Ommerin' Around
Exclusive New Column by Keith Burrows
Episode
Three - Speedway World Cup
Just
a brief note first on the wildcards as now announced for the 2006 SGP. A slight
correction from the previous article in that the World U-21 champion now
doesn’t get in as right, and would have to be a nominated wildcard. Contrary
to my thoughts, Holta didn’t make it. BSI/FIM preferring yet another Pole (Pepe)
Piotr Protasiewicz, whose performance in the SWC certainly caught the eye. Also
included was Niels-Kristian Iversen, who didn’t disgrace himself with 7 points
from his one appearance in Denmark. Arguments will continue to rage as regards
the merits of the inclusions when Kasprzak , Holta and Andersen have been
excluded. I for one won’t be shedding any tears on behalf of the Swedish Dane!
The full line up is now confimed for 2006
as:
1 Tony Rickardsson (Sweden)
2 Jason Crump (Australia)
3 Leigh Adams (Australia)
4 Nicki Pedersen (Denmark)
5 Greg Hancock (USA)
6 Bjarne Pedersen (Denmark)
7 Tomasz Gollob (Poland)
8 Andreas Jonsson (Sweden)
|
9
Jaroslaw Hampel (Poland)
10 Antonio Lindback (Sweden)
11 Scott Nicholls (Great Britain)
12 Lee Richardson (Great Britain)
13 Niels-Kristian Iversen (Denmark)
14 Piotr Protasiewicz (Poland)
15 Matej Zagar (Slovenia)
Plus wildcard for each meeting
|
Speedway
World Cup
: SWC 2005
Out went the idea of staging it in one country, in came a
run around the major European staging Nations. Getting people to come to the
early rounds is a problem.
Only 4 countries have a chance of winning and one of those is 15000 miles away,
so no travelling support from there to prop up admission monies. Even the
race-off had a poor crowd which I suspect was due to the high admission prices
for the Polish fans, I would suspect that the GB qualifying round at Swindon
made the most money! I am reliably
informed that the highlight of the race-off was a nut throwing fight between the
Swedish team!
Team
GB performed well in Swindon, beating the fancied Danes, despite their
ever-present injury problems in this competition. This performance raised
expectations for the final, and we were bought down to earth with a crash in
Wroclaw, where the Poles, (well some of them where actually born there!) reigned
supreme. We finished a disappointing last.
On the plus side for us as a nation to have any future in International
Speedway we need to give riders like Stead and Bomber Harris experience at this
level, and that is just what they got. Neither of them let us down, its just
that they are not good enough yet.
For Sweden Rickardsson and Karlsson were disappointing, whilst for Denmark the
Pedersens could and should have performed much better.
So
onto the Poles, I cannot begin to imagine how much they paid to have their bikes
tuned, but they where on another planet as regards speed to all the other teams.
They didn’t need to cheat with the inclusion of Holta, and would have won
anyway, however Speedway needs to look at its rules regarding qualification for
National teams, the inclusion of a Norwegian who last rode for Norway only
recently in the Polish team was just silly, and brands the sport as Mickey
Mouse: FIM/BSI SORT IT OUT!
I cannot speculate what the future of this competition is,
I would like to see the final in a big stadium with a big crowd, however the
costs of preparing Cardiff or Copenhagen would be prohibitive I suppose, the
other option to run before or after a GP at those venues would detract from the
occasion! What I do know is that for the final it is an impressive quality
meeting with most of the worlds top 16 involved, what they need is a stage to
perform on, and what speedway needs is a genuine nation based competition that
will drawn in the crowds and get people talking!
Keep checking www.cradleyspeedway.co.uk for further reviews
and predictions; one little success was that I’ve got the result of the
EL Play-offs correct, although I’ve caught a bit of a cold with my
Craven Shield prediction..
The next installment of Ommerin' Around will be a season
tidy up, I will have a look at the Premier League (thanks to Jim Salt for the
suggestion, and Ianator for the sarcasm!) and little bit of Conference league
stuff, what happened in the KO cups, and Craven Shield
.
Agree or disagree with my views, do you know more, talk about it on the message
boards - it's THE place for news about the best speedway club in the
world THE CRADLEY HEATH HEATHENS!
Previous
episodes of Ommerin' Around: [1] / [2]
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Copyright: www.cradleyspeedway.co.uk 2005.