26/08/2015
The meeting starts thrillingly when the 16-year-old Australian with the dashing, film-star first name – Darcy Ward – shows verve and determination when he zooms from the back of the field to the front. Although he rears and nearly falls at the start, over the course of the four laps he thrillingly picks his way […]
01/01/2015
Fans who wish to savour the statistics of the Speedway World Championship continue to be very badly served by both the F.I.M and the Speedway Grand Prix series current commercial rights holders and organisers BSI Speedway (an IMG company). Both continue to choose not to publish official attendance figures for SGP series events. The F.I.M. […]
27/12/2014
Drawing upon the full majesty of his 11 years speedway reporting Paul (Burbo) Burbidge’s digital social media profile continues to revolutionise our often turgid speedway reporting landscape. Part of a new breed of digitally savvy speedway journalists (“I write news for Speedway GP website and manage speedway gp social media. I’m also Speedway Star’s Chief […]
26/12/2013
Some romantics still believe the proper function of news journalism and news reporters is to try to speak truth to power. Sadly in the English language speedway media universe – without so much as a blush or backward glance – reporters usually only provide news and opinion suitable to those who pay them or, at […]
17/06/2012
This week BSI managing director Paul Bellamy announced ‘news’ that 2013 will see Speedway Grand Prix staged in yet another stadium that they’ll fail to fill anywhere near capacity (in this instance the brand new 50,000 seater Friends Arena in Stockholm). In trademark his usual breathless specious fashion, Mr Bellamy claimed “Speedway fans should be […]
17/11/2011
After all the hype and what feels like the relentless season long cheerleading opinion from the notionally ‘independent’ in the media, the 2011 Speedway Grand Prix series attendance figures throw into yet sharper relief the ongoing credibility crisis with paying customers that organisers BSI/IMG continue to fail to acknowledge, resolve or address. Instead they prefer […]
09/12/2010
After (allegedly) the most exciting Speedway Grand Prix series since the dawn of time, the ‘high’ quality of the racing product appears to have little impact at the turnstiles. A quick glance at the official F.I.M. figures for each venue recently published in Polish magazine Tygodnik Zuzlowy reveals that overall attendances remain more or less […]
15/10/2010
The last Speedway Grand Prix of the 2010 season finds Nigel and Kelvin trackside for Sky Sports at Bydgoszcz. As usual the excessive number of rounds of the SGP format ensures – like so many years previously – that there is absolutely no mystery about who will be world champion well before the so-called climax […]
03/10/2008
Given that the Speedway Star and the Speedway Grand Prix appear wedded at the hip, it’s astonishing to read some reasonably strong criticism of this event within its pages (both on September 13th as well as the subsequent meeting report on September 20th). Let alone to find that the chief critic is Philip Rising! Beyond […]
14/07/2008
2nd June The lure of another visit to Monmore Green Stadium proves irresistible for the Sky Sports cameras, which tonight sees the visit of Swindon. Though, we’re often rightly told that British speedway would be comprehensively up the Swanee River without the oxygen of publicity provided by the glare of the cameras, the Sky speedway […]