history

Speedway is a motorcycle sport in which lightweight specially built machines are raced around cinder, shale, or granite surfaces. It originated in Australia in 1925 and is popular in Britain, Australia, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and The USA. 

At a meeting riders race against each other and amass points that are added up at the end of a meeting. The sport can be ridden in a team or individually as a championship. Speedway bikes are among the most specialized of all. When the sport began in 1923 comparatively standard machines built by the famous British factory Douglas were popular. Their low centre of gravity and low wheelbase made them the most suitable for the leg-trailing technique that is customary in speedway. The British JAP engine became a natural choice, setting the trend towards single-cylinder four-stroke engines, which have the right kind of power characteristics for speedway riding. In the 1960's the Czechoslovak Jawa engine, which was more powerful and more flexible, dominated speedway, to be joined in 1974 by the British Weslake, Today the main builders of speedway engines are Jawa, Weslake and GM. There is also the lesser known Godden engine which Hans Nielsen used to win three world titles in 1980. The Godden was built by Don Godden, a former speedway champion, He's built them for speedway, grasstrack, longtrack, and he also built a v-twin engine for sidecar racing.

The GM is made in Italy and some speedway riders have this kind of engine. It is very difficult to tell one speedway bike from another. Their basic design changes little from decade to decade. They don't have any brakes and only one gear and weigh about eighty-six kilograms. Their top speed can be anything up to 80 miles per hour. The bikes are 500cc, single-cylinder four-stroke engines. They have very little suspension at the front and none at the back. This makes them very uncomfortable to ride. In Britain an average of 20,000 people go to watch speedway each week.

High Beech in Epping Forest was the first to stage a meeting and was an overwhelming success. 3,000 people were expected to watch but a lot more turned up. The numbers were overwhelming with over 30,000 attending. The main attraction was in Australian speedway where ace Bill Galloway was an expert in the sport. The original technique was to take corners while trailing the inside leg behind with the knee almost touching the ground. Bill's Technique caught on pretty fast which made the racing more exiting. In a short time regular meetings were held in many parts of the country and in May 1928 the first meeting under floodlight was held at Stamford Bridge, London. In 1929 the first leagues started. There were 13 clubs in the Northern League and 12 in the Southern. In 1936 the first World Championship was held under auspices of the Federation of International Motorcyclists (FIM ) at Wembley. By 1937 there were only 7 clubs. In 1951 that figure went up again to 37 clubs but dropped back down to eleven 6 years later.

In the team World Championship the countries competing were Sweden, Poland, Great Britain and England. Sweden won it in 1960, 1964, 1967 and 1970. Poland won in 1961, 1965-6 and 1969. Great Britain won in 1968, 1971-3 and England won in 1974-5. Speedway is one of the most professional of sports and is held at specially licensed tracks (the majority of speedway tracks in Britain are held inside greyhound and Stock car tracks). Most meetings are held at night between March and October.