Grachan

I'm not seeing anything on this on here, but it keeps popping up on my Facebook page. Swindon have a team and it looks very interesting. So far we have Jason Doyle, Rasmus Jensen and Peter Kildemand. Mad Korneliusen is given as a possible fourth member. I might even have been tempted to go if it wasn't being held on the other side of the World (ie Saddlebow Road). Looks like a good meeting anyway.

Should have re-run heat 15 just to give it a more satisfactory finish.

I'm not one to knock Kelvin unnecessarily, but good grief! There really needs to be someone who understands the scoring in the commentary box.

It wasn't the sprint race that cost Kurtz the title. It was having a poor round in Prague.

I'm sure I could fathom it out if I bothered to look into it. I just haven't. Presumably it's always been like that anyway with regards to semi final qualification etc., even going back to the A, B, C, D final. For example, today Doyle and Michelsen both scored 10, but in that old system one would have been in the A final and one would have been in the B final. For me, I was never that keen on the race points counting as GP points. I felt it made the final less interesting.

Lindgren didn't get an "extra point". He finished 11th. The rider who finishes 11th gets 6 points. You get points for the position you finished in the meeting. It's not hard. If a football team wins 6-0 do they get 6 points? No. they get 3. If a tennis player wins 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 do they win 16-12? No. they win 2-1. Scoring systems are what they are and that is what you ride/play to. Personally, I like the A, B, C, D final that they used to have. But at least this way the winner of the final gets the most points - which didn't always happen when it was based on race points. With regards to countback, I've no idea how it works. I'm assuming Lindgren finished above Kvech because he beat him when they raced? Is that correct? Or is it because he had a race win? However it is worked out, Lindgren finished the meeting ahead of Kvech so gets the points for that position. Easy peasy.

I don't agree actually. The last 3 races are like the championship rounds in boxing. They sort the men from the boys. Fricke constantly looks like one of the fastest riders on show but can't do it in the big ones.

For me, speedway's real decline began when they introduced such things at double point Tactical rides and 39 point points limits. I'm not sure when that was now. Maybe around 2000-ish? These, for me, caused a big reaction, and I remember going the following season and being surprised at how much crowds had gone down as a result. I don't think the sport ever really recovered from these "adjustments". The big irony with these, if course, is that it was Ipswich (the team that everyone now sees as the powerhouse strong side) that were very influential in such things being brought in because they were struggling with weak sides. Nowadays I struggle to get through a meeting on the TV. I'm sure that losing my team (Swindon) has a part to play in this, but I really do look at the sport on a Monday night and wonder why it is so boring. Is it just my own interest dropping off, or has it genuinely become that? I grew up loving speedway, and going to Swindon, Oxford and Reading where huge crowds would bait each other and the atmosphere would thrive on it. I guess I blinked and the World changed.

Why blame the fact that she is female for a decision like that? Do you think that every female watching that thought that Thomsen was at fault?

Bewley is so frustrating. If he could find consistency he could really challenge for the title - but I guess everyone already knows that.

A lot of empty seats.

To be fair, it's actually not easy to only show 2 riders when they are racing 3 abreast.

Yes. I was thinking the same thing. How many times have they cut to show a single rider when there's a good race going on that you're trying to follow?

I agree, which is part of the frustration of it all.

Plus Poland, Chechia, Latvia. Go Egon!