Bavarian

I like this one here http://redmcleod.com/2013/10/21/7/ Ronnie's got a tiger in his

Is this the end for Hammarby Speedway then?

Great News about the New Zealand Solo Speedway League. With three teams this is the perfect size and sustainable for NZ. Long may it continue and prosper!

All we hear about ice racing in China is rumours, no hard facts. Apparently they had a demonstration ice racing meeting some ten years ago in Harbin on the local 400m ice rink, with Russian riders from Blagoveshensk and even the two Swedes Serenius and Svensson. The plan then was to train Chinese moto-cross riders to become ice racers, but this has not progressed. Now they have targeted another Chinese town, very close to the Russian border, near Blagoveshensk on the river Amur. I guess it is the Russians that are helping the Chinese to get ice racing started, just like they did in the 1960's when introducing ice racing in Mongolia. It seems that someone is still working on the project of introducing ice speedway racing to China. The FIM seems keen on the idea of getting China on board. Believign rumours, 2016 could be the year of the inaugural Ice Racing Grand Prix in China.

The riders Conkers has mentioned above (Cheblakov, Kuznetsov, Popov, plus Nail Galiakberov) who rode for Kazakhstan in the FIM ice racing world team championship, may have originally been of Russian nationally or ancestry, rather than being Kazakh natives, but they were all locals at Alma Ata (now: Almaty)and they had become citizens of Kazahkstan after the break-up of the Soviet Union. Otherwise they would not have been able to represent Kazakhstan in the World Team Championship, because the racing license is irrelevant in determining which country a rider can represent in FIM world team events. He needs to hold the respective country's passport to be eligible to ride for that country's national team. Kazakhstan were in four consecutive ice racing world team championship finals (1994-1997)and have a pretty good record. They won a couple of bronze medals (Frankfurt 1995 and Izhevsk 1996), and finished fourth in the 1994 final in Karlstad and fourth again in the 1997 final in Berlin. Kazakhstan has even already hosted an individual ice racing Grand Prix before. That was staged at Almaty in February of 1994. Alexander Balashov was victorious on the Saturday and on the Sunday.

perfect timing then this competition is artificial, created just to give Matt Ford's Pirates a chance to win a "world cup". Who cares?

Holder now withdrawn, will not ride for Piraterna in this meeting. Maybe someone did not want him to ride AGAINST Poole?

There won't be many SGP riders in the Elite League anyway. The one or two who are will be replaced by guest riders, so how would the Aussie GP interrupt the end of the UK speedway season?

It's six man teams in this international test match. Wouldn't this be a handy formula for the UK Leagues next year? Does anybody already know the heat scheme for this meeting?

I am told that this meeting is off now that Czestochowa was refused a new Ekstraliga license for 2015. Seems their massive financial problems are eventually killing them. Speedway in Czestochowa will have to be re-started with a new club beginning in Division 2 next year. Orzel Lodz also won't get promoted into the Ekstraliga, since the facilities of their stadium do not meet the minimum requirements of the EL.

The coverage of the two finals was really good. If only all year long they would haven been of this high quality. Ordinary league meetings seemed to run awfully slow, with too many and too Long breaks between teh racing. More often than not it dragged on and tended to bore me a bit. Nevertheless I hope that EUROSPORT will show us the Swedish Eliteserien again next year. And then perhaps the broadcasts will be of the same high quality all season long, as were the two finals of this year.

Don't know what the problem is with Zielona Gora, but they seem to have a big problem. Their team manager Rafal Dibrucki quit the day after their big loss in the semi-final second leg Meeting at Gorzow. Now this poor performance in today's meeting.

Weather is fine here today on the Bavarian/Bohemian border, should be perfect in Pardubice over the weekend. So, don't worry about the Polish Play-Offs.

There is a strong rumour that we will get a German SGP next year, BUT as long as no German TV station is prepared to buy the rights for SGP/SWC (and believe me, this will not happen), there is not much hope for Smoli to be chosen for a permanent wildcard in 2015. He will surely get the local wildcard for that German SGP, but that's all.

Pole Pirate or Poole Pirate, not much difference.

Not quite, gustix. There are two Riss's, but not two Eriks. But it is a historic first in the history of the world long-track championship that a father and now the son have both won the world cahmpion's title. Erik following the tire marks of his father Gerd.

His father Gerd said on Sunday, right after Erik had won the world long-track title, that even now if he would ask his son, whether he is more keen on riding speedway or long-track, the answer would be speedway. Erik says, he only rides long-track occasionally and as he so easily got into the world championship, he did that as well this year, but never expecting that it would be so relatively easy to win it. His one year elder brother Mark is the same, and is just as good on the long-track as is Erik, but keen and very much focused on speedway racing. Mark did not ride long-track at all this year, after fallign of a few times the year before. Mark has instead concentrated himself completely on his speedway career, has won a place in the Landshut Devils Bundesliga team, finished runner-up in the German U-21 speedway national championship and has reached the European U-21 Championship final (which he unfortunately missed riding in due to their transport van breaking down en-route to Poland). Interesting fact on the Riss Brothers is that they are born on the same day, but one year apart. Mark is born on September 13, 1994, and Erik on September 13, 1995. Perfect timing shown once more by their father Gerd. By the way, Gerd Riss has already indicated that if Mark and Erik are to become professional speedway riders, at one point of their career the two must come over and ride in the UK to learn to ride the many different types of tracks.

And as he was fournd to be "over the limit" he has been taken out of the meeting and not allowed to race on that day. A fine for the offense might be apporpiate as well, but a lenghty ban from racing seems a bit harsh. Don't get me wrong, I agree that he should not escape unpunished, all right, but this here turns more and more into a witch hunt and quite a few on the BSF, it seems to me, would rather like to see him burnt on the stakes, just because he is Darcy Ward, or because he is a Pole Pirate, or because he's a ginger head, I don't know?

The 19-year old world long-track champion Erik Riss rides at Pardubice on Friday instead of riding for his club Landshut Devils in the first leg of the Bundesliga Finals against the Brokstedt Vikings. Landshut does not require Erik Riss, as he would anyway only have been their non-riding reserve at number 6.

Could there be an SEC round in Britain next year?

When will a decision be taken about how Long Darcy Ward will be banned from racing?

No, not many will travel to Lonigo either. The Polish speedway fans do not travel away as much as they used to some years ago. They only have those really huge crowds for some of teh League meetings (local Derbys and top of the table clashes) and some Special Events, but other meetings in Poland are often poorly attended. Last night's SEC final, though, was expected to be a good crowd puller. For some reason it failed to attract the people. The attendance at Czestochowa last night was well below 10,000 and a huge disappointment for SEC / One Sport. They have already indicated that they won't return to Czestochowa next year, due to the low attendance figure. It's a shame because the Stadium is very good and the speedway track there is probably the best race track anywhere in the whole wide world. I can not think of a better / more exciting speedway race track. Czestochowa is as close to perfection as it gets.

Though I'm glad that EUROSPORT shows us live Swedish league racing, I must say that I find these Swedish Elite Series meetings on tv quite boring to watch with all the delays and nothing going on between the heats. Nearly as boring as watching Snooker. Yet the racing is quite good, they should just speed up the proceedigns and avoid the long breaks and delays with nothing going on. SKY SPORTS are doing a much better job with their Elite League coverage.

Good question, dave. Germany is full of them Poles, too. They seem to be everywhere.

The Polish and Danish domination of the u21 events unfortunately is a killer. Hardly any interest shown from the rest of the world about who wins this team event, or this year's individual title. Who cares if it is this Pole, or that Dane.