International SPEEDWAY
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LINKS
| General Speedway Sites |
| I suggest using the comprehensive list of links at
either Speedway Plus , or the Cradley Heath Speedway site |
| Speedway History |
| Irish author George P
Kearns has written two books on our sport - "The Early Years
1896-1928" and "The Dublin Experience". Details
here Photos of speedway in Ireland can be found 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 those interested in the history of Australian speedway I can recommend "Trove", the site of the National Library of Australia. Here you can research books, magazines, newspapers etc of that country, by putting "dirt track" or "speedway" into the search box. And it's all free! 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 Hundreds of speedway videos from around the world to view free of charge at AllSpeedway.tv A nostalgic look at the history of the sport in the USA since the early 1930's is at xtremesport, with the focus on many of their tracks through the years. 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! Good to relive past times as you look at Cliff Jones' site Speedway Memories 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. The Speedway History Forum is a great way of discussing speedway history with others from around the world. The British Speedway Forum (nearly 10,000 members) includes a "Years Gone By" section. Many sadly defunct UK tracks now have their own websites including Hastings ,Romford , Cradley Heath , Hackney , Bradford , Greenford , Exeter , Sunderland, and now Canterbury . Middlesbrough has now been reborn as Redcar, and Birmingham rejoined the speedway fold in 2007. Hopefully Leicester will return during 2011. The Newcastle Speedway History site covers more than just that club and is certainly worth a look. Then there is much of interest on Lynn Isaac's Sand Speed Wales site. Many defunct tracks in the UK are now covered on this 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), formerly the Veteran Speedway Riders' Association, have a website here and the Australian VSRA 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