HenryW

Not sure if it's been mentioned elsewhere but, if it's not, I thought it was worth offering congratulations to Robert for his 2nd place in the German U21 championship at Gustrow. He took Marcel Helfer and Valentin Grobauer to a 3 way race off for the title, but fell just short of being the U21 champion for Germany. The race off can be seen here...

I actually just saw the news on the twitter feed from Darija Pavlic.

Don't see it mentioned already here, but Watt and Lindback have both withdrawn so Kildemand and Buczkowski take their places.

I'm not sure you could say anything for certain until after the Gorican qualifier. Those riders may be most likely. However... Would Jarek still receive a place and make it 5 Poles if Kasprzak, Miedzinski and Walasek all qualified? Would Ward still get a place and make it 5 Aussies if Watt and Batchelor both qualified? OK, both those scenarios are unlikely, but anything can happen in a one off meeting....

Indeed, all that I have been told suggests that it's just the final meeting positions that determine the league points....and that came from one of the managers at the meeting tonight, so I would hope he would know better than the TV company, but who knows

Andrei Karpov and Alex Loktaev are both Ukrainian and racing for Holstebro tonight.

My understanding of the format is that league points are awarded for tonight's match as 4-3-2-0. Heat scoring is as normal, but the winners of the meeting get 4 league points, 2nd get 3, etc. Basically that means that Esbjerg have to come last in the meeting with Fjelsted winning for anyone but Esbjerg to win the league. Hope that helps.

http://speedway-league.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Final-Four-2012.pdf

Would that be the same Leszno that lost home and away to Zielona Gora this season? A fantastic fightback from Falubaz today. It's just a shame they gave Gorzow such big lead early on.

Harsh words towards Bjarne there, but who am I to disagree

I think I agree here. AJ only got a chance to make his 2nd place last year due to 6 races at Bydgoszcz in 2010. Before that final round in 2010, I think I am safe to say that he was NOT getting a place in the 2011 series. It will be interesting to see whether his 2011 blip in form will gain him a place in 2013.

Do you enjoy feeling "outraged"? It seems like you maybe do. He called the ref a "tosser"...Oh no!! What a horrendous word to use! How will civilisation ever recover from such a disgraceful word being used on live TV? I think it was clear that Nicki actually chose to keep his language relatively respectable when he was interviewed by Brando despite what he was feeling inside. He said much worse before the interview....So.... If you want him banned for his language, what about banning the TV cameras from a round? What exactly did the director expect when he got his TV camera shoved in the face of a rider who has just found out that he has been excluded and his World title challenge has suffered the loss of a point? They knew exactly what they would get, and they got it. Despite Nigel's regular apologies for language, they want that. I do agree that it was a little unsavoury of Nicki to not seem to care about the health of his fellow competitor, but I can probably excuse that when the adrenalin is running high and he has just been cheated out of a point.

I think you'll find that Edinburgh's number 1 in the averages was standing in the crowd last night, so I don't think your number 4 beat him

Be careful, Dave....I need to do something special for that birthday, and a trip to NZ might be the thing...You might find yourself buying me a beer, and you didn't put any limit on the size of that beer. so if I do make it over, I'll have a 50 liter keg, thanks

March 23rd next year? That would be my 40th birthday! Is it unreasonable to hope that the speedway community might all pitch in and pay for my flights, hotel and tickets for the GP as a birthday gift??

By leaving on Friday and not racing in Edinburgh one would assume

I thought I had seen it somewhere...Sportowefakty reported he was the choice last week. http://www.sportowefakty.pl/zuzel/306288/jonasson-z-dzika-karta-w-malilli I wonder if he is maybe the Swedish federation choice but IMG are considering someone from another Nation, and that's why it hasn't been announced by them yet.

Hasn't THJ already been confirmed as the wild card. I thought I had seen that somewhere.

He's the highest Brit in the averages of each of the 3 major leagues. I think that gives him a reasonable claim to being the top Brit.

After the precedent set last year with the Polish GPs, it seems a little strange that they haven't considered a non swede with them already having 4 full time members of the series. However, if it has to be a swede I think Linus could be feeling a little hard done by that THJ keeps getting the invites.

You do realise that Patryk missed the first round of the series so was pretty much out of contention anyway? If the track was as dodgy as it sounds, you can't really blame him if he wasn't giving it full gas when his chances were already uber slim and he is just getting over an injury. Ermmm....Alex raced at Poole last year! Admittedly he didn't complete the match as he crashed out and took a ride to hospital, but he was there and racing. It was Vadim Tarasenko who didn't race at Poole last year due to visa problems.

British bureaucracy causing the problems once again, I believe. Whilst sportsmen are normally offered a simpler service for obtaining visas for international events, this seems to again have been denied to some speedway riders. The suggestion on another forum was that Loktaev was told that he would have to surrender his passport to the British consulate for up to 4 weeks, which is obviously impossible for someone continually travelling across borders to race.

A random comment, but I think that the problem is that 15 riders is too restrictive. I like the current format and scoring system as it rewards effort in every race, but I also liked the previous system for it's ability to have 22 permanent riders in the series, as that gave far more scope for including riders that were on the fringes, and also more scope for blooding young riders in the series and seeing how they coped. There almost certainly wouldn't be any fuss about including a Brit if there were 22 permanent riders in the series and two wildcards per round, as there was with the previous format, would have allowed Tai into Cardiff to see how he went as well. Whilst randomly commenting, I would also say that I think Tai should have been the wildcard for this year anyway. No disrespect to Scott, as he proved himself a worthy winner of the British Final, but is there really any point in giving him the wildcard place when he has shown he has no interest in the SGP series at the moment by not entering the qualifying rounds? Tai lost his chance in the qualifiers through injury. He deserves a chance to prove his value to the series in British GP, in my opinion.

Really? We are doing Mickey in a mousetrap? Can I offer this as a retort?

"Cheap ticket prices"..."empty seats in front of the start". It was £50 to sit in the main stand!