IainB

Ideal chance for Bomber to have branched out into team management Are BSN not doing the coin toss at Poole and talking to Spatula?

I hope they know what they're doing with the track, it's starting to look like a bit of a mess

Where's Muddlo? Where's Havvy?

"As the club builds up the atmosphere on Thursday, there will be 120 whistles and 30 trumpets given away by Lenny The Lion at the main gate prior to the meeting. BBC East Midlands Today will also be in attendance and will be speaking to Stewart Dickson and one of the riders at around 6.45pm." That'll give anybody that happens to see it 45 minutes to get there, probably an hour as it's on Eurosport to claim their ear trumpet, the place will be heaving!

Ipswich, Birmingham, King's Lynn and Oxford guys

... and were not 😉

Douglas hasn't ridden since his last Leicester match.

Brilliant work!

How did he get from Sheffield to Poland? Just asking 🙂

I'm going to put my mortgage on it then

It is an inside gate, the stats back that up. Lambert picked statistically the worst gate in the series, the one that most riders refer to as a graveyard at any track. The numbers show gate 1 or 2 I hadn't looked those up at that point... it's not about getting it right or wrong it's about giving yourself the best chance, Zmarzlik obviously couldn't because he had no choice

He didn't have to choose on Saturday he was gifted an inside gate

http://www.gbspeedway.com/2024/guestperf.php?mc1=x&mc2=i&mc3=pf&mc4=Belle Vue Aces&team=Belle Vue Aces&league=A&sort=date&comp=CMA

You won't be laughing as you appear to have zero sense of humour

Isn't the carrot of gate choice what keeps them trying to score more than 8 or 9 points though. The mental and strategic side of things is often what separates a sportsperson from a great sportsperson. Zmarzlik doesn't very often choose the wrong gate which is why he's always in the finals.

Ivacic riding with a massive air break on his head in heat 2

There's been another last minute rule change announced and it's that during Belle Vue's home leg Bewley and Kurtz will be starting from a 15 metre handicap in every race. It's okay though as everybody is still riding against everybody else and you will be entertained.

Shows you that there's a lack of experienced heads in the pits perhaps. It may be easy to get caught up with what's happening on the night for a rider and they may see that a certain gate is more favourable through the meeting but it tends to be a different story when it comes to crunch time. Obviously if a particular gate has been head and shoulders above any other you'd be a fool not to pick it but if they've all been fairly equal the percentages suggest you pick an inside gate.

No Polish club is going to drop the likes of Lindgren if he really wants to ride in the UK there are plenty of other Polish clubs that would be queueing up to sign riders of his quality

I'm not, I think it's a bit of light relief

Okay, point 2 is obviously a given, so say you run 5 rider teams and you have 3 of them out injured, what then? R/R for 1, then what? Cancel all meetings until the team is fit? Personally I'd like to see a little more club affiliation, so PL clubs could call on a CL clubs riders, like feeder clubs, that'll never work credibly while riders are still doubling up/down though.

But what is the alternative? I think in the Swedish match it was something like they were dropping Tom Brennan to bring somebody like Anders Thomsen back into the team from the "squad" knowing full well that he was unavailable to operate R/R instead of Brennan, and you think our setup is daft. The only way you will ever do away with guests is by having a squad of employee riders (say 10 or 12) contracted to only ride for your club and that ain't never going to happen

They either have juniors in their team or sign short term replacements from what is available like Wroclaw last year in their pay off finals, which made it a complete non-event Or Sweden run R/R and/or a squad system, but they like the UK can only bring riders in when Polish availability allows, I think I was watching a match the other day where they were running R/R for a squad rider who wasn't available due to a Polish fixture!! It's not just here where this madness prevails

I've just become a "Rising Star"! And I can't get a team spot anywhere 😁

There's lies, damned lies and statistics, just for a bit of "fun" I've looked back at this seasons GP's when it comes to the "sudden death" semis and finals, pick the bones out of this: 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Gate 1 10 6 6 5 Gate 2 12 4 5 6 Gate 3 2 5 7 12 Gate 4 3 12 9 4 I think the clear message is don't pick gate 3!