JOCK STROP

ONE DIMENSIONAL CYCLE SPEEDWAY – posted 7 March 2013
 

Spokesman columnist Steve Harvie

With the World Track (Velodrome) Championships from Minsk on TV at the moment I write this article and Team GB accumulating its usual haul of medals, it makes me think that cycle speedway, in its one dimensional mode of four lap/four rider races only, could perhaps learn a thing or two from their varied sporting menu.

 

There are less than half a dozen Olympic (200/250 metres) category velodromes in the UK plus the odd, seldom used, old fashioned outside longer 440 yards versions like Herne Hill in South London and the strange four-cornered Preston Park (cricket pitch in middle!) example in Brighton which I have used for winter fitness in the past avoiding opposite way joggers, child pushers and dog walkers as well as perilous solid baseballs from the infield participants playing at the same time.

 

Comparison with ‘Proper’ Track Cycling

 

With so few venues and like cycle speedway utilising specialist non-legal everyday road usage machines requiring car transportation, I imagine the fixed wheel version only, has a similar overall rider base matching our total of 1000 participants in the UK.  How unfair it is that the ‘shaven leg’ equivalents get so much more money, encouragement and TV publicity than we do from British Cycling I hear you cry.

 

Maybe this is because they have a variety of different competitions on their circuits, at least a dozen, involving, from single riders only, up to 32 participants on track, competing in time trials, scratch races, sprints, pursuits, endurance events and a variety of strangely named races (Omnium/Keiran/Madison/“Devil take the Hindmost” etc etc) plus motor paced additional ones which, when divided into age-group and male/female and tandem ones also pair and team versions of them, all adds up to a hell of a lot of racing (and Olympic medals!).  It appeals to many types of competitor from the speed and fitness freaks to the ‘crash and bash’ lot through to the cultured participants of the rarer examples, all stop-watch timed too which CS seems to have abandoned at our meetings also.

 

Four Laps Four Riders Tedium

 

We have four lap races with four riders which in the team events that make up the great majority of our fixtures actually usually means most races are over in the first lap as the pairings normally settle down to a defensive procession to maintain arithmetical points superiority, occasionally exploding into confrontational clashes which can carry on into personal feuds requiring challenging refereeing which, if handled badly, results in disciplinary on-going problems. The individual alternative usually results in a full four laps of racing won by the keenest, fittest and more skilful riders predominantly.

 

CS with 40 still serviceable tracks nationwide, roughly most of a similar size between 60-80 metres in length, surely should be able to incorporate some of the above codes of racing to provide a more balanced diet and attract more participants from not only velodrome cycling but the other more easily available Mountain Biking, BMX, normal Road Racing and everyday users in cycling’s present boom. 

Cycle speedway concentrates its recruitment solely on the youngster market from far too young kids of five, six, seven and eight through to the teenagers who enjoy many race meetings but despite great reports and pictures from many clubs of crowded practice sessions and full house award night presentations of happy, smiling, little faces clutching their trophies and certificates does not really transfer to sustainability in numbers in normal racing as once they reach 16 most instantly give up the sport.  

















So we are still left with poor turnouts for Combination matches, predominantly short staffed relying on press ganged veterans, utilising first teamers again or deciding matches usually by penalty points rather than race action.

East London’s Inevitable Closure

 

You only have to look at the match results now to see many former excellent prospects missing whom are now no longer racing. In the South East region East London lost all their juniors within one season in 2006.  The likes of Steven Jarvis, Alec Briggs, Carl Day were all top exponents in their classes.  Next youngster up the age group, Lee Ridgwell, is no longer involved leaving a squad mostly in their 50s. Only the five-year period Pole Alexzander Zielensky raced for us whose brother and other fellow countrymen helped fill in these vacancies, before the ageing Thurrock riders arrived, has delayed the club’s inevitable closure.

 

This scenario is repeated all over the SE and nationwide too as Great Blakenham’s former secretary Sarah Day’s two sons James and Philip along with the Osborne brothers’ cousin Daniel. a phenomenal rider in the making, do not feature anymore.  George Solomon too seems to have gone awol whilst in Norfolk, Hethersett’s Jazz Abbot and the two “double-take brothers” (sorry can’t remember their names) have disappeared whilst Norwich’s slide out of the PL saw almost all their youngsters re-allocate briefly to rivals Hethersett or the short-lived revived North Park club seems to have resulted in similar casualties there. 

 

Colchester has also declined in membership dramatically so will there be enough youngsters around to justify the re-vamped Spixworth or proposed re-birth of Woodbridge and eventually re-stock Dave Hunting’s archived 400 other former East Anglian teams? I am sure this pattern is reproduced in the other three regions too. Surely adapting our sport to snare keen older cyclists in the other varieties is the way forward and they will have sons and daughters already steeped in racing to follow as well.

 

Variety Has Decreased

 

Over the years the amount and variety of cycle speedway racing has actually decreased along with the days and times meetings are held partly because of the downsizing of the sport from its original boom birth in the post war years to the more manageable and eventual united national organisation from the Seventies to the early Nineties before the rapid decline to the present strength of less than 30 clubs and under a 1,000 riders. The reason for this is not just sporting and has been well documented previously.

 

Apart from the Wossock Junior League and the Eurovets GPs, both excellent competitions catering for the very young and the elderly, and the girls racing which began well a few years ago but has suffered team numbers problems since, there has been few other new competitions added to the calendar. Indeed if it was not for them there would be precious little racing held anymore on Saturdays as the normal CS Commission individuals have reduced dramatically in entries as sadly there does not seem to be much appetite for this type of racing anymore.

 

International Tests Petty Excuses

 

Few clubs stage big open meetings, four team tournaments, best pairs events which most did annually and gone completely are inter-league/area test matches and club championships which rounded off each season are almost unheard of now. Even regional riders championships have disappeared or been downsized dramatically whilst proper full International Tests again have ceased permanently for the most petty of excuses. Apart from limited events in the West Midlands, East Anglia, Sheffield and possibly Greater Manchester. proper midweek racing has completely gone from the fixture list as well.

 

Floodlight Matches Virtually Non-Existent

 

In the 70s and 80s one third of our matches took place in the evenings, many under lights in front of encouraging sociable crowds but looking at this year’s fixture list you will have a hard job to identify many programmed, save the odd one at Wednesfield (see picture below). Matches now are almost entirely team ones fixtured in a four hour Sunday afternoon window that will not appeal to riders of other disciplines if they wish to try CS.

 

We should be an individual sport first and foremost and in order to attract new participants should concentrate on providing all age group individual competitions for all residents of the UK that should always take priority over the cosmetic tampering of extra team events in a dwindling market mostly still insisting on damaging xenophobic restrictions in participation criteria having the opposite effect in attracting new recruits in post London 2012 cultural harmony.

 

Elite League Boom and Bust Culture

 

The Elite League (and Premier version before) should be cruising along in the fast lane by now, not bumping about on the hard shoulder purely because it is compromised not by its organisation but by the totally unregulated transfer system misused completely by over ambitious clubs and selfish riders (or vice versa). Surely a maximum of three riders in/three riders out limit per club each season and a fixed three year transfer term per rider would immediately eliminate all the horse trading that is responsible for this boom and bust culture which will still prevent any expansion to a proposed second national division in future despite the excellently compiled presentation by Ian Grange at the Development Conference recently as was Lee Aris’s views on transfers illustrating the problems they cause to the sport.

 

Abandoning secondary transfers completely and only allowing full transfers would be a more drastic method of curtailing these excesses. Having to drive 500 kilometre round trip for an Elite fixture every second Sunday for one’s preferred choice of club, similar fortnightly trip for a regional fixture for your new club the following weekend and two weekly ones on Tuesday and Thursday nights for training as you should not be allowed to return to your previous (now under-strengthen and probably not welcomed anyway by your fellow riders you have now deserted) local club for practice might just discourage this damaging rent-a-rider saga.

 

Leicester Warning To All

 

What has happened to Leicester (the Glasgow Rangers of CS!), although guilty of over employment of too many first claim mercenary riders over the years, is scandalous having to choose the ‘re-cycle button’ and hoping to regroup by playing friendly matches instead is a very risky venture given the previous history of fickle CS instantly failed clubs.
















It could be many years before Leicester win the British Team again

Rangers will survive their forced exile from the SPL due to their fanatical supporters in Scotland, Ulster and worldwide but Leicester might end up having to press the ‘delete’ button after all as their vandalism prone facility in the run down Frog Island industrial site could easily come under the influence of pariah property developers for conversion into bijou canal side penthouse dwellings now encroaching from the new upmarket city centre rebirth and a local council cash strapped to re-allocate a much reduced outfit to a suitable alternative venue cannot be guaranteed. I hope this will not be the case and I am looking forward to a full female Whitehead side winning the Elite League in a few season’s time at the present Harry Glover Stadium!

 

The Unimaginable Happened!

 

The instant demise of the all conquering Blackley team in the early 80s and Thurrock 15 years later could not be imagined then but it happened.  The history of the Premier/Elite league is littered by instant falls from grace of previous clubs who have dipped their toes in that standard of racing,  Many are now on the brink of extinction, most stating they are ‘taking a season out to regroup’ but seldom returning. I hope John Whiting, with his excellent recollections of the Manchester giants, will illustrate their demise fully as a warning to others and with East London only staying solvent by utilising the services of seven former Thurrock riders for the past few seasons makes one wonder why the Essex side dispersed so quickly back in 1997.

 

Controversial anti British Cycling regular “Viewpoint” contributors Dave Hunting and Joe McLaughlin correctly illustrated the pitfalls of the creation of superteams and the affect this has on normal clubs after last year’s British Team Cup Final, a tournament that has been deteriorating for years, becoming the property of the four leading clubs (now three) courtesy of first claim transfers. I was still amazed by replies from present and past riders stating that clubs have a divine right to strengthen their sides in this way and attract the best riders as this was the most important honour a rider could achieve in his career even ahead of World/European/British Individual honours.

 

Ipswich Youngsters Could Be Overlooked

 

With the now returning prodigal sons of Suffolk to Ipswich, which must make them favourites to win this trophy but after three years of nurturing a keen Elite side of youngsters may find that riders who have worked hard to achieve first team status are now overlooked in favour of these returnees and will probably depart the sport forthwith as I doubt their fathers will have the enthusiasm or finances to re-allocate them to Sheffield or Birmingham every weekend to continue their elite racing careers.
 

 

How many of these youngsters will have a regular Elite League place this season?

If Ipswich do not do well, the superstars may also depart the following season to seek their accustomed fame as before with other teams so it will become a no win situation for all with Ipswich having to retract to a lower level leaving an Elite League, toiling to contain sufficient members to exist sensibly let alone expand. It seems hoping to increase team racing at the top end is becoming like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  

 

64 Rider Finals Weekend Still the Pinnacle

 

The glory days when British finals were raced in front of huge crowds

However that may actually be a positive move re-concentrating the main team racing back to the four regions as was successful in the 80s “British League” and instead promoting a new re-vitalised British “Open” Individual Championship for all residents of the UK requiring proper qualification rounds nationwide and a return to a full 64 man weekend each August, surely the true pinnacle of UK CS racing and at the same time bringing back substance and credence to the BT Cup.  The finals of both will then justify the outlay of the expense and promotion of such events that we have now been accustomed to.




















Four of the all-time greats - Roger Ellis, John Watchman, Ken Greenhalgh and sponsors the Daily Mirror

Finally a look forward to the new season with a sideways reflection on the Armstrong saga to follow soon.