Monday 15 July 2013

Cheats & Unreliable Witnesses

ITEM: Let's get one thing out of the way first: staying down after you've fallen to get a race re-run is cheating. It cheats everyone except your own fans and your own team. It cheats the opposition fans, it robs your opponents of money they were earning before your actions, and it robs the sport of credibility. But, more than that, there's a sinister undertone that may have a potentially far worse consquences.
 
The most recent example of this kind of thing played out on Sky last week. With Wolves needing a 5-1 to win the meeting, and Darcy Ward going off 15 metres having touched the tapes at the first time of asking, the deck was stacked against the Poole Pirates. When guest Troy Batchelor missed the gate and found himself trailing the Wolves' pair, it looked even worse. A hard-chasing Ward fell on the 3rd and 4th bends and, although his bike clattered into the air fence, he took the gentlest of landings, lying spread-eagled on the shale. There he lay for a few seconds before slyly looking over his shoulder at the race, seeing that things were still bad for the Pirates, and making absolutely no effort to get up. The race was stopped and a smiling Ward walked back to the pits, unhurt and abused by the away fans. Needless to say, in the re-run, Batchelor made a jump-start and romped home. Cheats do prosper.
 
It's very difficult to get off a bike and make it look like an actual crash, so no-one's accusing these cheats of throwing their bikes away to gain an advantage. But they're willing to make the most of any falls, and that has to be stopped. There's also a difference between the rider who falls and gradually/immediately gets up and then struggles, in top Marcel Marceau fashion, to get his bike off the track, and those who feign injury. Poole may have just had their season wrecked by a very serious injury to their captain. Their whole season has been blighted by injuries, not least to Ward himself, and yet the Australian saw fit to pretend to be injured, and there must have been some in the crowd who - even for a moment - were worried for his welfare.
 
This is dangerous. This is the boy who cried wolf. Speedway fans can be the most sanctimonious in the world of sport when it comes to falls - woe betide the fan who celebrates if his team benefits from any kind of fall - but play-acting of this kind risks making a cynic of even the most trusting fan. How many times can you have your feelings played with, and show genuine concern, if the rider is pulling a fast one because he and his teammate messed things up? I'm sure that the next time a Poole rider falls and the opposition fans don't treat it as a serious incident that the Pirates' fans will be up in arms, accusing their counterparts of all manners of slights, but can you blame those opposition fans?
 
Given the nature of speedway fans - overhwhelmingly reverent and concerned for the welfare of the riders - there is actually little chance of them verly celebrating a fall or castigating a fallen rider, and so the riders who do engage in this kind of activity will still take advantage of them, and the benevolence of referees to cheat and cheat and cheat. However, some referees have taken action against this sort of thing - Berwick's Paul Starke was fined by the referee (and roundly criticised by Nigel Pearson and Kelvin Tatum, who stayed strangly quiet about Ward's transgression) for doing it, and Andrei Kudryashov was fined and banned for four meetings for doing the same in Poland. So the authorities can deal with it, they just choose not to in most circumstances.
 
Speedway has many issues but one of the things it is getting right is the racing on the track. This blatant cheating risks damaging even that. Stamp it out!

ITEM: Speedway journalism is a funny old thing. The usual criticism is that speedway "journalists" are merely editors, copy and pasting or occasionally re-writing club press releases, which have usually been written by the same people in the first instance. This will be strenuously denied, of course, especially by the editors of the Speedway Star, but is has to be said that - on the whole - speedway journalism gives the sport a pretty easy ride.
 
There have been some truly fascinating stories over the last couple of years, none of them covered in much depth in the speedway press, who would no doubt say that they are not in the business of writing about things which damage the sport. And this would be fine - although intensely disappointing - if that were the only reason behind it, but there's another reason why speedway journalists might be reluctant to tell the whole story and rely on "puff pieces"...
 
Speedway journalists rarely have one master. The realities of life as a freelance journalist are such that you have to find work where you can get it, and thus you have the situation where speedway reporters are often working for a number of publications. David Rowe, for example, covers the Coventry Bees for the Coventry Evening Telegraph and the Speedway Star, as well as working as the press officer and programme editor for the Bees. He also reports on Leicester for the Speedway Star, commentates for Clean Cut Sports, and works in the (virtual) BSPA press office. Oh, and he also reports on football for TalkSport, and a thousand other things. Paul Burbidge is the chief news reporter for the Speedway Star, reports on Poole Pirates for the Bournemouth Evening Echo, and is chief mouthpiece for the Speedway Grand Prix and Speedway World Cup. Even the managing editor of the Speedway Star, Philip Rising, is also employed by BSI!
 
This could - and I'm sure does - create a conflict of interest at times that both colours what they write and informs what they don't write. If a reporter is employed by a club to work on their website or programme, they are hardly likely to break a negative story about that club in the newspaper they also write for! Imagine if a scandal broke which involved one of the more high profile SGP riders, or even BSI themselves - could we expect to read an objective account in the Speedway Star? Could we expect to read about it all?
 
I'm extremely nosey about just about everything, so I make it my business to find out about the people who write the things I read. Others are less bothered/insane and thus take what they read on face value. Most writers do not declare an interest in the things they write about, and so readers trust in the reporter to be objective at all times. But how can they be when they are trying to keep so many people happy? I'm not sure Nigel pearson has ever claimed to be objective journalist, but I'm sure he'd love to be thought of as one (having come up the old school way - no BA in journalism for the proper journos!). Yet given that he works for Sky, Eurosport, BSI, TalkSport, Dudley Heathens, Sheffield Tigers and the BSPA (and I'm pretty sure I've missed some), and has to keep each one happy and look after his own future employment prospects, is it any wonder that he sits on the fence when it comes to any sort of controversy?
 
I want a thriving speedway journalism. I want investigative reporting and the facts laid bare. I want honesty and objectivity from my speedway news, and opinion and subjectivity from the major characters - those with the experience and awareness of the wider implications to the sport and beyond. I am not naiive enough to believe everything I read but I want to feel like I'm getting most of the story. Perhaps I'm alone? Perhaps the status quo exists for a reason and we're happy to be spoonfed whitewashed news and reports by a pliant press? I'd like to think not, though. I'd like to think that even the journalists themselves are a little tired of not telling the real story - they'd have to be, if they were proper journalists, surely? - and that change is possible. I won't hold my beath, though.
 
ITEM: Watching SWC "event 1" yesterday, it struck me just how moribund an affair it was. With the Russian federation playing silly buggers with their top riders, there are only five "world class" nations in the Speedway World Cup (and I'm being polite about TeamGB and Sweden there), and thus both events 1 & 2 will include teams who are really just making up the numbers.
 
If Russia had sent Sayfutdinov and the Lagutas to Czestochowa, Latvia would have been rooted near the bottom, out of things almost before the event began. The same will be true of the USA team in Kings Lynn tonight, and was true last year with Germany and the USA, and the year before with Germany, the Czechs and a weakened Russia. The format can sometimes produce a close contest for the one place on offer in the final (although not when a strong Poland team race at home, as they seem to do most years), but mostly acts as an introduction to the teams you may see in the final.
 
I'm a strong believer in the "weaker" countries taking part in the SWC. The current format excludes a couple that could take part, even though they would be makeweights at best. The only way the minor nations will improve is in competition against better opposition. It's true of the minor nations in football and it's true in speedway. Yet speedway is also a spectacle, with spectators and broadcasters paying often large sums for the experience. The current format, with many of the meetings a foregone conclusion, robs the paying audience and that watching at home of a true contest. Of course, speedway being what it is, even an uneven contest can still provide some good racing, although that certainly wasn't the case at a flat and boring Czestochowa yesterday.
 
There has to be a formula that would both provide exciting racing and not leave the minnows floundering like a fish out of water. Or we could carry on as we are, using the minor nations as practice fodder for the Poles, Danes, and Australians. SWC sponsor Monster likes to be seen as edgy and rebellious - what's edgier than the underdog upsetting the apple cart?
 
ITEM: It's unlikely - but possible - that TeamGB will qualify for the final from tonight's Event 2 at Kings Lynn. Although the Americans are a one-man outfit, and the Swedes have had injury problems you wouldn't wish on anyone outside Dorset, the Danes look far stronger than our own quartet, especially with the withdrawal of Scott Nicholls. But with all four riders young enough to have a few more pops at the competition, any experience is good experience, and those coming along behind them certainly give cause for optimism.
 
This season's under-21 championship was possibly the weakest in its history in terms of participants holding down Elite League and Premier League team spots. The young British rider seems to mature a little later these days, and at under-23 level we certainly look a lot closer to the other nations than the younger age group. What is especially encouraging is the quality of our 14-17 year olds, with Robert Lambert, Adam Ellis, Max Clegg, Daniel Spiller, and others looking very much a quality class. With Phil Morris and Neil Vatcher - aided and abetted by a host of "bigger picture" clubs - finding opportunities for these young racers to further their speedway education, the future looks bright.
 
We have suffered as a nation from a dearth of talent in recent years. This has had a number of effects on the sport, most notably in a lack of international glory and a paucity of British heroes for fans, the media and aspiring riders to hook onto and look up to. This, in turn, has led to a reduction in the public awareness of the sport, lower incomes from sponsorship, and less and less interest from the media. Although Sky's official reason (inasmuch as one never was given) for dropping the BSI events was their Saturday night timeslot, I imagine it had as much to do with a lack of a strong British competitor to sell to their customers as anything else.
 
Hopefully we'll soon be celebrating as Robert Lambert and Adam Ellis dominate the world scene, but I'd settle for them becoming solid international performers. Not asking much, am I?

No comments:

Post a Comment