The Henley College 62441 Owen Saunders 976279

Script

What used to be a widely known End of Reading V Peterborough clip

national sport is now described
as the dying last few remains of
a high octane, adrenaline
fuelled speed-fest. But is that
true? In order to find out, we
Early Speedway clip
have to go back to the beginning
of the young sport. Speedway was
invented in around 1905 and it
is believed that the first
speedway meeting took place at
the Newcastle NSW rugby ground.
But it was in the early 1950’s
when Speedway really took off in
England. 80,000 people would Wembley speedway clip
flock to the Wembley Stadium
every year to watch the Speedway
World Championship’s, were
legends such as Ivan Mauger,
Barry Briggs and Ole Olesen
would grace the track to compete
in the biggest motorcycle event
of the year. And Speedway kept
getting bigger. With over 50 Black skn head music with a black screen.
teams racing and holding 27 Cutting to the beat with flashing images of
world championships and a stadiums, riders and badges.
further 23 grand Prix’s. So what
sent the sport into such a Wembley clip resumes
disarray? Many people believe
that the massive popularity of 1966 world cup clip
football heavily affected the
sport, whilst others think that
the unpredictable English
Poole speedway rain off clip
weather meant that people were
getting fed up with suspended
meetings. But in order to Reading Racers team picture
properly understand the decline
of the sport, we’re going to
look at Reading Racers decline
and resurrection.

Founded in 1968, The Reading Tilehurst stadium

Racers rode at the Tilehurst
stadium which is now a retail Current day stadium way
park. After 5 years, the club
won its first of 4 British
Team picture with Anders Michanek
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League Championships with

Swedish legend Anders Michanek
topping the rider averages for Tilehurst stadium farewell
the year. In the same year, the
Tilehurst Stadium closed down Smallmead production
forcing Reading to cease racing
for two years while the new
Smallmead stadium was being
built off of the A33 and a
stone’s throw away from the
Madjeski football stadium.
Eventually, Reading moved to
Smallmead and continued racing
in 1975 where they had an
average of 6,500 spectators for Smallmead spectators
each meeting. The club won a
second British League title in
1980 and regularly had crowds of
7000 plus. In the mid 80's the
club had little success despite
having a very good team. Their
next British league title came Speedway star cover with Per Jonsson.
in 1990 with world champion Per
Jonsson leading the team. In
1994 Jonsson suffered a bad
crash when riding in Poland that Per Jonsson crash
ended his career and put him in
a wheelchair for the rest of his Per Jonsson present day
life. After the loss of Jonsson
the team suffered poor seasons Reading racing against Ipswich
in 1995 and 1996 where crowds
dropped and so did media
attention. The racers found
themselves in a relegation
battle in 1997 as they fought to
stay in the newly formed Premier
League, the second tier of
British Speedway. This brought
some much needed success as the
team won the league in the same
year. The next year, the Racers
won the League Cup. For the next
4 year stretch until 2003 the
club saw a changeover of
promoter which meant the club
won nothing. However, 2004 saw a
turning point for the club when
the Racers secured a large
sponsorship deal allowing them
to sign the Slovenian prodigy
Matej Zagar who still rides in Matej Zagar
the Grand Prix's today. Sadly,
the club never reached the
heights that it should've done
despite having a competitive
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team and in 2005 it looked as if

the club would struggle to
survive. The promotion team had
to sell the club to BSI Speedway BSI Speedway take over Reading news article
in 2006 where the new investors
took the newly named Reading
Bulldogs to the Elite League,
the top tier of British Reading Bulldogs logo
Speedway. In their first season,
the club narrowly missed out on Reading racing against Ipswich
the title when the Peterborough
Panthers beat them by one point.
However, off track, the Bulldogs
massively struggled, having an
average of 650 spectators short
of what the 2000 they needed to
break even. This was despite Individual team portraits
having one of the best teams in
the League with 4 time World
Champion Greg Hancock,
Australian U16 and U21 Champion
Travis Mcgowan, Previously
mentioned Matej Zagar, Danish
U21 Champion and 3 time Grand
Prix rider Charlie Gjedde, Czech
under 21 Champion Zdenek “Sam”
Simota, Current GP Rider and
Polish Champion Janusz Koledziej
and British Prodigy Danny Bird.
In 2007 some meetings were being Reading V Eastbourne clip
watched by less than 900 fans
which lead to BSI selling the
club to new promoters who agreed
to stay in the Elite League for
the rest of the season. In 2008,
the club opted to drop down to
the Premier League where news of Premier League logo
the expiring lease at Smallmead
overshadowed the racing. At the
end of the season, the lease
wasn't renewed. There were plans
for a new stadium to be built at
Island Road however the Island Road image
construction was delayed until
2018 where Reading set up a team
riding in the development
league. They raced the Arlington
Stadium, Eastbourne until at the Reading Racers at Eastbourne image
beginning of the 2019 season the
Swindon Robins agreed to let the
Racers ride their development Reading V Isle of Wight footage
league meetings at their home
track – The Abbey Stadium,
Blunsdon. Reading now focus on
helping developing riders on the
The Henley College 62441 Owen Saunders 976279

journey into Speedway but hope

to build a team that can compete
in the National League.
I followed the journey of young Sam Norris footage
Reading Racer Sam Norris and his
journey through the sport. I
first met up with Sam at the
Press and Practice day at the Mildenhall stadium B-roll
Mildenhall stadium in Suffolk,
home to the Mildenhall Fen
Tigers, where Sam is riding at
number 8 this season.

(Footage narration)

Founded in 1971, the original

Mildenhall Fen Tigers track was
built on farmland and was run as
a training track. 2 years later,
the track was moved to a
different area on the same
farmland. After four Tigers team
entered the newly formed British
National League. After 12
seasons in the Conference
League, the club were eventually
promoted to the Premiership in
2006. After coming up with a
scheme to sell shares in the
club to fans, many supporters
were sponsoring the club
themselves. The Mildenhall Fen
tigers are now in the National
League and have many successfull
sponsors.

I next caught up with Sam at his

first meeting for the Reading
Racers.