False dawn

Many years ago, I was also wrongly prescribed beta blockers. My experience mirrored your own. I also felt like I was unable to feel any sort of emotion, good or bad. I quickly stopped taking them and found better medical advice.

Bill had tremours for which he took betablockers. Unfortunately, the ruling body banned their use so Bill "used" multiple pints of lager instead. Some of which he managed to offset against his tax bill.

The nature of addiction eh? If we understood that, we could save many (famous sportspeople or not).

Then we need to tighten the rules. Miss a meeting where you're scheduled to appear where random testing takes place and you have 72 hours to present yourself for testing. Miss the test and you're automatically suspended pending further investigations. Can we, in any way, turn a blind eye to the possibility that a small minority of riders are endangering their peers due to drug or alcohol abuse?

Have the government cancelled the whole year then?

Thank you for further factual background. Reading between the lines, is it possible to be a drug user but it not be detected by tests with enough foresight and planning? And even if it is, the rider involved does not strike me as someone who could institute such a highly disciplined regime. I guess people have "assumed" hyper behaviour indicated drug use which in turn lead him to try and obtain money in an easily discovered way on his doorstep. Coupled with the vunerable nature of the victims has resulted in the less than sympathic response on here. You certainly don't get sentenced to 7½ years in prison for a minor offence. If funding a drug use wasn't the motivation, what the hell was the perpetrator thinking?

Sod it. I'm taking my referee exams. Then I can get that smell even if fans ain't allowed in.

Well even the 10 meeting one wasn't very good value this year, was it? I'll get my coat.

He's waiting till he's done a spell as GB team manager

You can't help but wonder if the tests could be made slightly less random. Surely if a rider is a persistent drug user, such knowledge will become well known in a tight knit community. It wouldn't be difficult to "arrange" a test. In fact, evidence of drug taking should be treated in just the same way as a rider smelling of alcohol. There must be provision in the rules for the Clerk of the Course to prevent a rider from riding.

Amen to that.

It's better than that. We (*) did win all of our fixture(s). And they were all away from home. A unique record I reckon. * It suit me to be included in the Leicester fan base at present, pending the return of the Bees to their rightful home at Brandon.

This started out as a serious thread. Well semi serious. But now it's descending into total silliness. I love it!

There was a time that we had both a team champonship and a pairs championship. One is not a substitute for the other. When we moved to the Speedway of Nations, it was mooted that it would alternate with the Team Championship, year on year.

But the last time we ran such a competition apart from the WTC was the 1973 Daily Mirror International Tournament. The fixture diary was full in those days and we fitted it in. Only England had home fixtures. But the competition went down to a run off at Wembley in front of 41000 fan. For sure the world has moved on, but a test match series run on a league format sounds pretty attractive to me.

With a straight through pipe no doubt? Double bonus. Authentic smell and sound.

Anyway back to my original quaestion: If "the smell" was down to Castrol R, why do we still get it sometimes with riders using synthetic oils? And more to the point, can we reproduce it some way at home, to enhance the viewing experience of online/TV speedway? What I had in mind was something like this: Click here (a bit expensive in my view).

So why do they? Other racing engines don't (as far as I know) and nor does my car engine.

Thinking about sitting at home watching speedway on TV or an internet stream, I thought I'd see if there was any way of creating "that speedway smell" in my front room. I know this whole smell subject has been discussed before, but there are still aspects of this that I don't fully understand. The conventional wisdom talks a lot about Castrol R and sometimes total loss engines. As modern engines recirculate the oil and synthetic oils are universally (?) used, why is that sometimes we still get that smell at meetings? Also, why are engines designed to burn oil anyway? They are not two stroke, so burning oil is surely inefficient.

I thought I heard him say that and then thought, no, that can't be right. I have heard a rumour that now that Marek Cieslak has retired as the Polish team manager, MA have engaged him as an advisor. That's the end of Jack Holder's international career then.

I'm afraid it does. As stated earlier, the definition of Elite sport is where the participants make the majority of their income from that sport.

I guess the argument is that they would have had to give their U21 rider an outing in the planned 21 heats. As no one knew that the meeting would be called off after 14 heats, they could say that they planned a later inclusion of their reserves. Of course, they may just have been clever, predicting that there might be an early end to the meeting and not risking the use of their U21 rider until after heat 14.

In Adelaide

Bruno, what's the difference between October in Manchester next year and October in Manchester this year? You did buy a ticket for this year's event. Fromafar: I seem to recall that the initial refund period does run till the end October. But there is to be another 30 day refund period once the rearranged date is announced.

But that's not what happened. The SON finals are designed to run over 42 heats plus a semi final and a final. So 14 heats does not in any way represent 50% of "the meeting". Actually it's less than a third. So we are left with an empty sense of being short changed. And that's before we even consider the quality of racing (for the most part) on such a wet circuit. Oh, and when did rain make a circuit bumpy? I can accept that the surface might become uneven following some racing. But those bumps were there from the start of the "practice session".