arthur cross

I'm sure it's been mentioned loads of times on other threads before, but for pirate paul's benefit (and anyone else) there is no such rule as "first bend bunching" when judging whether it should be all-4-riders back or an exclusion. "First bend bunching" has become the handy term for describing these situations, which has led to so many fans understandably thinking it's an actual rule. What the referee has to decide is whether any early bunching in a race has created an "unsatisfactory start, all 4 back" situation or a "rider X excluded for being the cause of the stoppage" situation. It doesn't matter whether the bunching is on the first bend, the second bend or halfway down the back straight if the riders are still sorting themselves out ... although it's an extremely rare situation, it can even happen that two or three riders remain spread evenly across the track all the way into the 3rd bend and if one of them then falls unluckily it can still be deemed an "unsatisfactory start, all 4 back" well over half-a-lap into the race!

Kevin Meynell says "the Stade de France is a terrible location and suffers from the athletics track problem as well" ... I think that's rather harsh. Although there's a fair gap between the seating and the rugby/football touchline, it isn't the full width of an Olympic athletics track because the lower deck of seats at the Stade de France is wound back hydraulically for the annual Golden League athletics meeting (you get to see how this is all set up as part of a highly-recommended guided tour of the stadium). As for location, the Stade de France's position within Paris is far better than Wembley's within London for access ... two totally different railway lines (one for the Paris Metro, the other for suburban commuter trains) at the Stade de France within 5 minutes' walk, two motorways within a mile and it's less than 5 miles from the centre of Paris. Just a shame there isn't a great speedway tradition in France beyond the valiant exploits of the Tresarrieu family because there'd be room at the Stade de France for a much bigger track than inside Cardiff's Millennium Stadium and I could happily spend a GP weekend every year in Paris

Depends if you want to stay in Cardiff itself for booking up many months in advance ... our group prefer to see a bit of the rest of Wales while we're there so after staying 5 minutes walk from the Millennium Stadium in 2002, we've gone to Porthcawl 2003, Brecon 2004 and Chepstow 2005 (all about 40 minutes drive from Cardiff). We don't worry about booking accomodation until mid-May and I've always found a really good place within two or three phone calls. On GP day, we know where to find plenty of street parking within 15 minutes walk of the stadium that only needs one of those Cardiff city-parking vouchers to cover us from 1.30pm onwards so even the driver has time to enjoy some drinks before we go into the stadium without worrying about being "over-the-limit" for the late-night drive back to our base. And if you think I'm giving away our handy parking location, think again

I wasn't at the original Cardiff GP in 2001 but I've been to all four since then ... without a doubt, Saturday's crowd was scattered better around the stadium than in previous years to make it look really busy for TV viewers (notably the far greater use of the upper deck of the back straight). A friend watching at home (but who's been to Cardiff at least twice) texted me just before the opening heat to wonder how much the crowd had increased on past years ... my own hunch at that stage was maybe the crowd was slightly lower than in previous years judging by the pubs & city centre in the afternoon (as well as some gaps at the back of the lower deck and throughout the middle deck cancelling out the extra use of the upper back straight). One tip for BSI or the stadium authorities for Cardiff 2006 ... judging by how neatly the dark safety-tarpualins over the front dozen rows of the lower deck make that space look smaller, how about some big adverts, SGP banners or more dark tarpaulins to cover some other empty banks of seats (eg, the upper deck's 3rd/4th bends) ? ... again, it would make it look on TV that the crowd were filling up a bigger percentage of the available capacity. From what I've read in the past, those lower deck safety tarpaulins reduce speedway's Cardiff capacity to around 65,000 (instead of football/rugby's 77,000) so we're roughly 60% full at the moment ... imagine how packed it could look if there's another crowd increase next year fitted into only say 55,000 available seats with the empty upper 3rd/4th bend seats hidden. My overall impression of Saturday's meeting was that it was the 3rd best of the four I've seen at Cardiff ... last year's remains way clear at the top, followed by the incident-packed 2002 version (helped by having backed Ryan Sullivan and then getting a close-up view on the lower deck 3rd/4th bends of his wonderful winning blast in the final) ... Saturday's opening 10 heats were either dull or terribly refereed but at least the rest of the action put 2005 well ahead of 2003's processional snooze (when the next day's West Wales Open at Carmarthen salvaged an up-till-then expensively-wasted weekend).