T.N.T.

11 of the first 12 races were won from gate one .... the only rider than managed to win off another gate before the interval was Emil Sayfutdinov who went unbeaten all night to score 24 points. Had Emil been missing from this meeting it would have been really bad, but I think Sam Ermolenko hit upon one of the problems in the Sky Studio. He was saying how Olsen does a great job with the GP's but maybe the track preperation should be left to the usual track men who know how to prepare a race track.

I answered this in General Speedway section already

Apart from the brilliant Sayfutdinov, the meeting was a complete joke really. Where they gated they virtually stayed and only bold moves like Gollob on Emil and Nicki in the final was going to get you anywhere. Emil was brilliant again, doesn't matter where the line is, he went for it and deserved a 24 point maximum. Heats 1 - 12 ..... all won from gate one ... except heat 4 when Emil (yellow) passsed Lindgren (red) down the back straight After the interval, the inside lane wasn't working and only heats 17 + 18 provided winners with heat 18 a race with four riders that were already out anyway. Then the semi-finals take place and again gate one wins both and suprisingly, Emil chooses Blue for the final !!! Holta (red) was winning until the big clash with Nicki / Gollob and Emil got a second chance. Ole Olsen has done a brilliant job with the GP's but if he is race director, surely that more like Clerk of the Course who at tracks ensures this are running right, but the trackmen are the ones entrusted to do the track .... so why should Olsen get involved. If the weathers bad, you can understand sometimes the track being a bit different, but when there is no excuse, the track should be prepared to provide racing on and this season they may as well have Scaletrix sponsor some of the meetings. Get Doc Bridgett and a few good track men together, get the tracks sorted and speedway may just be exciting to watch on TV and not have to rely on a 19 year-old paper boy going hell for leather to provide any real racing at all.

LEADERBOARD UPDATED AFTER SLOVENIAN GP

For those that cant get a feed, these are the scores at the interval 9 = Emil Sayfutdinov 3 3 3 7 = Rune Holta 2 3 2 6 = Tomasz Gollob 3 2 1 5 = Scott Nicholls 0 3 2 5 = Jason Crump 3 2 0 5 = Leigh Adams 2 0 3 5 = Matej Zagar 0 3 2 5 = Nicki Pedersen 0 2 3 5 = Greg Walasek 3 1 1 5 = Fredrik Lindgren 2 1 2 5 = Greg Hancock 2 2 1 3 = Kenneth Bjerre 0 0 3 3 = Andreas Jonsson 1 1 1 2 = Chris Harris 1 1 F 1 = Sebastian Ulamek 1 0 0 1 = Hans Andersen 1 0 0

1 J.Crump (2) AUS 2 C.Harris (11) GBR 3 G.Hancock (4) USA 4 S.Nicholls (9) GBR 5 G.Walasek (13) POL 6 L.Adams (6) AUS 7 S.Ulamek (14) POL 8 N.Pedersen (1) DEN 9 H.Andersen (5) DEN 10 T.Gollob (3) POL 11 R.Holta (8) POL 12 K.Bjerre (12) DEN 13 E.Sayfutdinov (15) RUS 14 M.Zagar (16) SLO 15 F.Lindgren (10) SWE 16 A.Jonsson (7) SWE 17 I.Santej (17) SLO 18 A.Conda (18) SLO 1 J.Crump (2) C.Harris (11) G.Hancock (4) S.Nicholls (9) 2 G.Walasek (13) S.Ulamek (14) L.Adams (6) N.Pedersen (1) 3 T.Gollob (3) R.Holta (8) H.Andersen (5) K.Bjerre (12) 4 F.Lindgren (10) M.Zagar (16) A.Jonsson (7) E.Sayfutdinov (15) 5 E.Sayfutdinov (15) J.Crump (2) G.Walasek (13) H.Andersen (5) 6 M.Zagar (16) T.Gollob (3) C.Harris (11) L.Adams (6) 7 R.Holta (8) F.Lindgren (10) S.Ulamek (14) G.Hancock (4) 8 S.Nicholls (9) N.Pedersen (1) K.Bjerre (12) A.Jonsson (7) 9 L.Adams (6) A.Jonsson (7) J.Crump (2) R.Holta (8) 10 K.Bjerre (12) G.Walasek (13) F.Lindgren (10) C.Harris (11) 11 N.Pedersen (1) H.Andersen (5) G.Hancock (4) M.Zagar (16) 12 E.Sayfutdinov (15) S.Nicholls (9) T.Gollob (3) S.Ulamek (14) 13 S.Ulamek (14) K.Bjerre (12) M.Zagar (16) J.Crump (2) 14 C.Harris (11) E.Sayfutdinov (15) N.Pedersen (1) R.Holta (8) 15 A.Jonsson (7) G.Hancock (4) T.Gollob (3) G.Walasek (13) 16 H.Andersen (5) L.Adams (6) S.Nicholls (9) F.Lindgren (10) 17 J.Crump (2) N.Pedersen (1) F.Lindgren (10) T.Gollob (3) 18 H.Andersen (5) C.Harris (11) S.Ulamek (14) A.Jonsson (7) 19 G.Hancock (4) K.Bjerre (12) E.Sayfutdinov (15) L.Adams (6) 20 G.Walasek (13) M.Zagar (16) R.Holta (8) S.Nicholls (9) Heats 4, 11 and 17 look very tight races 1st Jason Crump 134 2nd Tomasz Gollob 98 3rd Greg Hancock 97 4th Emil Sayfutdinov 96 5th Andreas Jonsson 87 6th Kenneth Bjerre 78 7th Fredrik Lindgren 76 8th Nicki Pedersen 70 9th Hans Andersen 65 10th Rune Holta 58 11th Leigh Adams 54 12th Sebastian Ulamek 54 13th Chris Harris 44 14th Grzegorz Walasek 44 15th Scott Nicholls 28 16th Antonio Lindback 27

You would have Kasprzak, Harris, Watt, King, Richardson, Bjerre, Holder, Adams and Lindgren all meet up at a track, compete in three round robin groups to determine three group winners who would ride in the final. Thats 12 heats which if run alongside a meeting like an Under 18;s Test Match (England v Poland say) over 15 heats could create quite a bit of interest and a pretty good crowd.

The Golden Helmet was always a good extra to a meeting but these days riders finish heat 15, get showered and then off to the next meeting. They don't need any extra ware and tear on equipment and would want paying for these extra rides. Although it would be nice, I cant see it happening but maybe another idea would be to include heat 15 results in a competition. At the end of the season, the top two riders with the most race points from each track would then be selected for the ELRC (bottom two as reserves) where the trophy could be the Golden Helmet. Otherwise, you could have the top rider at each track go forward to a Golden Helmet meeting held at say Cardiff (on the Sunday) or even alongside the Silver Helmet with the meeting held at a central track like Birmingham, Coventry or Wolves. You would then have 9 top EL riders competing in three groups of three for the Golden Helmet and 14 top PL riders competing in groups. All races would be match races with the meeting lasting about 40 heats of two riders.If you could get on average 100 fans from each track, thats a pretty good crowd and help pay for the prize money as well as making it a charity meeting for injured riders.

Anders Mitchaneck could well have been as he averaged 11+ in the 73 season while Sam was quite frankly brilliant after coming back from his big crash and 93 was a brilliant year for him, but he did end up the season with a broken leg ! Nielsen for me would have won the title virtually ever year from the early 80's to the mid 90's had the GP's been in place which casts more shadows over the fact that maybe Havelock, Jonsson, O'Pedersen and even Gundersen may not have won the title had it been over a season. There are loads of riders that could have been World Champion over the years going back to Bill Kitchen, Ron Johnston, Vic Huxley, Jack Parker etc, but in the near 40 years I have been watching I would nominate as could have been World Champions on a one-off night as ........ Dave Jessup Leigh Adams Tomasz Gollob Billy Sanders Dennis Sigalos weird how an Anglian theme runs through these names !

01 Neils K Iversen 02 Jason Crump 03 Greg Walasek 04 Tomasz Gollob 05 Andreas Jonsson 06 Chris Harris 07 Greg Hancock 08 Nicki Pedersen 09 Sebastian Ulamek 10 Rune Holta 11 Scott Nicholls 12 Emil Sayfutdinov 13 Fredrik Lindgren 14 Kenneth Bjerre 15 Hans Andersen 16 Leigh Adams

Unless Harris can either come with an unbelievable late run or get through the GP Challenge, then I dont see why there should be more than one Brit in the 2010 line up. Should Richardson be nominated ahead of others like Harris who can battle and is looking a bit sharper at the moment, Tai Woffinden who is riding as well as any Brit at the moment and could end up with an EL title in his debut year after already winning the British U18 and 21 titles. Or Edward Kennett who has had a decent season, but not good enough for the GP's. So should Richardson get a nomination when he pulled out of the qualifiers ? For me if they have to include a Brit, it has to be Harris or Woffinden

Think this years GP series has been a very tight series in many ways as there are good quality riders trying to get into the semi finals. True, Jason Crump is running away with the title, but when you see riders like Nicki Pedersen, Hans Andersen and Leigh Adams struggle this year, it shows that the series has many good riders in it. Leigh Adams has been a brilliant rider in the GP series, but this year time is really telling on him and comments made during last nights GP makes it obvious that Leigh will not be in the 2010 Series, even if he makes it into the top 8. At Latvia, he clearly let Jason Crump through and again last night. With riders like Chris Holder, Tai Woffinden, Matej Zagar and many many more young riders coming through, it will be a shame to see a GP without Leigh in, but he has been one of the best over the years and will take with him a very good record. GRAND PRIX HIGHLIGHTS: Challenge Champion: 1995, 1998; Scandinavian GP Champion: 2002, 2007, 2008; Slovenian GP Champion: 2003; Swedish GP Champion: 2004, 2007; Latvian GP Champion: 2007; European GP Champion: 2008. Adams may never have won the World Championship, his closest effort being second place overall in the 2007 series.

Well it started of well, but nevermind .... I will stick with young Emil as I'm sure he has another final or two left in him.

The track was good, level, no real ruts, good shape and length ..... but totally the wrong surface. What was that stuff as it was mainly grey in colour (like the old ash tracks) and had no real consistancy to it. Even after watering, you could see a fine spray of dust being pushed back. If that track had more of a clay style base like Wolverhampton, I firmly believe we could have witnessed a great GP However, what we saw was Gate 4 and Gate 1 working well and the only success from the middle was Kenneth "Rolling Start" Bjerre and Emil Sayfutdinov in his easiest race of the night possibly. Gate 4 only had one rider fail to score .... Laguta being excluded Gate 4 only had two third places .... Emil (Bjerre rolling on gate 2) and Nicholls Gate 4 was where Walasek gained 2 wins .... and never scored in other three races Crump's only 2 wins were from Gate 1 and Gate 4 Leigh Adams only had 2 wins all night ... both Gate 4 Ulamek gained a win from Gate 4, a second from Gate 1 and his only other win was when Laguta was excluded Iversen won off Gate 4 and Gate 1 Rune Holta 2 1 2 1 1 .... Guess which two races he had the Red and Yellow helmet colours in ? Greg Hancock wins the GP winning 4 races during the night .... All from Gate 4 and Gate 1 Fredrik Lindgren had a poor night .... 2 1 0 2 1 .... Guess where he had Gate 1 and Gate 4 ? Tomasz Gollob looked better tonight with two good wins .... Gate 1 and Gate errrr ? Must admit .... I prefered watching Gate 4 during the night the most as well (very nice )

Thanks for the race card, but I cant open it - What do I open it with as all i get is loads of boxes and numbers Found this on the GP site 1 N.Iversen (19) J.Crump (2) E.Sayfutdinov (15) L.Adams (6) 2 F.Lindgren (10) K.Bjerre (12) H.Andersen (5) S.Ulamek (14) 3 G.Laguta (16) S.Nicholls (9) C.Harris (11) R.Holta (8) 4 T.Gollob (3) G.Hancock (4) G.Walasek (13) A.Jonsson (7) 5 A.Jonsson (7) N.Iversen (19) F.Lindgren (10) C.Harris (11) 6 G.Hancock (4) G.Laguta (16) J.Crump (2) H.Andersen (5) 7 S.Nicholls (9) T.Gollob (3) K.Bjerre (12) E.Sayfutdinov (15) 8 L.Adams (6) S.Ulamek (14) R.Holta (8) G.Walasek (13) 9 H.Andersen (5) G.Walasek (13) N.Iversen (19) S.Nicholls (9) 10 R.Holta (8) F.Lindgren (10) T.Gollob (3) J.Crump (2) 11 S.Ulamek (14) C.Harris (11) E.Sayfutdinov (15) G.Hancock (4) 12 A.Jonsson (7) L.Adams (6) G.Laguta (16) K.Bjerre (12) 13 K.Bjerre (12) R.Holta (8) G.Hancock (4) N.Iversen (19) 14 J.Crump (2) A.Jonsson (7) S.Ulamek (14) S.Nicholls (9) 15 G.Walasek (13) E.Sayfutdinov (15) G.Laguta (16) F.Lindgren (10) 16 C.Harris (11) H.Andersen (5) L.Adams (6) T.Gollob (3) 17 N.Iversen (19) S.Ulamek (14) T.Gollob (3) G.Laguta (16) 18 C.Harris (11) J.Crump (2) K.Bjerre (12) G.Walasek (13) 19 E.Sayfutdinov (15) R.Holta (8) A.Jonsson (7) H.Andersen (5) 20 F.Lindgren (10) G.Hancock (4) S.Nicholls (9) L.Adams (6) Heat 15 is my favourite with Emil, Freddie and Laguta in

Sticking with Emil as the captain

Nicki will be riding in the next GP even if they have to strap him onto the bike, he may be many things, but he will be eager to still fight for every point. Ulamek is more likely to be missing, so Iversen looks odds on to be in the next one.

Australia lost this meeting more than Poland won it Poland won by 1 point due to them making a tac sub joker that netted them 4 points instead of 0 or 1 had Pepe stayed in. Thats an extra 3 points given to them because ..... any of the following or all three 1 Crump should have stayed behind Kasprzak 2 Boyce should have warned Crump to just follow Kasprzak 3 Did Kasprzak know what he was doing and let Crump past ? Some good races, but it was a shame they had the delay as the meeting was really hotting up unril the break with Russia looking good bets after starting the meeting so poorly.

I'm not British ... I'M ENGLISH Wont wear a Union Jack, wont support Team GB .... Make it England again and fine but sadly this Country is losing its pride and vanishing into a European hell hole of political correctness

So Antonio Lindback ~ born in Brazil ...... Jason Crump born in Bristol, England Mark Loram born in Malta Lets go all the way, Sir Cliff Richard !

Charlie is fine, but there is something about anyone that steps in front of the camera's for Sky .... They all make mistakes every sentence Kelvin the other night described one race hard for the Australian as he was against two very good Swedish riders Think the Mole is a bit stupid myself, but they are doing well with the coverage and seem to have quite a few on these meetings now. For me, Sam Ermolenko, Chris Louis and Kelvin Tatum in a Studio, Nigel Pearson and Steve Johnston doing commentary with Charlie doing pit interviews would be a great set up.

Take a step back ! There is a Norweigan in the Polish Squad The Aussies have their top rider born in England (against England) The Russians have a Polish mechanic running them (against Poland) The Russians have a British Engine Tuner with them The Russians have Tony Rickardsson backing them (against Sweden) The Russians had a Latvian in their squad But Wait !!! One English lad (raised in Australia) wears a T Shirt to help out friends as his team are no longer in the competition ..... Shameless

Honestly thought Crumpy knew what he was doing against KK as it looked like he deliberatly sat behind him for the first two laps, even when he made a mistake. There are so many team talks going on, the situation should have been known that finishing behind KK would have meant Australia were 4 ahead with Protasiewicz out in heat 23. Maybe Pepe might have beaten Watt, but giving Poland two extra points in the next by allowing Hampel to come in, really cost them as a team. Having said that, surely Poland should have ensured that KK let Crump pass him if he was in front of him. Works both ways really, but Poland benefitted from it big time

If you click on Leszno from the link on the side, it says rain is due in the afternoon and should be dry in the morning, so here's hoping. Cant see the track would have dried off much, so they will probably take the top layer off, then lay down some fresh material just before the meeting starts.

Poland are 4/9 to win the final but Australia at 2/1 may be a good bet if Adams, Crump and Holder are on form. Batchelor can pick up points at Leszno and Watt will fight for everything, so I may have a small bet on them. Just been on facebook and went to add Leigh Adams as a friend, underneath it said ... Leigh only shares certain information with everyone. To learn more about Leigh, add her as a friend. Is he really a Shiela !!