Speedway: a small team fights not to bite the dust

Speedway isn't a glamour sport. And like most grass-roots sports, it is run by and for enthusiastic amateurs.

But it didn't used to be like that: in the 1970s, speedway, in which 500 cc motorcycles with no gearchange and no brakes are hurled around a shale oval at speeds of more than 70mph, drew sizeable crowds to stadia all over northern Europe, Australia and the southern USA.

Speedway is dangerous. A small accident rapidly turns into a big one when there are no run-off areas. It's exciting for spectators because even if the racing itself is boring, the skill of the riders puts hearts in mouths on every one of the eight corners in a race.

Four riders pit themselves against track conditions that change from lap to lap as the shale is pushed out to the edge of the track, only to be brought back again half way through the meeting. If it's too dry, dust chokes everything; it it's too wet, mud cakes everything. These two reasons are at the heart of why there is no gear change or braking: they don't work if they are covered in dust or caked in mud.

When people talk about "biting the dust," they don't even contemplate the mouthfuls of the stuff Speedway riders swallow.

Riders slide the bikes into corners. It was in the 1970s that some riders learned to do this without putting their left foot on the ground: that meant less drag and less drag means more speed. Some riders added inserts to their rear wheel: a solid filling meant more control as the rear slid.

To get the optimum turn in, weight has to be forward on the bike. So the rider actually stands, leaning over the handlebars, so allowing the rear tyres to slide sideways. But he has to keep weight on the back to make sure he gets traction: that's where the forward motion comes from - and also how he prevents the rear swinging around and banging the handlebars, resulting in a horrible high-side.

But going wide, failing to turn in sufficiently, results in a front-wheel plant into the catch fencing or wall and, all too often, a visit to hospital.

To keep his weight on the bike, the rider's right foot sits not on a pedal, but on a six inch metal bracket like a spike with a ball on the end. Go too close to the wall or the catch fencing and the footrest digs in, spitting the rider across the track, usually face first.

You can spot the riders at a speedway meeting - even in their "civvies." They are the ones who can't stand up straight because of how broken bones have set.

No one but a total lunatic would dream of entering this sport.

There are a lot of total lunatics in the world.

Speedway has a contributed a lot to other forms of racing: look at today's MotoGP and Superbike riders - the commentators talk about them "backing the bike into the corners." What they are actually doing is riding their bikes like speedway bikes: sliding to gain better angle and therefore better traction and speed out of the corners. Some of them are often said to have perfected their techniques on dirt tracks - American racing similar to speedway but usually on much longer tracks. And we've seen solid-wheel inserts in MotoGP appear as the drifting technique has taken hold.

A speedway track is short: usually between 400 and 500 metres. Getting around is a matter of neck-snapping acceleration, forcing the head down to see in front, shouting "****, there's a corner," and going through it all again a split second later - assuming that you got round the corner.

Many of the world's best riders have come from Australia: after all, in a country where roads are as often as not dusty trails, they have the same kind of advantage in speedway as the Scandinavians who learn early to ride their bikes on ice and snow.

But in Australia, today, finding speedway is difficult. Like everywhere else, the Playstation generation prefers vicarious thrills to risking real scrapes and bruises; those that want to move off the couch might go for "extreme sports."

Listen, kiddies: there's bugger all more extreme than speedway. Your skateparks and padded playgrounds are for girls. Real men strap 500 throbbing horses between their legs and dash off at full throttle towards a 180 degree bend with no way to stop if it all goes tits up. And it often does.

It's into that situation that a bunch of old codgers who remember the glory days have banded together to reform an institution that petered out 20 years ago.

And so it was that on 26th September, Dave Clifton - white hair, doesn't stand very straight but smiles a lot, tugged on his gloves and - with a clear look of trepidation in his eyes - strapped on the Canberra Bulls colours for their first outing in two decades in a meeting run at Neapden Speedway. He didn't fall off, he didn't crash but he didn't win because his chain broke - perhaps the most common equipment failure in the sport. He didn't corner with both feet on the bike, but he was leading when his bike broke.

For the people behind the efforts to rejuvenate the team, that was a wonderful moment.

The team is trying to find a home for a track of its own. They have tried to come to terms with the operators of a greyhound track: in the UK the two sports have long combined their use of stadia to great success, keeping both alive when times have been tough. But their approach was rebuffed as the greyhound operators said they feared for their own track.

Now they are trying to get permission to set up a practice track at Canberra Airport.

It seems strange that in one of the world's emptiest countries, that a group of crazy people can't get the use of a few acres of dusty landscape to run their bikes around in circles.

For now, they are looking into using a track a few miles out of town. If they are successful, then it's possible that next year the Canberra Bulls will be able to enter competition.

And for the grey haired group that refuses to let the idea die, that will be a great triumph.

And it will be an even bigger one for speedway.

Canberra Bulls Website