Grachan

Oxford are in danger here already. Poole are really fired up - perhaps too much so!

1st - Sky were the best by a long way. 2nd - BT Sport were also very good. 3rd - BSN do an admirable job, and are improving all the time but do make error i commentary and editing. 4th - Eurosport - I look at the coverage, and I think to myself... "Eurosport".

Oxford gifted that one to Poole. Very odd that they didn't use Killeen. Could cost them the league.

Suzi Perry was great, but probably under-appreciated at the time as she was still cutting her teeth in the business when she did speedway. When Speedway was on Sky, she'd be interviewing riders walking back to the pits after they'd been brought off. I remember Jimmy Nilsen saying he would get revenge on Joe Screen while stomping back to the pits. It's great telly. Now, if there's a crash, they cut to a bunch of over-60s eating their sausage and chips because they don't want to upset anyone. Also, instead of cutting to some interesting conversation between races, we get long shots of stadiums with a tractor going round or race-re-runs with repeats of the races to the same old music every time. Every time that comes on, my 6 year old complains that it's "that again" and that it's "boring". Kelvin does his best, but it is a lot to expect an ex-rider to carry the whole programme - and his self-confessed maths problem is a major flaw as it's pretty key in the context of a meeting that if you are 10 points down then two 5-1s aren't going to get you a draw. I must admit, I do find speedway on Eurosport a hard watch at times and don't always get to the end of a meeting. But it's Eurosport. It's always been poor for as long as I can remember. There is a lot of space between races at a speedway meeting. The key is how to fill those spaces.

Jack saying there exactly what I thought the first time I read about this. How can you throw a team sheet through a wire fence? Must have been one hell of a throw.

Because it's based on position in the meeting. I actually like the current scoring system. I wasn't sure at first, but now I think it's better than before. Sorry.

It does change it. At the moment, the winner of the final is the top scorer in the GP. That's how it should be. Winning the GP should also be about how many World Championship points you get. Even under the old system, it was, although the top scorer wasn't necessarily the GP winner - so this makes more sense. Having no points for winning the final makes no sense at all.

That's a terrible idea. It reduces winning the GP to the status of winning the second half. I actually think the current scoring is fine. It's only hard to work out because poor old Kelvin isn't very good at maths so just confuses everyone - including himself. The winner of the GP should be the top scorer. Anyway, well done Robert Lambert, and congratulations to Bartosz Zmarzlik on yet another "asterix" World Championship. I'm still not convinced he is as great as other winners with a similar amount of wins though. Imagine someone like Leigh Adams riding in a field this strength instead of Bartosz. We'd probably be talking about Leigh Adams as one of the greatest riders of all time instead of "best rider never to be World Champion". How many World Championships would Jason Crump have won if Tony Rickardsson and Nicki Pedersen had been banned? Does he suddenly become the greatest of all time by default. You can only beat what is in front of you though, and Zmarzlik is doing that every year with a GP to spare.

Wow. I was prepared to give the ref the benefit of the doubt, but not any more.

Ipswich are going to throw this away with all these falls. Leicester have been poor.

I've been to a couple of Autorace meetings in Japan. As you say, it's mainly a betting thing and very different to speedway other than the oval track and no brakes. Good entertainment though. The problem I can see with speedway in the Philippines is that the riders probably wouldn't want to wear helmets and would have their granny on the back and a baby sat on the petrol tank!

Decent GP, and great to see a British 1-2. Th crowd looked a similar level to the last couple of years, so this looks like the new normal now. It can't help having tracks closing down all the time. A lot of fans from the likes of Swindon, Wolves, Peterborough and so on are probably lost over time. Swindon, for example, used to put on a coach. Cardiff is still the best place to hold it though. I think most people can see that. It's only the Belle Vue Freedom Fighters that seem to be resisting this. Belle Vue is obviously a better track, but it's outdoors and the crowd for the SON doesn't exactly encourage change. I don't know if crowds can ever get back up to the previous levels. I saw a comment on the Digital Spy forum recently in a discussion on speedway, where someone said they used to enjoy watching it but have lost touch with what is going on now since it stopped being on Sky. I think that was a bit of a shark jump for the sport when that was lost. I'm sure Dan Bewley could be a World Champion if he can retain a level of consistency. He certainly has the skills!

People had better get cracking then. There are still front row tickets available on the third bend!.

Was it 70 quid a ticket? Really? Taking that into account I'd say the crowd was pretty good.

Definitely going to miss having a strong reserve by the looks of it. Missing Tai Woffinden without a doubt. Is it worth giving Brennan a go or will Dan pick up a bit?

I agree. It's like an obsession. As soon as someone has a bad meeting people are online banging on about possible replacements. It drives me crazy sometimes.

A bit of a let down as a meeting. I arrived at the car park. The moment I got out of the car it was like opening the oven door to check on my roast potatoes, so I was sure then that it was going to be dry and dusty, and so it proved. From the opening heat, a lot of the riders looked more interested in preserving their own lives rather than racing for points - and who could blame them. The first time they came round bend 4 it looked like they were all going to hit the fence coming out of the bend. From then on a lot of riders clearly showed little effort once at the back. This carried on for many processional races, until about 3 or 4 to go where there was actually a few semi-decent races. It's a shame. I was looking forward to seeing Workington, and had told my son to watch out for Tate Zischke. "He's a star of the future," I said. "Watch him go" I said. "That means he'll be rubbish," he said. Oh, how he gloated at my rubbish speedway predictions.

Got my ticket for tomorrow - much as I resent having to buy it a day in advance. It's Championship speedway, not Taylor Swift, for God's sake! Weather forecast is dry and sunny, which is a bit of a concern as that normally means a rain-off at O*ford! C'mon the Batch!!! Go Celina Go!! Girl Power!! Good grief, that's far too much speedway enthusiasm for one day.

Didn't Sophia Floersch, the top female racer, opt out of, and speak out against, the female series saying it undermined the effort women currently make to compete against men? I'm sure I remember reading that a while back.

Personally I don't think I'm doing them a disservice. To me, I'm actually doing the opposite. They compete equal to men, so can be judged in that way. It's not the same as, say, tennis or swimming, where the physical dofferences between male and female mean they have to compete separately. If I did a disservice to the other riders by assuming they weren't at her level then, in my defence, I did say 'presumably' as I don't know much about them. Having said that, Celina was unbeaten all meeting and that is what I, for one, expected. And if you think I'm somehow having a go at her, I should point out that she's probably my favourite rider at the moment and one of the few likely to get me to part with money and actually go to a meeting

A good thing about speedway is that men and women compete equally so whether or not someone is transgender is irrelevant. Or at least it should be! So, presumably, there would be no issue with a transgender woman competing in this as they are still equal competitors.

Celina Liebmann winning this was probably even more of a sure thing than Bartosz winning the Grand Prix series. Maybe the apathy was because men and women compete together in speedway, so having a competition for women only makes it quite a low level competition and little more than a novelty. I think there must be a lot more enjoyment in watching Celina trying to take points off men in the Championship than watching her beat women who (presumably) are nowhere close to her level.

Great racing t Workington again. This track and Belle Vue have to be a blueprint for any new tracks that may be built in the future (**cough** Swindon) Heat 4 was a very strange decision by the ref. Sam McGurk clearly brought Luke Killeen off. You could see the bump when they collided and Sam was snaking afterwards. I can only think that the ref was watching Troy and Scott going at it hammer and tongs half a lap ahead at the time. Tate Zischke looks like he is going to be one hell of a rider. There's a future GP rider right there! (No pressure). They said on BSN that Celina was taken ill on her flight and is in hospital. Hope she is ok.

It's doubtful, but who knows. Someone in the Adver comments seems to be saying they have found one between Wroughton and Royal Wootton Bassett.

I vaguely remember Doug Underwood being a bit of a magician at helping to get meetings at Reading on after heavy rain.