MattK

Sorry, we digressed on to the subject of Swindon based on the question about which stadium will be built first. My understanding is that the council is borrowing £4m to build the stadium and will then lease it to a private company run the management of Belle Vue speedway.

Think about it objectively for one minute. A new stadium costs £4m and let's say it makes £400,000 profit per year. It'll take 10 years to simply replay the cost of construction, before the developers see any net gain. The land where the new stadium is proposed could site around 200 houses. If each house costs an average of £100,000 to build and sells for £200,000 that's £20m profit. Which would you rather do? Built a stadium and wait for 10 years before you see any return or build houses and make £20m the moment they are sold? It's a no brainer.

Work has commenced to built houses on the land around the current track. Let's wait and see when they start work on the actual stadium.

Swindon's stadium has already been granted outline planning permission, however as Orion says, it will never be built. Belle Vue haven't even applied for planning permission yet, unless someone can say otherwise.

They wanted to announce speedway alongside egg chasing, Scottish football and WWE!

Personally, I think Oxford speedway's best bet is to cut a deal with the property developers to support housing in exchange for a down payment of a couple of million to build their own speedway track elsewhere.

Building on floodplains doesn't stop them!

Unfortunately, being refused planning permission by the local council is just the first step in the merry game to getting permission granted. If you want an example of the futility of it all, take a look at this. All the right noises from the council and MPs, 50,000 signature petition and no where near existing houses. Permission granted.

They are not world class, but they should be able to beat the likes of Ricky Wells and Gino Manzares. Yes, we are light years behind Poland, Denmark and even Australia but no one expects us to be competing at the top level. However, we should be easily seeing off the likes of USA and Latvia. The SWC should be your best four riders, not for blooding youngsters. If young riders want to gain experience they should leave the relative comfort of the Premier League and go and fight for a ride in Poland and Sweden.

We have plenty more than the likes of USA and Latvia, that's for sure.

There's no way on this planet that GB should be losing to the likes of Latvia and USA. That result was inexcusable with the riders we had at our disposal.

Same s**t, different season. Anyone know the rule for replacing reserves? Can you pick any available rider from the pool or does it have to be a pool rider who isn't allocated to another EL club?

I'd also love to know how often they graded the track during those 100+ heats. I'd like to see some evidence that grading every four heats produces better racing, than say every eight heats?

I can't watch that, the riders are not wearing sequential numbers. Saying that, 93 looks handy. However, I have absolutely no idea who he is.

Whatever you do, don't watch MotoGP, otherwise you'll have a brain haemorrhage.

I think it's a great idea. Hopefully the Elite League will also carry the numbers across and allow riders to use them in league meetings.

Maybe it is not as black or white as that?

This is crucial season for the Elite League. I hope they issue the new heat format and associated rules sooner rather than later and that the rules are unambiguous enough to avoid the usual bending and manipulation.

I'd have thought he would be a decent bet in the current watered down Elite League. Certainly showed glimpses when he rode at Swindon.

Isn't BSB shown on ITV though, therefore significantly more exposure than speedway gets on Sky Sports?

Of course he shouldn't have to pay to get in. I'm just pointing out that his opinion is worth less than mine. £17 less to be precise.

Because if Peter Collins stops going to speedway, it would make no difference what so ever. However, if I stopped going to speedway, a club would be making £17 less every week.

I wonder if he pays to get in to speedway meetings?

Old Man In "I Prefer Old Speedway" Shocker

I have never heard of any of the other nominations in that minority sports award.