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Speedway History
Brough Park, Newcastle has a history stretching back to 1929, and fans of the team can see their current website here

South Africa's greatest rider, Henry Long, at the age of 87 in the summer of 2014, has bequeathed his collection of photos and press cuttings to the Speedway-SA website, where David Austin and Colin Jewes are gradually uploading all the infomation, and a very fine collection it is too. It can be viewed here

A Swedish site for the Vastervik / Skepparna teams by Pascal Lindh covers the history of the clubs since 1952, and features match details, programme scans, rider stats and video clips. An excellent site.

Detailed research of Australian speedway from the early days of the 1920s until 1954 is now possible, free of charge, on Trove. It allows access to most of the main newspapers of that era, is easy to use, and an absolute mine of information.
There is a similar New Zealand site at Papers Past, which currently has newspapers up until 1945, and is also free.
The British Newspaper Archive is free for a trial use, but then costs money (surprise, surprise). A list of newspapers currently loaded to the British site is here .

A valuable resource for anyone requiring access to match reports and news of the pre-war period, in magazines such as Auto, Motor Cycling, and Speedway News, can be found at https://www.box.com/shared/33fblrou1a5fzcx28rkh .

There is a new website for South African Speedway, which includes an extensive history of the sport in that country. Highly recommended!

For those of you that enjoy discussion forums, I can recommend the Old Time Speedway group on Yahoo, and the London Speedways group on Proboards. These are in addition to the Speedway History group.

The British Speedway Forum covers all aspects of the sport, but contains a Years Gone By section which is of interest.
Most forums and groups require you to become a member, but they are all free of charge.

Stefan Ornerdal has created a history site for one of the oldest teams in Sweden, Vargarna, and it looks like it is a very comprehensive website.

The Defunct Speedway Tracks website is a great place to wallow in nostalgia, maybe you can contribute something, too?

Irish author George P Kearns has written two books on our sport - "The Early Years 1896-1928" and "The Dublin Experience". Details here

The history of the sport in North America is covered on the SpeedwayBikes website - go to the bottom of the page for information on the early days.
For a look at some programmes from the USA, and around the world, go to R C Jones' excellent Speedway Motorcycle Racing Programs site.

Przemyslaw Jany's Speedway History site is now here. World, National, and League champions from around the world , plus much more.

I can recommend a new site, Speedway Champions, which has records of champions of the World, Under-21, and National titles, various Golden Helmets around the world, major domestic trophies, and UK League champions.

Magazines and books covering the history of speedway, including the quarterly Classic Speedway Magazine (1920s to 1960s) and bi-monthly Backtrack (1970s to 1990s), both published by Retro Speedway.

For anyone interested in Danish speedway, Soren Kjaer has compiled a website about every Danish track that has held a speedway meeting, very detailed and highly recommended. Danish Tracks is in Danish and English

There is an excellent website about the British all-round motorcyclist, and Stamford Bridge, Wimbledon, and England rider, Gus Kuhn at guskuhn.net

Sadly, some riders have lost their lives while competing. Steve Brown's fine site, In Memoriam, provides a fitting tribute to those courageous men.

The Complete A-Z of post-war British league riders - I can recommend this CD-ROM. First in the series has details of all riders who rode in the UK in the 1940's, the second covers the 1950's. Invaluable! Full details are here

Jim Blanchard's wonderful tribute to New Cross Speedway and to a personal favourite of mine, Peter Craven

Excellent collection of speedway video clips including World Finals and some great moments on YouTube and Rapidshare thanks to SpeedwayOnDisc. Some complete meetings available too!

History - Speedway and Longtrack is 3 sites in 1: Swedish Speedway History from 1934-2003, World Championship History (including Star Riders' Championship) from 1929-2003, and Ice Racing History from 1964-2000 (Anders Aberg / Thilo Wunderlich)

Poland Speedway History from 1932 (Roman Lach).
History of Torun Speeedway

History of Speedway in South Australia (Rod Webb)

Speedway Researcher Off-shoot of the magazine, with an ever-growing database of statistics relating largely to UK speedway, both pre- and post-war. (Jim Henry / Graham Fraser)

Just Solos Wonderful Australian site with photos, many rare, from the earliest days of the sport to the present day. (Brian Darby). Australian Vintage Speedway, Maitland (including the very first speedway programme), Sydney Royale, and many more sites containing wonderful images of days gone by, are also from Brian Darby.

Some of the all-time greats have websites - for example, see the Ove Fundin tribute site, whilst Ivan Mauger has his own website.

Jim Blanchard's excellent speedway and motorsport paintings can be seen here.

Speedway Archives is a tribute to England and New Zealand star Bob Andrews from his son Robert - more great pics.

Historic World of Speedway is from former rider Steve Magro.

Many sadly defunct UK tracks now have their own websites including Hastings ,Romford , Cradley Heath , Hackney , Bradford , Greenford , Exeter , Sunderland, and Canterbury .

The Newcastle Speedway History site covers more than just that club and is certainly worth a look.
Many defunct tracks in the UK are now covered on the popular Defunct Speedway Tracks site

Programme collectors can look at the Old Programmes Gallery at the Speedway Swap Shop (Derek Carruthers), and a huge variety of American programmes at R C Jones' Racing Programs USA site.

Search for "speedway" on the Pathe News site, and you can download film clips of around 50 speedway events, including pre-war Test matches. Search for "cinder" and you are rewarded with extremely rare footage of the first UK meeting at High Beech in 1928 (misleadingly titled "Greyhound's Racing Rival") !

Taranaki Historic Speedway is by former rider Dave Gifford and covers the sports' history in New Zealand.

The World Speedway Riders Association (WSRA) website is here , and the Australian Veteran Speedway Riders Association site is here .

Not really "history" sites, but well worth a look, are The Milky Speedway , selling top class speedway scale models, brooches, etc (these are QUALITY items) (Paolo & Franco Oliani), and the very comprehensive Speedway FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) covering just about every aspect of the sport (Kevin Meynell).

And a personal favourite site of mine, for news of the sport in Canada, go to the Canadian Speedway Racing Association site.

© Brian Collins