05/10/2011
The charming and modest Neil Street has sadly passed away. Sincere condolences to all his family and friends. Neil inspired and cared for so many speedway riders over the years but, more than that, he made people feel special. Neil also inspired as a man – genuine, compassionate and modestly humble. Most of all, Neil […]
The Polish Ekstraliga in 2012 will operate a rule to limit each team to only one Speedway Grand Prix rider per team. Therefore, any rider offered a wild card for the 2012 Speedway Grand Prix should – for financial reasons – turn down the opportunity to ride in the SGP series. If, indeed, career earnings […]
10/06/2011
In a wide ranging interview to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Cardiff Speedway grand Prix, BSI Managing Director Paul Bellamy spoke enthusiastically about ensuring that the raceday experience of the fans got emulated that of important sports events elsewhere. Rarely prone to understatement, Bellamy lauded the innovation of Fan Zone as giving fans something […]
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 […]
02/12/2010
Tomasz Gollob $84,800 Jaroslaw Hampel $67,700 Jason Crump $67,700 Rune Holta $59,500 Kenneth Bjerre $57,200 Chris Harris $57,150 Andreas Jonsson $55,350 Greg Hancock $54,750 Nicki Pedersen $53,300 Chris Holder $52,600 Hans Andersen $48,450 Fredrik Lindgren $48,000 Magnus Zetterstrom $44,500 Tai Woffinden $39,750 Emil Sayfutdinov $18,700 Davey Watt $14,100 Piotr Protasiewicz $10,150 Janusz Kolodzirej $6,900 Nicolai […]
18/11/2010
SHALE TREK Review by Paul Burbidge, Speedway Star 20th November 2010 WHEN it comes to writing about the shale sport, Jeff Scott has established himself as speedway’s literary equivalent to Sky Sports camera-come-mascot Moley. He is the man with a different angle on proceedings – an angle or viewpoint which is not always aired by […]
22/10/2010
Unusually, the permanent wildcards selected for the 2011 Speedway Grand Prix actually look surprisingly sensible choices. This hasn’t always been the case and the performance record of those permanent wildcards selected by the powers that be has often been spotty. Much more significantly, their performances have been historically worse than those riders who qualified for […]
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 […]
31/01/2010
Attendance figures for the 2008 and 2009 Speedway Grand Prix (SGP) series have finally been released from where they’d been held in a file marked ‘Top Secret’ inside the BSI/IMG bunker located on the outskirts of London. A quick first glance indicates that the SGP World Championship outlook remains cloudy and its popularity with fans […]
14/06/2009
Riders and some pundits have rightly complained that the Speedway Grand Prix series organisers (“BSI – an IMG Company”) wish to stage the various meetings on sub standard tracks that sometimes verge on the dangerous. There have been some real shockers, so thank goodness last night that round four of the Speedway Grand Prix was […]
24/04/2009
The new series of the Speedway Grand Prix is about to get underway but, arguably, finds the glamour of its start marred by cost-cutting, secrecy and prevarication. Sadly, the fanfare over the arrival of a new website for the Speedway Grand Prix fails to paper over the vexatious issues and unanswered questions that still beset […]
31/10/2008
Once again, the end of the 2008 Speedway Grand Prix sees Paul Bellamy, John Postlethwaite and Ole Olsen comfortably ‘earn’ more money than anyone else with some connection to the series. Remember these are the ‘fat cats’ with the business acumen and marketing genius not to be able to manage anything as simple as a […]
18/10/2008
The Daily Mail has wholeheartedly joined the Internet age with various blogs on its website and, quite amazingly, one of these is dedicated to speedway! It’s called Speedway from Skezza with a masthead that features a photograph of a youthful looking member of the newspaper staff. Albeit one with an irksome matey nickname, gel in […]
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 […]
29/09/2008
Tonight sees the sudden death stage of the Elite League season with the play off semi finals at Lakeside and Poole. Arguably the spectre of elimination makes this the most exciting part of the finale and, you’d have thought, that this would be a public relations gift for both the BSPA and the Sky Sports […]
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 […]