BV, Bomber, British Final & Being Real

ITEM: Oh, Belle Vue, why do you make it so easy to mock you? Just when it looks like you might have gotten things together a little – council approval for the new stadium, a team that isn’t utterly rubbish – you go and pull one of the most ridiculous stunts seen in British speedway since Nigel Wagstaff renamed Oxford after his favourite David Essex movie.

When the news broke last Monday that Belle Vue’s meeting with Poole was off due to a waterlogged track, there were chuckles and gasps of surprise from the north west, where it had remained unusually rain-free for some time. Not only that, but the forecast was for fine weather, allowing any wetness on the track to dry up before tapes-up, surely?

Upon realising that people can put their heads out of the window and tell that it’s not raining, Belle Vue changed their story to a burst pipe, soaking the track and waterlogging the base, leaving it unfit for racing. Only Dakota North, staying with locally-based fellow Pirate Kyle Howarth, took a photo of the track looking in pretty good condition and posted it on Twitter.

Ah, said Belle Vue, you can’t see the second bend in that photo, and that’s where the problems are. Cue Poole number one Chris Holder, who revealed – also on Twitter – that two of Belle Vue’s riders, Matej Zagar and Magnus Zetterstrom, had missed their flights back to the UK, which would have left the Aces with no facility for their top two, and already operating rider replacement for their number three, Artur Mroczka, who was injured.

With the comedy increasing by the minute, the Speedway Control Bureau obviously decided enough was enough, and despatched local referee Darren Hartley to assess the situation. A statement to this effect, released by the SCB later that night, heavily implied fault on Belle Vue’s part, and the Aces subsequently released their own statement apologising for a “wrong postponement”, but stopping short of admitting they made the whole thing up to prevent a home loss.

So what’s to be done? Should Belle Vue be punished for trying to protect their own business? Do the Poole team – and fans – have the right to claim compensation for wasted journeys? What form should any punishment take? And does the fact that the Aces’ track man is an SCB official – Colin Meredith – make the whole farrago even worse?

There’s something to be said for trying to prevent your fans witnessing a heavy home defeat. I’d argue that the best way to do it is to ensure that you have seven decent riders in your team, but my own Bees have shown that’s not the prevailing thought at the moment. That said, decent or not, having seven riders is a good start. It’s not particularly Belle Vue’s fault that Zagar and Zetterstrom were stranded in Germany by industrial action, although you have to wonder why they chose that particular route home when Adam Skornicki, who rode in the same meeting as Zagar, made it back to ride at Coventry with no issues.

However, this is the risk teams take in employing riders with such busy schedules. It’s pretty much impossible these days to find a number one rider who doesn’t ride in Poland, but if it is your business to have all seven riders there, you take extra care to make sure that happens. This isn’t Sunday League football, where you turn up at a match and pick from who shows up. Was the route taken by these riders unusual? Half a dozen others made it back to race on Monday, so you’d have to assume it was. Did Belle Vue take all the steps necessary to ensure that Zagar and Zetterstrom would be there or did they leave it in the lap of the gods?

Even so, riders miss meetings because of this kind of thing every so often – as it happens Poole were punished for the exact same thing two days before as Maciej Janowski missed a flight out of Poland for their match at Eastbourne, and both rider and club were fined, and the Pirates lost the match as a result. It’s part and parcel of speedway in the modern age. I don’t like it, but there it is.

You have to ask, though, what good they thought pulling the meeting would do. On a fine night, with the “Turbo Twins” in town, a big crowd was expected, and the majority of them would have understood the situation, passing the blame onto the riders rather than the club. There would have been grumbles about paying £17 to watch a sub-standard team but then the Aces’ fans have done that for the last decade anyway.

By the sounds of it, a good number of fans did not check the internet before leaving for Kirkmanshulme Lane – because why would they on a fine night? – and were confronted only with a hastily-scrawled A4 sign announcing the meeting was off. Even those who did check would have confused and angered by losing yet another meeting to a substandard track, and there’s only so many times they will come back after that.

Did the promotion make the right decision to protect their business? Obviously not, because they’re a laughing stock, and have turned their own fans against them because they got caught – and it was not exactly the crime of the century – pulling a stroke. Was it worth the risk? It’s not my money, but I can guess what they’d say if asked now.

So what happens? How should Belle Vue be punished? Any fans who can prove they reached the track should be compensated, especially those who booked hotels. Obviously it’s not the easiest thing to prove, but in the absence of advance tickets there’s no simple answer. Poole’s riders and management should also be compensated – not for flights or any expenses into the UK but from their home base to Manchester. This is just good business.

And past that? What sanctions should be imposed on the club? Given that they failed to complete their fixtures last season and did actually call off a meeting in perfect weather because the track was unfit? The mitigating factor is the fans – they should not be punished by the loss of seeing Poole Pirates in action at Belle Vue, so the meeting should be re-run. In any case, it would be unfair to the other teams in the league to gift the points to Poole, who by chance happened to be the scheduled opponents on that day. Belle Vue should be punished with a hefty fine, a points deduction, and no guarantee that their new stadium should hold shared events for five years.

I wrote some time ago that Belle Vue should have considered a year out until the new stadium was finished. Not many agreed with me, but this is exactly the reason why. The current promotion cannot be trusted not to pull strokes like this, and the whole Elite League suffers as a result. Kirkmanshulme Lane, whether it is victim to phantom burst pipes or not, is largely unfit for racing, and the world champion has said that the riders take their lives in their hands every time they race there.

And what should be done with Belle Vue track man Colin Meredith, who actually holds the role of SCB track inspector? Was he in on the decision or agree to turn a blind eye? How can the SCB investigate and possibly punish Belle Vue without taking this into account?

We’ll have to wait and see. I’m sure that any SCB investigation will be transparent and comprehensive, and the right decision will be released. I’m also heavily medicated. These two things may be connected.

ITEM: So Chris Harris got the Wild Card nomination for Cardiff, then. And everybody’s happy, right? What’s that? Oh.

Harris has carried the torch for British speedway in the Grand Prix series for the past few years, with very mixed results. Only once qualifying by right, and the recipient of series wild cards on many other occasions, he’s been rarely competitive, despite beating his GP rivals in league speedway in three countries. Although some were disappointed when he was overlooked for the 2013 series in favour of Tai Woffinden, most understood that he’d have to earn his chance again if he wanted to race in the GPs in the future.

And earning a chance is usually how the wild card for Cardiff is decided, with the highest-placed non-GP rider in the British Final gaining the spot. In recent years that’s been Scott Nicholls, because the British Final is latterly a shoot-out between Harris, Woffinden, and Nicholls, and Woffinden has had rotten luck in the winner-takes-all final. Given that, it appears the wild card this year would have been a straight shoot-out between Nicholls and Harris, and so BSI jumped the gun and gave it to Harris before the final even took place.

There are a couple of questions that come to mind – how and why was the decision taken? Firstly, what needs to be understood is that the wild cards for each round are decided in a three-way process between the FIM (who divest most of their decision making in the GPs to BSI), series promoters BSI, and the individual event promoters, in this case BSI. So I think we can be pretty certain that this was a BSI decision.

When it was initially announced, some fans and riders jumped all over the BSPA, assuming that – as they oversee the British Final for the ACU – it was their decision to forego the highest-placed option, except that the BSPA seemed as surprised as anyone when it was announced, live on Sky, by Nigel Pearson.

Why did BSI decide to change the way the Cardiff wild card is decided? They haven’t said, but there are a number of possibilities. It may be that ticket sales for the British GP are slow – crowds are down, year-on-year, for Cardiff – and that Tai Woffinden hasn’t captured the imagination of the British public. Harris, as a heart-on-his-sleeve, die-hard Brit, may have been seen as a way to sell a few tickets, especially to fans of Birmingham and Coventry, who may have been reluctant to back a Wolverhampton rider in their home GP.

It may also be that they feared a more open field in the British Final resulting in a rider qualifying for Cardiff who would not fit their criteria – Edward Kennett and Danny King both have good chances of making the rostrum at Wolverhampton next Monday, but would probably not be seen by BSI as enhancing their showpiece event. It could also be that, having been kicked off Sky, BSI did not want an event shown by Sky to be used as a qualifier for their meeting, or even that Sky themselves would be reluctant to have the British Final openly used as such.

Whatever the reason, Harris has the wild card. The majority of fans are not happy – not at Harris, because why shouldn’t he take that shop window for his sponsors? – but still fail to understand the crux of the matter: BSI have turned the speedway world championship into a circus. It’s sports entertainment, in a way, rather than pure sport – more Superstars than the Olympics, and this was illustrated last season when Holder wasn’t excluded for his move on Pedersen in the final Grand Prix.

There’s a decision to be made: do you continue to support whatever BSI serve up to you, or do you make a stand? Because if you go to Cardiff, enjoy yourselves, but don’t moan about Harris getting the wild card, or a suspect decision that favours a favourite over an unfancied rival, because that’s what you’re buying into.

ITEM: So where does that leave the British Final? Does it cheapen the final to have no carrot dangling at the end of it? Will riders stop entering the competition with no prospect of reaching Cardiff if they take the title (or finish second, or third)?

The British Final started out as a qualifying round for the world championship. Before that, the British (and Commonwealth) Final pretty much was the world championship. But the emergence of those pesky Swedes as a force to be reckoned with meant that a separate round had to be created for riders on these shores (still including the Aussies and Kiwis) to qualify for the World Final, and it remained that way – in name, at least – until the mid-1990s.

But from its earliest stagings, even though it only paid to finish in the top twelve or so, riders wanted to win it. The roll of honour reads like a Who’s Who of British speedway. And I can’t believe for one minute that it’s any different today.

Okay, the number of realistic contenders is fewer than it’s ever been, with Woffinden a massive favourite, and Nicholls and Harris the only two on past form who can stop him (although, as I said earlier, Kennett and King will get amongst the points). But every one of the sixteen riders lining up at Wolverhampton next Monday will want to be British champion. It carries an enormous cache, especially as their chances – at the moment – of becoming World Champion are pretty remote.

So, no, the British Final hasn’t been cheapened and, no, riders will not stop entering it, not least because it does lead into the qualifying rounds for the Grand Prix series later in the season, when riders are nominated based on their finishing position to enter the Grand Prix Challenge.

We need to reorient British speedway to putting ourselves first. The Grands Prix are a nice distraction and something to watch on TV every couple of weeks, but they’re not our bread and butter. What happens in Poland and Sweden is nice if you’re bothered by it, but it doesn’t put food on our table. No, British speedway – whatever you may think of its current standing in the world game – is, and should always be, our priority. We need to stop talking down the product, stop trying to cheapen our own championships, and get behind what we have on track twenty times a week in this country.

British Final? Can’t wait. My money’s on Harris.

ITEM: There were quite a few eyebrows raised at what was probably a throwaway comment by Nigel Pearson on Sky last week, when he called the Premier League – Sky were broadcasting from Scunthorpe’s Eddie Wright Raceway – a feeder league for the Elite League, most of them from fans of PL clubs.

Fans of all clubs ruthlessly defend their teams against all manner of slights, imagined or real. Some of them are grounded, and will offer a true assessment of their clubs’ position, while emphasising the positives, while others will just flat out refuse to admit that the precious team, and anyone associated with it - can do any wrong at all.

Surely, though, in this instance, no case can be made for the contrary. The Premier League is the second division of speedway, and the quality of rider and the infrastructure of the clubs largely reflects this. Ambitious riders and clubs will always want to progress into the higher league, should their ability and backing allow.

Yes, the Elite League has some “Premier League” riders in it, through the doubling-up rule, and geography and a lack of a squad system means that injuries for the lower EL riders will be always be covered by PL guys, but that’s what a feeder league is for, is it not? It’s how it works in baseball in the US, and no-one ever accuses the Major Leagues of being watered down!

There is uncertainty ahead in British speedway, whether the Sky deal is extended beyond this season or not. The current thinking – and it changes weekly – is that there probably has to be a reduction in the quality of the top league to match the money coming in through the turnstiles. If that happens, some current PL teams may find themselves in an expanded top division, and I wonder what their fans will be saying then when they borrow riders from whatever Division Two is in place?