flagrag

Lasse is in Czech Republic next week for the Golden helmet meetings think he is in both junior and senior events. The Peterborough meeting was arranged way after the Czech meetings which makes it more surprising that Peterborough have gone for this date.

I too have a feeling that Sheffield will be in the elite league in 2015 with Steady and bates at reserve. I hear as well that the lighting is being upgraded at Owlerton in the winter to make it better for Live TV have a look next Tuesday at the Greyjounds and you will see what I mean

Firstly I hope Chris Mills is not too badly injured as sounds like a horrible crash and he is a nice guy. Was the air ambulance called due to the nature of the injury or to speed up the meeting ? as if the track Dr would have gone by land ambulance with him there would have been no chance of 2nd meeting anyway.

Screm- Darcy has a very nice and attractive woman in his life and from what I have heard has calmed him down a lot. But will be interesting to find out if he was massively over the limit from a night of partying or just slightly over, it has to remembered as well that the limit is lower than for driving a car and could be caused by just two large beers

Oh dear that's not good for Darcy as may well cost him a place on the podium for the series. I am very surprised that he went out drinking the night before a GP as knew he could get tested. I wonder if it was a case of being caught out having a local beer stronger than he thought or whether he was well over the limit after a big night out partying ? Will there be any further punishment for this or just to miss the meeting I wonder

I thought it was a good meeting with a nice result in team GB winning on the night. Although I have a lot better racing at Kings Lynn before I think the track staff did well with the warm and humid conditions not much dust was created and a constant amount of grip. Just a couple of improvements that I think could have been made by BSI for the future, A number of members on here and around the tracks go on about pre meeting entertainment at Cardiff but it is at the World Cup where the event entertainment is needed like the stunt bike guy or a covers band like the Magoos. As we all know majority of fans only get into the stadium just before parade as all the pubs and attractions of Cardiff, where as at Kings Lynn most fans arrive early to get best spots and because of travelling to event. Last night there was nothing and felt very flat to start with. Also last night after the rare GB win why was there no presentation on the centre for the winners and national anthem as in previous years also meant no photos, this was especially strange as Eurosport remained on air well after GB did quick lap on the Monster truck so the satellite feed and broadcast was still open.

I have some friends that want to go to SWC event 1 at Kings Lynn and have told that its expected to be a sell out, When they try to buy tickets online it says just get them on the day. Are they still accepting online orders or is it too late now ? They can not get there really early as got to pick one of the group up from Heathrow at 3pm so going to be in a rush to get there anyway.

It is a poor show from Lasse saying that he is not able to get here for this meeting, He has himself said at 11pm last night he is driving back to Denmark a journey of around 14hours but the routing would take you in close to a number of major airports including Munich,Frankfurt,Stuttgart,Hamburg and Dusseldorf that is before you even try Italian ones like Venice,Verona,Vicenza,treviso lots of options. In fact just seen a Lufthansa flight this morning that would have had him in Birmingham at 13:30

There is a couple of questions there that I shall try to answer 1) I agree the around the tracks feature was a good idea and you will likely see it again as the season moves forward. It has not been used this season due to a combination of reasons we are currently not allowed to report from matches on bet365 so that will often rule out Wolves or Belle Vue on a Mon and when there has been Wed matches same applies plus the system used does not work at Kings Lynn due no 4G Mobile signal. 2) The aerial beauty shot does not work well at all tracks and at some tracks can get a high level camera position from top of the stand. The Swindon match mentioned was due to this and also the forecast was not favourable that day. 3) The Swingy camera is called a Jimmy Jib and is quite a specialised art and is done by only a limited amount of operators who also own all their own equipment. This year there has been a struggle to get them as many of the UK based ones have been out to Brazil for football World Cup and will move onto commonwealth games soon, Also many of these persons also took their holidays before this known busy period so hopefully availability should increase soon. Also last night at Leicester one could not be used due not enough clearance from fence to track, Also it was known that Leicester city council H&S officers were going to be visiting and as usual were being very over cautious in fact one very funny thing mentioned was the camera operators on the scaffold towers they felt should have safety helmets on. Do they not realise theses guys can be 100-200ft up in a 4ft wide gantry in a football stadium with maybe 10,000 people below them ? They are just being picking as its Speedway. I understand the promotion had to give detailed plans to the counci beforehand about the broadcast I don't recall this happening when we do OBs at Leicester city or Tigers grounds

This is only a guess but could the supposed big hitter be the shadow boxer himself Martin Smolinski ? As reports from Cardiff seem to suggest he has finally realised that he is not getting enough racing at present, Also I believe he is a Coventry asset. It seems we shall all find out in the next few days

I thought it was another good Cardiff weekend with the usual excellent atmosphere in the stadium. Just a few points that I think could be improved on for next year As others have said I really did not like the fanzone in that location it was very squashed in especially the autograph signing that should have been moved to the other end to the stage, Personally I think it was better in the street. I understand that will already be changed for 2015 anyway. Although the programme content,editorial and Information was very good I thought the actual production quality of the programme was very poor on cheap paper that got ripped very easily and looked scruffy for the £10 charge I expected and have seen better from BSI on this front. Lastly as this the largest gathering of Speedway fans in the world with 1000s staying over I am very surprised that both BSI and Monster do not arrange a proper after party for fans and the many riders that go to gather,drink,party,listen to bands and DJs. I know that they do this at some of the foreign GPs and generally work very well. To me I feel that there is a big opportunity being missed here by the organisers to provide more and also to make extra money. This weekend most speedway fans seemed to be in Walkabout,Prince of Wales or the Brew house I am sure that most would be happy to pay £5-8 to go to proper Speedway party . Venue wise the ideal places would be Cardiff arms park pitch area or Sophia gardens park, If noise restrictions maybe the Motorpoint arena.

Oh why do some people have to kill these threads off so soon often fun seeing every body trying to guess the dates. Oh well for th ladies maybe they will have Tom Cruise there making a special appearance and another Greg Hancock win as its such a special day for both of them. I see the hotels have already published their usual high rates for the said weekend so best to get onto the smaller properties who may not be aware of the date yet.

This is purely a guess and not sure if would fit in the averages but release Nielsen and Lanham to bring in James Wright who is practicing again around the tracks and Anders Mellgren who is also fit again wanting to ride in the UK.

I think the announcement may be that Simon Stead is becoming a Sheffield asset

Has there been any update to any injuries that the riders picked up yesterday?

The service will also be on the Sky Bet website soon , It will be interesting to see what Go Speed have to say as it was always my understanding that you would have to place bets of a min of £5 but as Speedway is a new sport they may be trying to get more interest in the service and also may not have the systems setup right yet. But I guess it's up to the betting companies how they want to do it as have paid the money for the rights and by the looks of it have paid out for the required uplink equipment at the tracks which is quite a large investment . If they want to show it free if you just hold the money in their account its their choice it's them that has to make it pay Well done Mr Ballinger for arranging the comms but fully agree that you should get your fees for doing so and hopefully can increase your DVD sales if people watch races and want to watch again will buy the DVD.

Norrie Allen said on Saturday at Leicester that if Jason did not have the permit in his hand by Tuesday so that he could arrive Wed/thurs then they would be resubmitting the team with Kenni Larson in his place until Jason can get over here. This is due to Leicester not being allowed a guest and RR would not work.

I noticed at Leicester that they have had a Vsat terminal installed to uplink the pictures from there which will work a lot better than the 4G solution being used at some tracks. I thought the 2nd match was due to be Leicester vs Wolves on Saturday ?

I am not 100% sure the tv broadcast by Polsat is still going ahead as they announced it and I know have desperately been trying to find a UK broadcaster to take the feed as well to help share the production costs. The last I had heard was Sky,Eurosport,BT and Motors tv had all said no as just one off meeting. I have a feeling it may just end up being a 2-3 camera edited highlights programme later in the week on Polsat

I have spoken to a couple of contacts at Eurosport and it appears that it is good news with Swedish league being shown in the UK and across Europe by Eurosport. The coverage should be improved as the host broadcaster are very keen to make this work and will be providing a HD world feed with the main programme interviews done in English and the swedish broadcaster will do own interviews mainly with swedish riders. There will also be full English commentary and graphics You have to remember this is a lot bigger deal both financially and audience size to the Premier sports which was just the UK to a 140-200k subscribers. Now you are talking Europe wide with possibly millions of viewers as is included in a lot of tv packages and even free to air in some countries.

I have a feeling that BT sport may well have gained these rights as have heard from contacts that they are recruiting and setting up another production team for a new content programme with core hours of Mon and Tues this could well be for the Swedish speedway. If it will almost definitely be presented from the UK studios in London

PhilfromCov- When we trialled the LiveU system at Sky we found on average a 64sec delay over a 3G HSPA connection. The delay did drop down when on 4G which should be a lot better this year as will now have access to Vodafone and O2 4G networks.

With regards to time delays on tv broadcasts currently there is a 1.8 -4.6 second time delay on Sky sports live sport epending on location if the pictures are sent from the event along BT broadcast fibre links usually 1.4 gig dedicated connection to a main exchange then down to the tower in London then to the broadcaster who uplink to satellite. If the event does not have BT broadcast fibre link it will be uplinked by satellite truck which will make the time delay about 6 seconds depending on encoders used and which orbital position they use for uplink as some are in inclined orbits. For this new betting project neither of these options will be used its far too costly instead the pictures will be sent over a standard Internet connection or a leased line if available and up to standard as far as I am aware this should be fine at the following tracks Coventry,Belle Vue,Poole,Swindon,Birmingham and Wolverhampton all of which have good connections. I expect delays of around 20 seconds as has to travel over Internet to the server it will be hosted on who will then send it to the betting companies Leicester,Lakeside,Kings Lynnand Eastbourne will be the problematic tracks as they will be using 4G and even 3G mobile connections to get the footage to the servers and will add quite a bit of delay as slower connection and also has to travel all the way around the mobile companies infrastructure first before even hitting the Internet so expect 60-90 second delays. The technology being used is different to what is used for greyhounds as most tracks have fixed SIS satellite links or SIS fibre boxes both of which would have less than 10 sec delay.

I still have large doubts on this project due to the logistics of broadcasting pictures from some of the tracks but also think it is open to abuse as in my experience of the technology they are planning to use there could be 60-90 sec delays

If GoSpeed have sold the UK rights for the Polish league to BT that would be very good news for fans and them as a business as well. I have to admit I know nothing about this possible deal but have a feeling if BT have got a speedway deal it is likely to be for the Swedish league as Tuesday in summer looks light in their schedule they could of course go for both