the FIM as well, clearly a no-go as you say. I'll change my prediction to Zagar for that one then

Mentioning the offer of a Croatian license was just to highlight that they were obviously sympathetic to Sayfutdinov/Laguta so it would make sense if they also offered one of them this opportunity. I'm just assuming that the Croatian federation can nominate whoever they like as a wildcard for that round as they have no riders of their own. They wouldn't need to change nationality for a one-off GP, they can ride in it as Polish. Clearly most countries aren't going to give them that chance at the expense of one of their own riders but that isn't a problem here.

For a start there's no local rider to have that spot. And if I remember correctly the Croatian federation have previously said that they could take out a licence with them to enter the qualifiers so there was clearly a willingness to assist them there. With a one-off meeting though they could presumably nominate either as a 'Polish' rider.

I'm guessing there's a reasonable chance that Sayfutdinov or Laguta could be the wildcard for the Croatian GP?

As someone who just wants to see an entertaining meeting, I can't help but be disappointed at Ipswich replacing Belle Vue. Hopefully the track work will make a big improvement but maybe waiting a year to make sure that all went smoothly might have been better.

Incredible from Lambert, he's barely had a bad ride in the second half of the season. Showed no signs of nerves at all, a good 2nd off a tough gate to start and then flawless for the rest of the night. Fair play to Zmarzlik being straight there to congratulate him. A mention for Kurtz too, must be disappointing to miss out again but I'm sure he'll be in contention again next year and he now has a brilliant opportunity to do it in front of a home crowd.

If that's just the peak, is there not a chance that was because the programme overran and it was people tuning in at 10pm for the EFL highlights?

Realistically it couldn't have gone much better than that for Lambert. Hope he can go on to finish the job now.

Maybe it was for a longer-term deal and they didn't want that? Figures I can find from 2022 show their subscription numbers as 222k. Unless that has very heavily increased I don't see much benefit from it. Those kind of numbers aren't going to help grow the sport much over time. If they have/had confidence that a deal with Sky, TNT, ITV etc was possible I think it makes sense to wait.

Phil Morris mentioned a few weeks ago in the Speedway Star that they had turned down a good offer from Premier Sports to cover this season. I think their subscriber numbers would be too low for that to be worthwhile.

Agree with this but I think I read that the side had to be named by last Wednesday so this meeting won't have had any impact on selection.

Looks like it'll only be on HBO Max.