BSI, Belle Vue, Having Fun & "Twatch"

ITEM: BSI are parasites. As opening salvos go, it's a brave one, but it's true. They take, take, take from speedway, giving back little to nothing, and seem to have been given free reign to do whatever the hell they like with the sport (as long as they don't mess with the financial powerhouse that is Polish speedway, of course).

I couldn't tell you how this came about. Money talks and bullshit walks, goes the phrase, and I wouldn't mind betting that large amounts of both were poured on to the FIM track commission that gave them the exclusive rights to run the World Championship and World Cup.

And what a World Championship! Thirty percent of the competitors in each round of the championship did not have to qualify, chosen instead for their "pulling power", already making a mockery of the competition. Of the seventy percent that did "qualify", eight are holdovers from the previous season, and could have finished sixty or seventy points adrift of the winner. And the three - less than twenty percent of the field - that did qualify directly? Even they go through a process tainted by selection - Jurica Pavlic will take his place in the final qualifying meeting as a wild card, having already been eliminated earlier in the competition, and will fancy his chances on his home track!

In the old system, a fall or engine failure could prove costly, and left many a favourite out of contention for another year. But that is sport - every rider who took part in the old one-off World Finals had earned their right to be there, every champion a deserving one (yes, even Egon Muller!).

In BSI's world the champion is one of a hand-picked elite. That's not to say they wouldn't have won the championship under the old system, of course, and it's all really beside the point. Which is, I remind you, that BSI are parasites.

I'm not sure who shares in the money their circus generates. Presumably the riders earn a bit, though there have always been rumours that this has not always been enough to make wealthy men of them. And presumably the FIM takes a chunk. If they're anything like FIFA, a very large one!

I'll tell you who doesn't see anything from the series - British speedway. It may be a little different in other countries, where the staging venues are mostly club venues, presumably licensed as shared events (although that's just supposition on my part), but the British Grand Prix take place at Cardiff, one of BSI's beloved Frankenstein venues, which looks good on TV and in a brochure, but produces inconsistent racing.

All the money spent at Cardiff - which even you take each ticket to have been sold at £29 (which they won't have been, of course), amounts to over a million pounds - is funneled straight out of British speedway. It's money that could be spent at local tracks, and I'd guess that a lot of it has actually been diverted from that purpose. And that's without spending on hotels (at inflated rates) and merchandise. It's probably fair to say that the British Grand Prix costs British speedway somewhere in the realm of four to five million pounds a year.

Repeat that across the series, throw in the SWC, and you can begin to see just what a burden on speedway BSI are. At least at the football world cup the money goes to FIFA, who share it with their member federations!

All this and taking the top riders away once a fortnight, and infiltrating our only magazine with their nonsense!

Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills I'm starting a fight I can't hope to win, but I can't in all good conscience give money to an organisation that is bleeding us dry and making us grateful for doing so.

ITEM: How do you solve a problem like Belle Vue?

The Bees were supposed to be there on Wednesday night, racing a meeting already postponed from earlier in the season, but a message appeared on Belle Vue's website on Tuesday afternoon, informing us that the meeting had, again, been postponed, and that a further announcement would be made.

This mystery postponement brought scorn and derision from fans of all clubs, and when the actual reason - the track was unfit following a stock car meeting - was posted, almost two hours later, the damage had been done.

Now this is the thing: the Bees had raced a meeting on Sky the week before in terrible conditions, brought about by trying to prepare a track with had been damaged three days before. If anyone would understand why the Aces were calling off the meeting, it would have been Bees' fans.

This was just the latest in a catalogue of disasters for the Manchester club, which has seen the club become the laughing stock of British speedway - no mean feat when you look around at some of the promoters given a license by the BSPA!

It's sad that a club with such a long and proud history as Belle Vue find themselves in this position. Cash poor, trapped in a stadium that has seen better days, and unable to produce a quality racing surface that might at least assuage their critics, they lurch from defeat to defeat, having named a massive SEVENTEEN riders in their 1-7 this season.

What's to be done? Their mythical New stadium might solve some of the issues, but that shows no more sign of appearing than it did when I last wrote of it, six weeks ago. A new promotion team would undoubtedly help, but who would take that job under the current circumstances? And a winning team would at least put smiles on faces, but that's more of a pipe dream than the stadium!

We have to watch and wait, and hope. I don't like making jokes about Belle Vue (no, really, I don't) so let's hope they stop giving me ammunition one day (very!) soon.

ITEM: You might not think it from reading my blog or following me on Twitter, but I do occasionally enjoy speedway. And sometimes, I get to enjoy a whole meeting!

Monday's clash at Alwalton between the Panthers and the Bees was one such occasion, a meeting so free of crap and twaddle that it was a pleasure to witness.

Was it a decent track, prepared to engender racing, and allowing passes from the back? Or the fact that the score remained close throughout, and that the pesky Tactical Ride, that abortion of a rule, never made an appearance? Or the simplicity of the venue - little more than a track and a shack, but what more do you need?

I don't know. Maybe all of the above and more. But whatever the recipe, the end result was a thoroughly enjoyable meeting, a result to send everybody home at least partially happy, and a feeling that I'd got value for money for once. Even Edward Kennett's woeful performance was so bad that it was laughable!

Now Thursday and Friday was another story altogether..!

ITEM: I'm going to talk about wrestling for a minute. Bear with me, because it is relevant...

In wrestling you have good guys and bad guys, and they're known in the business as "faces" and "heels". The job of a heel is to get the audience behind the face, by drawing what's known as "heat". Heat can be anything from boos, to abuse, to physical assault - if the heel does his job right, the audience should be ready to kill him.

Occasionally, the heel draws the wrong kind of heat, known by smart "insiders" as "fuck you" heat. This is where the audience couldn't care less what the heel does, or whether the face he's fighting defeats him, they just don't want to see him at all.

Now this is where it gets back to speedway. Troy Batchelor has "fuck you" heat. There are riders who have cheated, been involved in sexual assault trials, and all manner of other shenanigans, and they're still not hated as much as Troy Batchelor. Even his own fans don't seem to like him much.

As it stands this hatred is worthless. He's only worth as much to Swindon as the points he scores. He's not going to sell any merchandise, he's not going to sell any tickets, and nobody is going to clamour to meet him at the end of the night.

But if Troy - and Swindon - are clever, they can turn this around. They can play up his arrogance, manufacture a feud with a rival rider in an upcoming but tough to sell meeting, and watch the sparks fly. The competition on the track remains pure and untouched, but the sport gains a marketable edge that the media and the fans can buy into.

After all, if you're going to have to put up with "Twatchelor", you may as well make money off him!