Parsloes 1928 nearly

Ah ha...: so WHY didn't the Daily Mirror Grand Prix carry the same status as the World Final then..?? Surely according to your logic it should've been regarded as "better"..??!!!!

It's clear that there are two views - but the fact is that the World Final offered (and delivered) something different to the season-long GP system. I accept we have the latter now, but I don't think it's acceptable that this has developed into such a closed shop. The very least that should be happening is that only the top eight can stay in it for next year; with eight positions up for grabs in qualifying. That gives real chances to the ambitious and the talented to break into what otherwise (and currently) looks like an 'old boys' network.. It would also make both the World Championship qualifying process and the GPs themselves a whole lot more interesting... To me, any championship in which one can be in it purely on the largesses of the organisers is NOT a proper one...: and that is a major flaw to all those arguments raised by the pro-GP brigade about "fairness"...!! Might have been nice too if anyone had ever bothered to find an argument against the idea that the WF tested (like an Olympic Final for example) the competitors in the white-hot cauldron of a one-off Final whilst the GPs smack of the LCD (for example when Loram won without, er, winning a single GP..)...: but no-one apparently could so there you go... BTW, iris you mis-read about the Premier League. I was referring to the Darts PL which is indeed very akin to the Speedway GP series in being a season-long version of an individual championship featuring the folk who contest the one-off World Championship...!!!

Hmm, you have a problem with the word "Champion" being used to refer to Peter Collins, Ove Fundin, Barry Briggs, Ivan Mauger, Peter Craven, Erik Gundersen, Ole Olsen...; and Ronnie Moore..???

Er, well two of those ARE motor sports are they not..??!!

But the format of a Darts match, a Tennis match, a Boxing fight etc. are different in that they only ever involve two protagonists.. A Speedway (indiv.) championship has 16... So, yes, it would be inadequate as a sporting endeavour, in every respect, if Taylor vs. Barney yesterday had been decided over a single leg... Why, Henman could've won Wimbledon if he'd only had to win one game ! And though many a fight does end after one round, there are 12 three minutes rounds to negotiate to win that championship Boxing belt.. But all of these are SILL one-off Finals...!! Darts has its 'Premier League' but that competition carries none of the status and public interest of the big World Championship Final... A Speedway World Final can't be the best two just racing against each other 20 times... No, the essence of the sport is four riders in a race... But the 5-rides, meet each opponent once, top points scorer prevails worked for years and IS the fairest way to decide a champion... Outside of things like F1 and other similar motor sports, name a World Championship decided by the long route of multi-rounds as opposed to the one-off Final...!!??

Hey, Jesper...: why not stage one of the Rounds over here....: at Sittingbourne...??!!!

Yes I went to World Finals at Wembley & Bradford, at Ullevi and even that apparently notorious one in Norden. An excellent weekend of drinking was had in northern Germany that year...!!! I have NEVER commented on the particular quality of racing in a GP - that's not my beef... But it's rather like chastising a devoted fan of Manchester United (someone like Blazeaway!!! ) for not going to see United play in a pre-season tournament... That fan may regard such friendly games as a waste of time... I don't tend to watch the GPs on TV because (1) I have little interest in them as they more often than not have little one-off excitement or value as events; (2) my real interest is, and always has been, in lower league and grass-roots Speedway; and (3) I am often too busy either going to Speedway here or writing for the various progs and publications I have commitments to.. Blimey, this is hard work...!! What are you on about iris..?? You know full well that the 16 riders in a World Final didn't just turn up on the day... Like Phil Taylor winning the Darts, they also had to negotiate qualifying rounds.. Indeed it's the GPs which, uniquely, allow people in them who've NOT had to qualify, who are just put in there...: even if they've tried to qualify and failed or failed to stay in the prerequisite top eight the year before!! And of course, if like Hans Andersen in 2004 your face doesn't fit and they leave you out, you can have the season of your life the next year but it matters not a jot coz 'politics' has frozen you out. That's not sport in my book...!!! Again though, no-one EVER responds to any of the arguments made by me (and plenty others...) about the special nature and special qualities of a one-off Final. The one-off Final is the stable format of the huge majority of sports, always has been and always will.. I WON'T drag out the stats again which show that the old World Speedway Final was dominated by a very small number of top riders for decades... It wasn't a lottery, decided by "a good piece of luck".. It was the TRUE test of greatness and more to the point, a fantastic, well-loved, massively supported event. I've been to two British GPs, BTW...: one at Cardiff and the original one in 1996 at Hackney. The only one, incidentally, where the World Champ was crowned on British soil since the GPs started. As things stand we'll NEVER see that happen again and that's a crying shame IMHO for GB Speedway...

Make that just the senior championship!! It obviously slipped my mind that we celebrated Alex's 21st. when he was over with us at Sittingbourne in 2008!!!

And it's certainly tempting to apply that particular bolt...!!! I guess it's topical having just listening to the dulcet tones of none other than our very own Nige and one of my first Speedway announcing heroes, the peerless Dave Lanning on Sky, to go with a Darts analogy... You see The Know, you chastise me for watching the SGP rounds from my settee - sorry to disappoint but I don't watch them at all.. I also don't watch the 'Premier League of Darts' but I sure as hell watch the Darts World Championship. The difference...?? Well, that's obvious, isn't it...!!!

Er.., it was....

Ah right, sorry I must have mis-remembered reading that this was the case.. Lived in Leicester (and followed the Lions) from 1978 to 1981 but have not been to the part of town where that fantastic stadium was since it was pulled down... Here's to a return to Speedway in the city by 2010...

I agree with you. It makes my blood boil when I see 'Stadium Drives' and 'Stadium Roads' all over the country where there's now some poxy industrial estate or housing and no stadium.. Places I've seen this include St. Austell (I saw a Stadium Rd. near to the holiday camp I stayed a few years back...: was this the original home of the Gulls..?? ) and local to me in Ilford where a once-proud non-league football club had its impressive home... A similar thing happened in Barking, where the lovely '30s built cinema was bulldozed and replaced by a rubbish looking block of flats that they had to cheek to call, The Odeon...!!

I think some of the roads on the Stadium site at Blackbird Rd. in Leicester are named after former Lions' riders are they not....

Well, that's right. Over 35 years later we're still talking about it... No-one ever bothers to talk about any of the GPs even 35 DAYS after them...!!!

Not really flats...: mainly houses... Harringay is now a Sainsbury's as indeed is Crayford... Though a utilitarian tiny dog track occupies part of the former site of the Crayford & Bexleyheath Stadium...

The best of luck to Alex (Cunningham) in the NZ Under 21s and main championship over next couple of days...

An excellent posting: perfectly sums it up.. The most successful sports always decide their principal titles in a 'one-off' final. Those you've mentioned; the Olympics Athletics (indeed obviously ALL events in the Olympics); Wimbledon Tennis etc., etc. It's the mark of a GREAT champion that they can rise to the ultimate challenge.. The Athletics example is interesting. Their GP series attracts much money throu gh sponsorship and a lot of publicity and is very lucrative for its winners; but who has a clue who won the 100 metres GP in 2008..?? Whereas no-one will ever forget that Usain Bolt won the Olympic Final..!! So, yes an excellent posting from 'PC/KC': no doubt the eponymous 'The Know' (sic) will be calling it crap any mo...!! PS it was the equally-daftly named Asafa Powell who triumphed in the GP...!!

Just to save others (potentially...) being confused by this...: when Jim says 'Plech' he does, of course, mean Plechanov, NOT Zenon...!!! With two second-places Plechanov (alongside England's Spilt Waterman) stands as the most successful rider in World Indiv. Final terms NEVER to be World Champ. Plech (ie Poland's Zenon...) had two rostrum finishes too so he's well up there. But unquestionably the most successful rider in terms of rostrum positions NEVER to step onto the top step of the rostrum overall is Tomas Gollob. IF they'd still have been a World Final I doubt anyone would disagree that Gollob would've claimed at least one (and quite possibly upwards of three...) world titles....

Hmm, well for someone who allegedly knows more than everyone else, seems strange that your response to an argument you don't agree with, is not to address any of the points of those "who havnt {sic} got a clue" but simply to hurl insults at them...!!!

You are really getting on my nerves.. All you EVER do is be rude and hurl insults. Try reading the points made and responding to them, because frankly m8 at the moment you're making a complete show of yourself....

You're not really being ignored, mick.. It's just that a "debate" about Polish World Champs (real and 'imagined'..!!) is raging on the following..: http://www.speedway-forum.co.uk/forums/ind...p;#entry1400938

Hmm, but not Poles still based in Poland... They had to leave Poland permenantly did they not, to ride in the BL. It was later (about '75 or '76) when the likes of Plech were able to come and ride here with the Polish authorities' blessings... A shame that Szczackiel (thanx for help with the spelling BTW!!! ) wasn't among those; but I do think it was more in Poland itself rather than elsewhere that he was "out of favour". His face somehow didn't fit as the comment about him nearly always being left out of the WTC team suggested....

Spot on... Sport is meant to be about entertainment and excitement isn't it..? That's from the spectator point of view.. As a test of competitors too, the highest level of sport is all about rising to the challenge of a massively pressurised competition.. Take for example the Olympics track and field...: no second chances there..! The GP is significantly easier from that point of view...: mess up one race, several races...: never mind..: plenty of time to recover in future Rounds.. The World Final was the ULTIMATE test and was also massively tense and exciting. And that applied whether in a "field" in Germany or in the world's most famous stadium (Wembley). Thankfully the huge majority of the one-off Finals were in superb stadia (Wembley, Ullevi, Katowice etc.) rather than the oft-mentioned Nordens of this world...

I think there were two parts to the Sczkaiel problem (as well as the fact I STILL can't spell his name!! ). One was that back then, of course, Poles couldn't ride club Speedway outside of their country and so he was an unknown quantity entirely outside of his own backyard and had very limited opportunities to improve on that.. It didn't help that he bombed out entirely on the two ocassions he came here (both in '73) riding for the Polish national side... The other was more 'political'. The Poles were determined to see Zenon Plech win in the '73 Final but it didn't go to 'plan'; and I think that poor hapless Jerzy took a fair bit of flak internally for that. I always think his face on top of the rostrum tells a story. No smiles at all...: just a worried expression on his mush which suggests, "I'm in a lot of trouble here..."... I think he's gone on record much later saying something along these lines himself.. I take the point about his Pairs maximum but the fact does remain that he is the only rider, IMHO, who stands out on the list of World Champs as really not fully deserving of that accolade... And over so many years of the one-off final that ain't bad... It is a shame that the likes of Eddie Jancarz, Plech and of course, Gollob never became Polish World Champs coz they would have richly deserved to have done so....

And my fav...: Victor Trofimov!!!!!