manchesterpaul

Going to pick your brains if it's ok. Great to hear of good crowds in Belguim. How well or poorly attended are the dutch meetings?. Is grasstrack racing popular in both countries, and considerably more so than speedway? If so, is there not any big crossover of fans to speedway meetings? How aware are the grasstrack fans and the general public of speedway itself and of any meetings that are staged?

Many thanks heathen79. If you know of anyone who might like the page by all means pass on the link. As i can't really bump the topic myself and it will very quickly disappear out of sight on each of the Elite, Premier and National league forums. Therefore anyone who hasn't been around this couple of days will be totally unaware of it.

Note to Moderators. Whilst i personally avidly read as many sections of the forum as time allows, it is clear that a lot of members tend to only use the league section specific to their team. Therefore, i'm posting this thread in each of the three sections for the leagues that the tables cover. I trust and hope that's ok. There is no advertising or any personal gain from the table pages being viewed, it's just a service for supporters. I've set up a page on my speedway site for what i call MiniMax league tables. 'MiniMax' indicates that you can see the crucial information within your eyeline at an instant glance. Additionally, more detailed information/stats follow the first couple of columns of which you can peruse at leisure. As with most sports tables nowadays - in view of the numerous categories needing to be included - it's more instantly informative to have matches ridden and points gained as the first two columns. After all, they are the two key fields that matter with the others just being additional information. If you picture the Premier table as the season progresses you'd need to switch your eyeballs to a widescreen mode to make for easy and instant comprehension. This alteration i make to the traditional sports table means that the vital information is available at a glance. There is detailed explanation on the page itself as to the presentation of the various stats. But to touch on two categories, firstly the percentage of available points acheived. It's a telling stat in view of the way speedway awards league points nowadays. For example if a team wins all of it's home matches by 7 points or more it will have a 100% record. If a team wins all the matches by only 1-6 points it would actually have a true average of 67%. Therefore, displaying the percentage figure gives a far more accurate output than both teams being listed at 18 wins, 0 draws and 0 losses which is what a lot of tables show. When comparing teams records it also saves one from having to engage in mental arithmetic adding up the varying points for margins of victory. A simple glance at the percentage shows which team is performing better. Secondly, rather than display the total race points earned i show the average per meeting AND rounded up to whole figures, such as home 55-38 and away 46-45. That's far easier to grasp than the usually published four figure numbers which is made worse by the wide variance of matches ridden by teams. All of which makes the traditonal table layout not much use until the final table of the season. Even then, it is clearly preferable and comprehendable to have it in the form of a match average that one can make more sense of. I strongly proposed this in various speedway forums and suggested it to websites and publications years ago. Also added a nice little coloured graphic at the top of the page that i wish someone like Sky would use when referring to how league points are earned during their broadcasts lol. Minimax Tables

There have been several comments added to the link i gave and all extolling the virtues of Polish racing. Premier sports are responding quite positively and ALSO taking an interest in the Swedish league. Only slight downside is the Polish racing would unlikely be shown live on the Sunday afternoon because of other commitments. However, not a bad thing in my eyes as it is extremely rare i see meetings from Poland due to the multitude of other major sports taking place on a Sunday.

Sincere thanks for a speedy reply, much appreciated. dziękuję

Just a quickie question directed to our polish friends on here (or polish speakers). In the rider averages what do the column headings d, u, w, t. each stand for? I remember working it out last year but can't find my scribblings lol. I'm presuming 'd' is going to mean excluded and one of them will certainly equate to engine failure. I've just dumped all the worlds top leagues rider averages into a spreadsheet and am having fun filtering records by all sorts of parameters, not least by individual rider. Nine times out of ten a rider has his UK performance higher than his swedish and then his polish average lesser still. Guess pretty clear evidence for the 1.2.3. quality of the leagues being Poland, Sweden, UK. (and yes i'm waiting in for a delivery which is why i'm idling away on my computer lol)

Hey all international speedway aficionados....i guess nobody want to see high quality big tv screen coverage of polish speedway in the UK? If you do, add your wishes to the Facebook link of Premier Sports as soon as possible. Update Just checked their facebook site and 'where da ef' is TR??? they say they are interested and asking for his contact details. Is the heaven of polish speedway on big screen TV sliding away?

One reply of sorts i guess equates to no massive full screen high quality tv broadcast of polish speedway this season I presume also nobody likes the idea of Premier League speedway being on tv either? They ARE SOOOOOOOOO open to suggestions for sports coverage. One would presume speedway would not be out of their financial scope either.

Was feeling a little miffed at having had to sign up to yet another sports subscription channel in order to view all of my favourite sports. The latest one being Premier Sports so i can watch Nascar. The hit on my pocket was eased a little by the fact that they also show the South American version of the Champions League (Copa Libertadores). There is also now a chance that it could be made a more valuable subscription by them adding polish speedway. They always ask people to recommend sports for them to show. I notice on one of their Facebook pages someone suggestiong they show polish speedway and their reply is Premier Sports Is Polish the biggest or Swedish? Can you ask Terry Russell to email the channel at enquiries@premiersports.tv It has crossed our minds before this. Incidentally, i presumed the original suggestion would have been from a member of these forums, but i can't see a thread in eithert the General or International forums. So i started this thread. If anyone wants to suggest speedway coverage, polish or other, the page is http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=131657873523766&topic=278

Thanks for detailed info once more Conkers, you're one of an elite core of valued 'correspondents' in the international section.

Too be honest it's really quite humiliating, i can't think of another 'organized' sport in the world that would lack a filmed record of it's World Final. Incidentally, if you enter http://forum.speedway.ru/index.php into Google Translate, or alternatively into the Google search bar and then click on 'Translate this page' you can navigate in English throughout the site. I'm guessing there are more english readers than russian on this forum

Wow that is equally astonishing and disappointing. I'm sure i read somewhere recently that there was/is some 3,000 Ice Speedway riders in Russia alone. Wish i could remember where i saw that, as i found it hard to believe. There seems to be lots of Ice clips on You Tube so i presumed it was a given that the World Finals would at least be televised in Eastern Europe. Thanks to you both for searching for coverage mind.

Were neither of these meetings streamed on the internet? I thought someone was going to post details nearer the time. I totally forgot the meetings were due to be staged. I did make a note a few weeks ago but what use are notes if one forgets to check them lol. I take it they were televised, at the very least in Russia?

I've been doing whatever the winter offseason equivalent to 'making hay while the sun shines' is and barely even drop into the forum. I am keeping an eye on the calendar though and will make available for each GP a two page (bigger print) version in addition to the one page. Just wish i had managed to find the time to make available my all bells and whistles interactive version that i use for myself available for free. Beats the hell out of Sky's or any Live ones i've seen on the night of a meeting. Not disrespecting Sky's page at all but mine does do and show more and much faster too. So hope we get an excellent GP season again, all the ingredients are there for sure.

Thanks for that. Incidentally, i note the article says it was broadcast to Poland on the internet, i hope that doesn't mean we could have watched it streamed online too curses! lol

Any estimate of the attendance for this meeting?

Oops! apologies and an example of why one shouldn't enter a discussion at around page 9 lol. Regarding the spelling, i went Googling to assist the poster whose reply i was answering and he had spelt it Razuna, so i went with that trusting it to be correct. Unfortunately, as mentioned, that gave no joy even as a place. So i then did a Wiki of Czech Republic which made mention of Ruzyně and like DutchGrasstrack's Růžená gives lots of results. It's all Dutch's fault as he never spelt it on page 9 of the discussion which is where i came in lol. I was going to give a link to the official website of the place in question but it might trigger spelling wars as the links are all based on 'ruzena'.cz!!!!! Anyways, most people in the world believe in (a) God but have different names and beliefs for him, so we'll settle for we all believe in a particular Czech track.

I can't find any reference to this meeting being staged at all. The official FIM schedule is listed as; 15/01/11 FIM ICE RACING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP AUT - QR 1 St Johann-im-Pongau 21/01/11 FIM ICE RACING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP POL - QR 2 Sanok 22/01/11 FIM ICE RACING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP AUT - QR 3 Saalfelden 05/02/11 FIM ICE RACING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP RUS - FINAL 1 Krasnogorsk 12/02/11 FIM ICE RACING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP RUS - FINAL 2 Togliatti 12/03/11 FIM ICE RACING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NED - FINAL 3 Assen 26/03/11 FIM ICE RACING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP GER - FINAL 4 Inzell Are you saying there is a 'preliminary' round as well? Incidentally, do you have an alternate spelling of 'razuna' or a nearby location only Google, Wikipedia and other search engines fail to come up with a Razuna in the Czech Republic (or at least within the first god knows how many pages lol). UPDATE A quick read up of Czech Republic in Wiki mentions Ruzyně/Ruzyne ("Ruzyně is a district of Prague city, part of Prague 6. It has been a part of Prague since 1960") which in turn under Google gives an avalanche of returned results. I'd suggest you undertake another search using Ruzyně or Ruzyne.

They could film it (stream it even) and put it on the internet as they do now. Ideally, with the stunning start line girls in attendance Thanks for the programme info, but i'd still prefer not to have to do that much writing, especially, if it should be in the open with pouring rain lol.

Sorry Conkers i'm not labouring a point i just don't want to miss out on something. But you are aware that if in Internet Explorer* one saves a Google translated website page as a bookmark it will always go from new page to new page continuing translating. *(which i use 99% of the time - please don't anyone get into browser wars lol). 'Google Chrome' is a browser. Are you saying that it treats 'Google Search' in a superior way to when using Google Search in any other browser such as Internet Explorer?.

It helps a lot and many thanks in advance for any meetings available that you unearth. Why do i need to download Google Chrome to view the russian forums? I can view it presently with Internet Explorer 8 and, as with the polish site sportowefakty's speedway section, have it bookmarked to come up in already translated to english mode. I'm sure the ice racing stadium closing down was a Speedway Star article. However, it obviously hasn't come to pass thankfully.

Nice to see such a relatively large fixture list. I thought Ice Speedway was about to die. The last i read about the sport was that one of it's major venues was closing down. But mention of a new ice hall at Inzell would indicate that was the venue??? and all is now ok. Or was it and STILL is Assen that's about to close?. Is there usually any coverage of meetings on the internet, ideally live?

Oooops! i think that is what was actually suggested. I just couldn't remember at the time of posting what they had said they were considering exactly. I'm pretty sure now it was to do the draw at the previous GP. It would be great for me to as i wouldn't have to make sure i'm at home on Friday afternoons to do the GP race card i make available.

Curses and Drat 1. One of the penalties of not visiting the forum in the off season is missing out on news of such a webcast. Curses and Drat 2. Delighted when i saw the link for a re-run of the webcast but......could have done with you enabling a navigational slider. After five minutes of nothing i was about to give up and turn off when i heard the stadium announcer say the riders in the pits have five minutes to join the rider's parade, so i did duly instantly turn off then. Goodness knows how far in the actual first race was? If anyone who has seen this rebroadcast knows when the first race starts i'll put it on and go off and do something whilst waiting for it to get there. I appreciate it was a recording of the whole live webcast and whilst live the waiting about would be acceptable (speedway fans across the world wait for ever inbetween races lol) an ability to navigate by clicking or sliding would be aa greatly valued feature. I'll definitely be checking back to watch live if you decide to do another one. I never got to see a race as i gave up waiting but was very pleased to see that, unlike most american speedway videos i've seen, you had a camera perched up high. That obviously would allow you to see the complete race. Most others i've seen you have got to peer through people and various bits of stadium furniture on the centre green. I definitely look forward to viewing any more you do live and congrats to you.

I saw mention last year that the SGP were strongly considering doing each GP draw a week in advance of the meeting rather than the previous afternoon of the actual race day. Does anyone know if this is going to be the case? It would save an awful lot of filling in of programmes etc. I've never been able to get to a GP yet and, until they mentioned it themselves last year, i hadn't thought on that the way the system is now unless programmes are printed locally late on Friday you have to fill in the whole rider and heat grids!!!! Is that indeed the case with the majority of GP's. The actual line-up is known well in advance so it would make more sense to do the draw a little more ahead of the meeting.