Our Money or Your (Riders) Life?
v Kings Lynn, Posted 08/07/04

That was the question being asked at the Norfolk Arena last night by angry fans irrespective of club. This meeting should never have started and it ended in farce with three riders injured and a yougster asked to risk life and limb to slide round four laps on his own to allow a result.

To the heats that were run-amazingly given the weather after a parade lap!. Poor conditions were evident right from the start when in the first heat Grieves nearly slid into Tacey. The resultant 4-2 was followed by a shared heat but in that heat Lee fell unchallenged.

Heat three saw Jones chain not only snap but destroy half his engine on the final lap whilst he was pushing for the lead, giving Kings Lynn a 5-1.

Carrillo made it 2 out of 2 in his personal battle with Lee in heat 4 when he got a third place, Parkers win making it an heat advantage to Glasgow. Heat 5 was shared and in heat 6 Parker held off Topinka with Blackman in third.

Jones failed to make it out in heat 7 and was replaced by Blackman but the Tigers were left with a mountain to climb in this one when Bentley was adjudged to have touched the tapes and went of 15m, resulting in a 5-1 for the home team.

Two shared heats followed. In heat 10 Jones again failed to make it and Bentley was Glasgows sole representative. With the conditions worsening significantly he struggled on the first bend and the Kings Lynn Pairing managed to pull away for a 5-1.

Much to the astonishment of the crowd the meeting continued and Glasgow put Stancl out as a TR in heat 11. Going into the second lap with conditions and visability now extremely poor Madsen came together with Stancl. Even the Kings Lynn fans were astounded when Stancl was excluded. In the driving rain, Grieves managed to win the re-run to ensure a share of the points.

All those in the crowd could see this was a disaster waiting to happen but the meeting continued and sadly the effects on heat 12 were considerable. Doolan lost control in the conditions and came down, Carrillo and Lee could not avoid him in what was an awful looking accident. Again the wrong rider was excluded but most of the crowd were past caring as riders were being asked to race in unacceptably dangerous conditions. Doolan Lee and Carrillo were all hurt and yet still it was seen acceptable to put Kings Lynn reserve Harding out to complete four laps on his own at snails pace to allow the result to be declared.

I don't think it would be fair to judge any rider on tonights performance as the conditions they were asked to race in were totally unacceptable. I don't care how far I as a fan have travelled or how inconvenient it is to re-schedule, this sport is dangerous enough without it being added to by staging meetings in conditions like this. It is totally unacceptable and those who were party to the decision to allow this meeting to go ahead should hang their heads in shame.

Three young riders were injured tonight, speedway was lucky it wasn't worse.

The scorecard and heat details can be found here.

Tiger Points:

George Stancl
Paul Bentley
Graham Jones
James Grieves
Shane Parker
Corey Blackman
Eric Carrillo