Man of Shale … Gerald Richter

Driving rain and 80mph winds meant that we could get very little done this week. Punch and I dug out another drain to get water from the dog track and away from the speedway surface but were soon driven back to the relative warmth of the staff room. I took the opportunity to interview Gerald Richter, track curator at Swindon, about his work and experiences.

The whole interview and photographs of his South African tracks can be found on the full blog. Click here to load the all colour, all dancing version of the blog.

In the second of our interviews with track staff (the first being with Rod “Punch” Ford) the Blunsdon Blog caught up with Chief Track Curator at Swindon, and also at Arena Essex, Gerald Richter.

Born in Bulawayo in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Gerald found himself growing up in a family of motor sport fanatics. His father, in particular, was a fan of all types of motor sports in Rhodesia and South Africa. He knew all of the Southern African speedway riders and often took his 6 year old son, Gerald, to speedway meetings. Gerald was hooked on the sport almost immediately.

“Dad would help out in the pits and I spent the first race of my first meeting on the terraces and then joined him in the pits. I think that one race was the last time I spent time of the terraces watching a speedway meeting.”

The Richter family moved to Northern Rhodesia to a place called Broken Hill. Here Gerald completed his schooling and indulged in all manner of sports. “There were no youth clubs and the cinema was only open one day a week. Power cuts were a norm and when it rained it flooded. After school there was nothing else to do other than play sport and I enjoyed cricket, rugby, football, diving in fact just about anything.”

Gerald moved south to work on a farm and it was there that he got to know Alex Ferguson (no, not that Alex Ferguson) who was opening up Rhodesian and South African speedway to visitors from the UK. “I can remember seeing Dave Jessup, Tom Leadbeater, Barry Duke, Norman Stachan and Bobby Beaton amongst many others.”

Gerald’s brother was a flat track rider at the time but he soon became friendly with top Rhodesian rider Peter Prinsloo.

The move to South Africa in 1972 brought Gerald into contact with Buddy Fuller who operated tracks in and near Johannesburg and it was here that Gerald really cut his teeth on track preparation. Having learned his trade on tracks throughout the country the young Richter was ready to take on the responsibility of working with renowned track man Peter Murray at the Corobrick track near Johannesburg. 205 metres in length, the Corobrick (taken from the name of the local “Coronation Brickworks”) was a deliberate copy of the Costa Mesa track in South California. “We even went so far as to copy the kick boards. It was a great little track.”

During the mid 1980’s Gerald gained his referee’s licence and set about an extraordinary period where he not only prepared the track, he refereed the meetings and then ran the bar after the event. “We had all of the top South African and Rhodesian riders competing at the track, including Denzil Kent, David Steen, Dion Prinsloo, Eddie Cox and Nick Floyd.”

During the late 1980’s the international brigade came for a series of meetings. Riders such as Kelvin Tatum rode on “Richter” tracks in South Africa as Gerald’s reputation as an A1 track man gained momentum.

But all good things come to a close and Corobrick closed in 1990. In the meantime Gerald was travelling throughout South Africa visiting car tracks and preparing special speedway tracks on them for individual meetings throughout the speedway season. “I also gained a reputation as a ‘rain man’. I’d arrive at a track, set it up and then, on the day of the meeting, the rain would come. In some places we visited it hadn’t rained for months. Ten minutes after I started on the track the heavens would open.”

In case you are thinking that track preparation was his main employment, it was not. During these years Gerald was working at developing a highly successful Insurance and Financial Brokerage company in South Africa.

In 1989 Gerald took the derelict Walkerville track about 8 miles south of Johannesburg, and set about transforming it into a proper speedway track (295 metres long) with proper facilities. The accompanying photographs show a series of before and after shots and it is clear that it promised to be a superb venue. However, Speedway South Africa granted the track only one full meeting in that year, the others being farmed out the sub standard car racing tracks. The fact that the sport has almost completely collapsed is testament to the quality of leadership at SA motorsport at this time. Meetings were held at the track but Gerald was fast becoming disillusioned by South Africa.

The level of crime and corruption was increasing at a rapid rate. As South African Speedway delegate at the FIM Conference in 1998 Gerald met with Terry Russell. A link was made that would soon bring Gerald and then his family to the UK. Twice stabbed in attempted street robberies, Gerald decided that the time had come to leave the lawlessness of South Africa.

After sending his CV to Terry Russell in 2001 he was invited over with the prospect of becoming track curator at Sittingbourne. Sadly the plans for Sittingbourne faltered at Planning Permission level and so Gerald was installed as track man at Area Essex. When Terry Russell took over Swindon in 2004 one of his first jobs was to install Gerald as track curator at The Abbey Stadium.

“I just love this area. We live in a small village north of Swindon and it is a typical piece of Old England with Old English values and I love it. My wife works in Swindon for a major insurance company and my children have settled so well, although they are grown up now.”

Ask Gerald about the greatest challenge that he, and other track men up and down the country, and he responds without hesitation – “Drainage. In many cases there is no actual drainage from the centre green of a track and every drop that falls in the stadium eventually makes its way down the lowest point, the speedway track or the centre green. And there it stops! At Swindon we have a 4 inch pipe running over 100 metres to get water away from the centre green and you don’t need to be a genius to appreciate that that is not sufficient.

“Building work will begin on the new stadium at Swindon soon and I just hope that the architects and planners include proper drainage from the centre to outside the stadium. It would also nice if the centre green were lower than the track – that would make for brilliant drainage.”

So what, in Gerald’s estimation, makes for a good speedway track?

“First you need good staff to help you and lots of preparation. You just can’t leave a track from one week to the next and hope that it will be all right to ride on. Being responsible for a speedway track is like no other. You find yourself hammered by riders and promoters and by the public, but you just have to take that. Remember that when the home team wins it is the riders who have ridden well; if they lose it’s inevitably because the track was bad.

“My perfect track is one that is fast and safe with possibilities for passing. Level and even, the track should be firm going into the corners but there must then be some dirt to give them grip and prevent the bikes from sliding too far. I want to see bikes going at full speed down the straights and then having sufficient grip on the corners to allow the riders to enter into a fast, controlled slide. Speedway is all about speed and control and it’s my job to make sure that the track gives the riders a chance to demonstrate their skills of balance and control. In a perfect world it would never rain on the day of a meeting, nor would it be baking hot before a fixture. Sadly, you have to work with the weather in this country – there’s no point trying to work against it. So much of the job is trying to predict what the weather is going to do and then anticipating what needs to be added to the weather’s effects to make a track good for racing.

“Swindon is a particularly difficult track to deal with. It’s sheer size makes it hard to prepare and the drainage problems simply compound the difficulties, but every track is difficult and they all have their problem areas.

“I’ve worked at Reading, Oxford, Poole, Wolverhampton, Eastbourne and the Isle of Wight amongst others and they all have their own characteristics and challenges. Cardiff presents many unique challenges and I’ve helped prepare that track.

“Nobody sets out to prepare a bad track on purpose – when the track is bad it’s always down to outside influences. I’m lucky here because I’ve got good equipment and good helpers but a lot of trackmen work on their own with poor equipment – it just makes their jobs so much more difficult. But above all, you cannot sit back and rest on your laurels. If the track is good one week there is nothing to say that it will remain so. A speedway track is like a living being – it needs to be understood and studied to get the best from it.”

So what have been the worst experiences in speedway from Mr Richter. “No need to think about that – The World Cup meeting at Swindon in 2005. I was so tensed up that I was physically ill during the build up to the start of the meeting.

“Not only did we have significant numbers of riders and mechanics in the pit area but the Sky vans were here as well. The whole pit area and behind it was mayhem. We started work during the preceding week and all seemed to be going well. Punch and I were at the track on the Sunday at 5 am to put the final touches prior to practice. We then had some rain which meant that practice had to be put back a couple of hours. 20 riders then belted round the track for what seemed like hours, trying out just about every square inch of the track. It was during this session that we saw and appreciated the style of young Russian called Renat Gafurov!

“By the time that the practice had finished the track looked as if about 20 meetings had been run on it. There was a lot to do and we knew that we had to get some water onto it to prevent a dust bowl in the evening. It was at this moment that the main water tanker decided to breakdown in the middle of the pits. Nobody could get around it and we were in real trouble. Once we’d managed to move the damn thing we had to water and prepare the track by hand. Everything was going against us and time was ticking by. Ole (Olsen) was in a panic and the Sky guys were frantic.

“And then it rained. I could hardly believe it. Everyone was convinced the meeting would have to be called off but we got the “Wonderwheel” out and just about rescued the situation. Anyway, the British lads did really well and everyone considered it to be good meeting. We were so relieved and completely exhausted. I never want another meeting like that one.”

Gerald Richter has now turned an extremely expensive hobby in South Africa into his main job over here but it’s not his only job. In addition to preparing and overseeing the tracks at Swindon and Arena Essex, Gerald is also employed by a leading supermarket chain, stocking the store and often working very unsocial hours.

Next time you come to Swindon and see the crouched figure behind the wheel of the yellow tractor with the South African sticker on its window, just consider this :

He’s been at the track probably since 7am, often before that. He’s worked without a break right through to the start of the meeting. He’s kept the track in some sort of order (the aim is that heat one conditions should be close to those experienced in heat 15) throughout the meeting. While you are driving home of enjoying a pint in the bar, he and his team will be “putting the track to bed”, taking down air fences and repairing the track. When you are tucked up in bed he will be tidying the area around the pits before locking up the stadium. It being the early hours of Friday morning, he will then drive over 130 miles to Arena Essex and catch three or four hours in a caravan at the back of the stadium.

Up at 7am he will work with his track staff through until midnight (Arena’s matches in 2007 will predominantly be on a Friday night). If he’s not too knackered he may then drive back to his home on the Wilts Gloucestershire border.

Saturday morning and he will be at The Abbey to supervise the weekend work before leaving at lunchtime to go and put in a full day’s work at the supermarket. Sunday may well see him at Blunsdon. Monday and Tuesday will see him either working at Blundson, Arena or at the supermarket. Wednesday is a preparation day for the next week and on Thursday he starts work again at Swindon at 7am.

And before you mention that this is only during the season from March to October, the work of a speedway track curator is definitely a 12 month year.

It’s a mad life and it can’t be good for the health. So why does he do it? Why do they all do it, those who don overalls and work throughout the year on our speedway tracks? They do it primarily because they love the sport and because, when they receive even a little praise, it makes all the difference and makes those wet and cold days’ work all worth while.

So the next time that you feel the need to hurl abuse at a member of the track staff during a speedway meeting just take a moment to appreciate how he feels because if you feel upset, he will be feeling one hundred times more upset. The track is a reflection of the people who work on it and with it. Gerald Richter is a proud man who is mortally wounded when something goes wrong on the track.

I’m just a hack, a volunteer who stayed and stayed. Had it not been for Gerald Richter and Punch Ford I would have retreated to my place on the terraces long ago. Together they make a remarkable team – both are remarkable men and Swindon are very lucky to have them working at the Abbey.