HenryW

I would think that not being allowed into the Country that the meeting was being held in would be considered "force majeure", unless it can be proven that Artem was negligent in his efforts to obtain a visa.

2nd of July I believe (as the sub heading says). And to answer myself...Apparently Max isn't going to be ready in time, so 17 year old Andrej Lebedev will be taking the wild card position in Daugavpils. While down in Croatia another 17 year old, Dino Kovacic, takes the wild card place for the Gorican round.

Emil (although he almost certainly uses his Polish passport for racing here) and Renat Gafurov.

Assuming he is fit, it's surely fairly safe to expect "Mad Max" to be taking this place? I was wondering why he hadn't been in the qualifiers until I realised one of the semi's was in Daugavpils.

He has already withdrawn from the event. The SGP site has confirmed that Zorro will race.

Have Australia only officially named a 6 rider squad then? If they have, what happens should a couple of riders pick up injuries? Are they allowed to add to the squad at any time?

If I am reading things right, and remembering my national federations correctly, Australia didn't even get what they asked for this year (although neither did Russia). I don't think the number of Russian's in the qualifiers is the biggest anomaly. They do have 2 riders in the SGP series this year and provided 3 of the riders in the SGP qualifying final last year, including the eventual winner. The Czech Republic receiving 6 places seems the most out of place to me. Considering Russia and Czech Republic both asked for 8 places, why are GB content with only 5? Why aren't we asking for more? Even Slovenia and Germany asked for more places than us!!

Agree 100%. Another stupid decision by the Brit authorities. The road to the SGP is already 1 year behind current form. Why are we insisting on making it 2 years behind? Can we not follow the example of other countries and hold our National qualifiers before the SGP qualy's start or leave a chance to make sensible, form related picks at the time?

Any comments on why Artem Vodjakov only took one race? Was he so bad that they just left him out the rest of the match or what? He was such a great talent before his injury and "problems"...I'm hoping he can get himself back to the form he was showing when he was 16/17.

Unfortunate if there were problems with the booking website, but I guess that after the fast sale of tickets last year there was a massive load on the servers this year leading to problems...Yes this maybe could have been predicted, but it's always difficult to predict server load for something like this and having masses of spare capacity to cover all eventualities can be very expensive. As for the confirmation mail...I wonder how many languages the Cardiff ticket confirmations get sent out in?

Honestly, I don't think it is understandable. It's not like it's shock news that the meeting is being held there, they knew the venue when they entered the competition. Having entered and qualified, I hope they are severely penalised if they don't race in the Final.

They were doing a pretty good job for a couple of laps, but he was just too clever and determined for them

He was racing at Armadale last night and is at Rye House tonight. I would assume he decided that doing these two league matches was a better use of his time than travelling to Slovakia to be reserve for this match. Just my guess though, I don't know this for sure.

Yes he can. The UK season officially ends on the 31st of October. He can do 5 days of racing for the Witches this year

Gotta love that....I am happy to admit to being a Falubaz fan partly because of their wonderful fans...and of course the inclusion of PePe in their team

Not sure why everyone is making these style of comments. Prague has always been bad for racing. It wasn't any better last year than this. One bad meeting on the traditionally slick and dull Prague doesn't change anything about the track prep agenda. As far as I understand it, what Tony Olsson changed when he took over from Ole was that he let the locals do their thing rather than dictating a slick track. I doubt you would see Prague much different for any other match held there.

...and yet Mr Pavlic has been quoted blaming the new silencers for the crash.

Tell that to Koldi who was owned from the back twice by the magnificent PePe

Oh, come on FSP, you gotta say more than that....Has Kalle learned any boxing skills while over in Scotland, or is it just his drinking skills that he has honed?

Oh dear...This is what happens when work makes me get out of bed at 6:30 on a Saturday...my brain shuts down. It was indeed a match at Gdansk this season. However, it has been Gniezno's internet TV site that I watched live matches on last season, rather than Gdansk's. I think that's cleared things up...or confused them further.

Thinking about it again, I was getting confused. The first match was in Gniezno and it was them who have done some live streams in the past...Sorry for any confusion

That would have been Gdansk's opening match of the season. I'm not sure what the situation is there. They seem to have their own "internet tv channel" and occasionally showed matches live last season as well as that one at the start of this sesaon. If you don't mind watching delayed coverage of matches, www.itv24.com.pl usually have the Bydgoszcz matches up on their site the day after the match, home or away.

Don't recall that one, but wouldn't surprise me at all...Emil was, and still is, a bit special

Quite an impressively young set of qualifiers. Pawlicki, Lebedev and Zmarzlik are all 16. Tarasenko only turned 17 this week. Loktaev is also 17 and Belousov is the old man at 18.

No massive surprises in the qualifiers, although I think Vladimir Borodulin would probably have been expected to have taken one of the 6 spots. It looks like he had a bit of a disaster today.