Time for some serious research

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It’s a quiet week at the track this week and a chance to get some serious research done and dusted. Gerald will be back next week so it’s unlikely that I’ll get another chance before Christmas – rumour has it that he has a number of little projects for Punch and me to work on. My back is going into spasm just thinking about it.

Anyway, back to musings on the past with an emphasis upon the tracks themselves rather than riders, stadia and promotions.

As has been recorded in many other forums, the first British speedway meeting was held at High Beech on an old and largely neglected cycle track somewhere behind the King’s Oak public house near Epping Forest in Essex. Historians lead us to believe that it was a Cambridge undergraduate, one Lionel Wills, who came up with the concept having witnessed speedway and dirt track racing in Australia two years before.

In front of an estimated 20,000 crowd, most of whom were penned in behind a sturdy rope barrier on the centre green, the first racers were an assortment of road and trials bike riders together with two Australians, who had sampled the fledgling sport in their own back yard in the two years previous.

A programme of 50 races and 40 riders guaranteed a spectacle for the crowd. The originally planned 5 lap races were cut, after a break for luncheon, to 3 lap sprints so that the entire event could be completed before darkness fell.

The bikes were a real mixture of stripped down road bikes including a 490cc Norton, a 344cc Coventry Eagle and a 493cc Sunbeam. Many riders had simply resorted to removing mudguards and headlamps – anything to reduce weight and increase speed.

The first rider to officially complain about the track surface appears to have been one of the Australians (the xenophobe in me is tempted to add “what a surprise”). Billy Galloway complained that the hard cinder track was simply too hard for proper “broadsliding” and that what was needed was a “looser dirt surface” like the ones he’d raced on at home.

Records show that a “dirt track” meeting had been held near Manchester in 1927 on a 440 yard circuit covered with cinders purloined from the local power station. From the records that remain of that meet it would seem that the cinders were, again, packed too hard to allow any form of sliding.

But High Beech had sown the seeds and tracks appeared throughout 1928. Audenshaw near Manchester held a meeting on 3rd March followed by White City, who opened their 440 yard track on 16th June. On 4th August 1928 the fledgling Swindon Club opened its circuit at the Swindon Autodrome, on land near Gorse Hill in Swindon. Under the watchful eye of Mr W J Roper, the 356 yard cinder track provided a base in the town for racing for two years before closing down.

In the period between 1928 and 1949 (an auspicious year in the history of speedway – trust me) a number of different surfaces were tried to try to encourage “broadsliding” as the Aussies had it. Cinders were found to be very difficult to handle – too much packing and the track became like a road racing circuit – too little packing and the riders found it impossible to slide. The fans had cause to complain when tracks were too loose – they ended up wearing the track after the first couple of races!

Oxford opened their track in 1939 on a “sandy soil surface”. Alf Elliott, a rider, was charged with the laying of the new track. A concrete starting area was laid during the period that the track closed (between June 1941 and April 1949). This “development” had painful repercussions for the captain of the 1950 Oxford team, Harry Saunders. Whilst practising for the forthcoming season, Saunders “looped” on the concrete whilst attempting a “start” and sustained significant back injuries, sufficient to rule him out for some time.

In 1949 the Abbey Stadium was built atop Blunsdon Hill on the outskirts of Swindon. It featured a 410 yard cinder track and opened its doors to racing on 23rd July 1949 when some 8000 spectators witnessed the first meeting, against the old foe from down the road in Oxford. Whilst the spectacle was impressive, the track surface was swiftly changed to shale in time for a meeting on 27th August, the same year. Swindon legend Bob Jones set the lap record of 77.6 seconds.

Whilst the track surface remained largely unaffected for a number of years the addition of floodlights drew great interest. 10,000 people crammed into the Abbey Stadium for the first floodlit speedway match in the town in 1950.

That the first rained off fixture was on 11th August 1951, a full 65 meetings after the first night, is either a testament to the marvellous drainage at the surface or an indication of divine intervention (perhaps there really is a God, and perhaps he really is a Swindon Robins fan) – “thou shalt not rain on a Saturday night in Swindon.”

But all good things come to an end and the stadium authorities realised the Blunsdon bowl could be used for more than just speedway purposes. The first “midget car” meeting was held on the track on 11th October 1952. Greyhound racing (bite your tongue – don’t think it, speak it or write about it) started on 1st November of the same year whilst Stock Cars, the scourge of the speedway track, made their presence felt on 25th September 1954.

Bob Jones’s track record had been gradually eroded by the time that Barry Briggs reduced it to 72 seconds in 1959. This was no mean time, especially since the track was larger than it is today. During the winter of 1959 the Swindon track was altered, reducing its size from 410 yards to the present day 395 yards (363 metres).

The first sub 70 second track record was set by Swede Christer Lofqvist on 30th June 1973, his 69.8 time equalled by the great Anders Michanek during the second half of the same meeting.

Phil Crump set a new standard in a meeting on 22nd July 1979 and, during a season that boasted an astonishing 37 home meetings on the Blunsdon shale, ex British World Champion Peter Collins equalled it. Erik Gundersen smashed the lap record on the 26th August 1985, taking it to 65.2 seconds before the “Main Dane”, Hans Nielsen recorded the first sub 65 second lap in September 1990.

Somewhat surprisingly it was Swindon’s New Zealander Gary Allan who would take the time still lower and there it stayed until the Aussies took over again, Ryan Sullivan lowering it still further in a benefit meeting before Leigh Adams and, this year, Jason Crump, sliced further fractions of a second away.

But the fastest man around the pacey Blunsdon circuit was New Zealander Bruce Cribb. He took seconds off the existing time, but he did have an advantage – he was riding an exhibition race on an ice racing bike, equipped with the ferocious spikes on both front and back tyres – fabulous grip allied to awesome acceleration.