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FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY | TONY RICKARDSSON

FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY | OLE OLSEN

Father of Danish speedway, Ole Olsen put Denmark on the FIM Speedway map when he became the nation’s first world champion in 1971.  The three-time World Final winner has since managed his country during their decade of dominance in the 1980s, before launching the FIM Speedway Grand Prix series in 1995 and bringing speedway to some of the world’s most famous areas. As speedway celebrates 100 years of racing, PAUL BURBIDGE caught up with a man who has changed the sport forever – and built the iconic stage for Saturday’s DeluxeHomeart FIM Speedway GP of Denmark - Vojens … Firstly Ole, I would like to find out more about how your racing journey started. How did you get into speedway? “That goes back a long time. In Denmark, we didn’t have so much regular speedway. People raced on flat dirt tracks and the tracks varied in sizes. They raced on 250cc and 500cc standard bikes. Then there was a sidecar competition and the expert class – five or six senior riders, who did three or four heats. It was all mixed up in one big day. In the end, they also had cars on the track – Mini Coopers. That was how I started in my local town Haderslev.  “When I was about seven or eight, I was out there with a rake. They had two meetings per year on the track. The kids came out and raked the track because it was a farmer’s field. There were cows feeding there. When these meetings came – one in the spring and one later in the year – we had to rake the track and help to put hay bales up as fencing. They gave us a free ticket as payment and that’s where it all started.  “My idol in those days was Arne Pander. He was very fast around these tracks. They had some handicap racing as well – some of the riders were on the third turn when others were still at the starting line. He did five laps and passed them all. I thought he was fantastic. “When I got older, I delivered newspapers in the morning. I went to school and then after school, I had a job delivering groceries. That’s where I met one guy, whose father had a garage on my route. One day, I rode up there on the bike to deliver some groceries and I saw this guy come out from the side of the garage, spraying dirt as he rode this 175cc bike. “He came out and asked, ‘Do you like this?’ I loved it. The guy let me sit on the bike. I was 14 then and he said, ‘If you like this, you should be a member of Haderslev Motorsport (HMS), and then you can ride these bikes.’  “There was a new class coming – a junior or novice one. I went home and told my parents I wanted to do motor racing and they looked at me, thinking I was nuts and asked me how I would get the money.” You got into some trouble in your younger days, and it nearly ended your motorcycling career before it started. What happened? “I got into a bad crowd. We used to ‘borrow’ some petrol for our bikes. We led under cars in the parking spots and drew petrol out of the tanks. Then the police got involved with that. They caught us. It only happened a few times, but that’s what changed things.  “My parents told me I couldn’t ride. But then one day my mother said she wanted to talk to me. She told me that if I could get out of this world with these bad people I was mixing with, I could save money and buy a bike and try motorcycle racing if I wanted. I said, ‘Oh, thank you! I will do that.’ “I found new mates and really worked to save some money. I bought a bike when I was 15 – this old 175cc Husqvarna. I took it out in a quarry close to us and rode it there until the tank was empty. That’s how I got into it, and I got into this motorsport club. It took off from there. “In 1963, I got a licence. You had to be 16 to have a licence. I started in 1964 and in 1965, I could start on the 500s. I saved money to buy a Jawa speedway bike. That’s when I started that, and I won the Danish Junior Championship in 1965.” 

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FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY | TAI WOFFINDEN

With three FIM Speedway Grand Prix World Championships and an FIM Speedway of Nations gold medal, Tai Woffinden is already Britain’s most successful speedway rider. As he heads to Cardiff seeking his 12th Speedway GP win this Saturday, he looked back on an incredible ride to the top of the sport as part of our FIM Speedway Stars of the Century series. PAUL BURBIDGE caught up with him … Firstly Tai, we need to talk about Cardiff. We’re just days away from the FIM Speedway GP of Great Britain – Cardiff this Saturday. How much are you looking forward to Britain’s biggest indoor motorsport event at Principality Stadium?“The British GP is such an amazing event. The Warsaw GP and the British GP have this thing where they compete over which one is better. But there is something about Cardiff and the atmosphere.“It’s a pretty big one for me being a British rider and having all my corporate partners come down and bring their guests. There is always a lot of work to do in Cardiff, but I have a great team around me, and we make it run as smoothly as we can.“I have always said it is the best one on the calendar. I haven’t won it yet, so it would be nice to get a win there. That has kind of evaded me over the last however many years I have been racing. But we’ll see what happens on Saturday.” What is it that makes the Cardiff weekend so special?“Just everything – there isn’t one specific thing. It’s obviously my home GP, but there is something special about the atmosphere at the British GP. It’s amazing being inside the stadium with all the British fans and having all the noise they bring.“When we leave the stadium after practice on Friday, the streets are full. The Principality Stadium is right there in the city centre. As soon as you walk out of the stadium, the pubs are packed, and the city is busy. It just has a really nice buzz about it, which no other GP on the calendar has.”

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FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY: GREG HANCOCK

American great Greg Hancock has redefined what’s possible on a speedway bike, winning four Speedway GP world titles – three of them after celebrating his 40th birthday. With a record 218 Speedway GP appearances to his name, plus 2,655 championship points scored from 1,248 heats and 455 race wins, the Californian has cemented his spot in SGP history.As part of our Stars of the Century series, PAUL BURBIDGE caught up with Speedway GP’s evergreen icon to reflect on three decades at the top …Firstly Greg, how did your speedway journey start?“My dad Bill started to take my sister Carrie, brother Dave and I when I was around four or five years old. He was newly divorced from my mum and living alone, and eventually he became friends with (American rider) Josh Larsen’s dad Charlie, who was also newly divorced. They ended up living on Balboa Island – upstairs and downstairs from each other.“Long story short – Charlie got my dad into speedway because he was watching it. He got my dad really hooked on the sport. Charlie also became friends with and started to help (legendary American rider) Bobby Schwartz at that time. He introduced my dad to Bobby too. They started to support Bobby with some sponsorship and through all that, Bobby got my brother interested in speedway.“From the first moment we saw junior speedway live, I was running around underneath the grandstands collecting tear-offs thrown by the riders or all of the beer cups. When I saw the junior speedway guys, like Kelly Moran and eventually Dennis Sigalos and Lance King, these guys became my new heroes.“I just remember from that point on that I never stopped tugging on my dad’s back pocket to try speedway for myself. It was the biggest addiction I got into from a very early age, and it never left. It still hasn’t.” You gained a lot of heroes as you followed the sport in California, including top American riders like Bruce Penhall, Dennis Sigalos, Bobby Schwartz and John Cook, and it sounds like a number of them helped you become the rider you became …“From day one, my dad was associated with a lot of the greatest riders. Having Bruce Penhall, Dennis Sigalos and Bobby Schwartz around was great, and they became part of our extended family.“It was a no-brainer. I was around these guys from the word go and I had the red carpet rolled out in front of me. All I had to do was walk it and respect it, and just take in all this great knowledge getting thrown at me, which I did.“I never took advantage of it in the wrong way. I took advantage of it in a positive way and learned from these guys. “Bruce quickly became one of my heroes because of his rapid success. But he always had time to come down to your level and talk to you as a human being. He was really easy-going.“Bruce and his mechanic Spike are the ones who nicknamed me ‘Grin’ back in the day. They used to give me advice constantly and they’d say, ‘We don’t know if he’s really getting what we are saying because all he does is grin.’ All I did was smile and take it all in, but they obviously wanted some sort of a response, and I didn’t always give them that, so they were thinking, ‘What the heck is up with this Grin guy?!’ Bruce’s success played a major role in my career. “I turned to Bobby for so many things over so many years. I had Bobby on a different level to Bruce. Bobby didn’t beat around the bush. He told you straight. Bruce would say, ‘You could have maybe done it like this.’ Bobby would say, ‘You don’t do it like that. You do it like this.’“I had the best of all words. All they were trying to do is help me find my way forward in different ways with the different upbringings they had. I had all this free information and all I had to do was absorb it. In a nutshell, that’s what I did.“John Cook became my next big brother. He is the one who really started to emphasise things about Europe and explain things to me.” What were your first experiences of speedway in Europe?“I went to Europe in 1985 – I went to watch the World Final at Bradford. I stayed with John for most of the time. I also stayed with Bobby for a couple of days, but most of the time with John.“John really painted the picture of British speedway for me. I got to work in the pits with him regularly, cleaned his bikes and I just really lived it. That was the key moment of me saying, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I was 15 years old, but I was thinking, ‘This is me. As soon as I get the opportunity, I am coming.’“That’s what I did and in 1989, I got the call. I was quick to jump at the offer. I had the red-carpet treatment. Lance King offered me a place to stay. Little did I know at that point he was in his final year of racing in Europe, but I had everything to gain – his workshop and his knowledge. He showed me where to go, what to do and what not to do.“He was hard on me, but we also had a lot of fun together at the same time. He was a bachelor, and I was a young punk kid. When I did something wrong, he’d say, ‘Dude, you just don’t do that! If you want to do it right, you do it like this. You work hard and you play later.’“He was amazing. He would wake me up if I was sleeping too late and play his electric guitar super loud downstairs, telling me, ‘Get up!’ We laugh about it, and it was all meant in good nature. “He installed the software for me from the very beginning. I literally ran my career, all my pre-season stuff, how I set up my workshop and everything I did based on what I learned in year one.“All I had to do was make the updates to the software that he installed. That’s what I tell everybody, and I tell Lance the same. I still have in my workshop some of the equipment Lance gave me to set up a workshop from the very beginning. I still use it in some cases. It’s a piece of my history that reminds me of the hard work, effort and people who taught me what I know.”

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FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY | BARRY BRIGGS MBE

New Zealand great Barry Briggs may be a four-time FIM Speedway world champion, but his trophy haul only tells a fraction of his incredible story. On the bike, he was one of the all-time greats. Off the bike, he was a businessman, an inventor, an adventurer and often all of those things at the same time. As FIMSpeedway.com celebrates the sport’s 100th anniversary this year, PAUL BURBIDGE caught up with him as part of our Stars of the Century series.  Firstly Barry, how did your speedway journey start? “It all started in Christchurch (on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island). They put a new practice track in there and I was probably about 12 or 13. I was always into motorbikes. My cousin had a motorcycle, I had to clean it to earn my rides – I’m probably still behind with my cleans!“There was also a small practice track, I knew most of the fellas, but I had no money. I was the bloke they shouted at ‘hey, I need fuel’ or ‘hey, the tyre’s flat.’ I used to do all those jobs and I got 10 free laps for that at the end of the practice.“All the riders went down the straights flat-out and around the corners slowly. I went slowly down the straights and as fast as possible around the corners. They thought I was an idiot, but that’s how it started.“Then the local soft drink manufacturer sponsored me with a bike, and I made my own leathers on my mother’s sewing machine. I broke what seemed like a million needles!“In my first meeting I rode, I fell off after the race was over. I found that there was a design fault in my leathers – I didn’t put enough padding in the knees. I quite badly hurt my right knee and I was in hospital for a couple of days.“Mum didn’t want me to ride. I was thinking of going to England. She was really against it, but I talked her out of that. After that crash when I was in hospital, she came up to visit me and brought a speedway magazine, so things weren’t quite so bad, but she never watched me race again, sadly.”  You mentioned that money was tight in your younger days. What jobs did you do before you headed to England? “When I was a kid, I got a delivery job at the local grocer’s shop, and I learnt about finance in one foul lesson. As I was earning, I bought a new bicycle on hire purchase. It was stolen within one week, so I had to pay over one year for something I never had - tough lesson! Then I worked full-time at an advertising agency for around a year and a half. “Three months before I was leaving for England, I got a job at the meat works. I started very early in the morning, about five o’clock, packing kidneys and all that stuff. The boss knew what I was doing it for, and really helped me to get the cash I needed. It got a bit tough on the boss because the other workers knew he was helping me and gave him some stick. But full marks, he stuck to his guns.”  What do you recall about making the move to England?“I had to go by boat which took six weeks. I got to Sydney and the boat had a fire, which delayed us by two weeks getting to England and those two weeks drained my money. I had my first cash flow problem and I remember the Sydney YMCA coming to my rescue.“I was a naïve kid. We stopped in India, where we went ashore. There were some really sad sights. There were kids with one leg and one eye or just disfigured in some sad way, mostly done so they would get more money when they were begging. I was dumbfounded and really felt sick. “I just wanted to get back on the boat. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. You were unexposed to that kind of stuff. You didn’t really know what poverty was. It was a big learning curve.“I was supposed to go to Aldershot when I came to England, but promoter Ronnie Greene sent me a message ‘will you come to Wimbledon?’ I definitely wasn’t another Ronnie Moore as a speedway rider. Aldershot was definitely my level. I was 17, I had my own special leathers, I had come halfway around the world to be a speedway rider, but I had no bike. How ridiculous!“An American team raced in England and were based in Dublin, but they closed down a couple of years earlier. Their old bikes were owned by Ronnie Greene. The boys managed to prise one away for me. I have no idea what they promised Ronnie from me. “I knew I had an old bike, but I never blamed my lack of success on bike trouble. I took the blame head-on and later in my career, I found it made me a better rider. I had a bike, I was a real speedway rider, but I knew nothing. I was in another world.”  One man who helped you with conquering the world was another New Zealand legend, two-time FIM Speedway world champion Ronnie Moore. How much of an impact did he have on your career?“I was friends with Ronnie. We belonged to the same cycle speedway team in Christchurch, so I got to know him a little bit then. I didn’t know him very much, but Ronnie was a star turn in Christchurch. He used to go to school on a 3T Triumph motorcycle. All the girls chased him, and he was a hero. I thought ‘that’s not a bad deal.’“When I got to England, he treated me like a brother. He went to England a couple of years before me and knew the ropes. Ronnie had been a hero to me since I was a school kid. He was unbelievable. He would get a maximum in most matches. I wasn’t in the team for quite a while, but when someone got hurt, I was a reserve and got their rides.“Even if Ronnie got a maximum on the Monday night, he would still be down at the track the next morning at 7am. He certainly didn’t need practice. He did it just for me. Ronnie looked after me. I probably would have made it without Ronnie. But I think it would have taken me quite a bit longer.“Later in life, it got very difficult. When I was behind Ronnie, I couldn’t give him a push and a shove. He was always my hero.”19-JSJC0188-S-BarryBriggsOveFundinRonnieMoore-190959-WorldFinal-atWembley.jpg 8.19 MB  Your first FIM Speedway World Final win came at Wembley in 1957. You won it after a run-off with Swedish legend Ove Fundin – the two of you tied on 14 points. What do you remember about the run-off?“Ove was tough; he was a much better starter than me. He made the start, and I caught him up. I got beside him on the third lap going down the back straight. Then, unbelievably, he hooked his left arm over my throttle arm.“My brain was thinking, ‘Ove, you’re going to go for a whopper here,’ Now the pressure was on me. I had to stay right on the white line 100 percent because if I had entered the corner and drifted off the white line, I would have been excluded. I stayed right on the line. Ove ended up in a heap in the fence. Even Ove couldn’t turn the corner with his missing left arm. Whoopee, I was world champion!”  Incredibly, you won your other three FIM Speedway World Finals with 15-point maximums – at Wembley in 1958 and in Gothenburg in 1964 and 1966 …“Some riders won their finals with 12 points. I could never do that. I would get 14 and finish second or something like that. I wasn’t the best rider there, but without being boastful, with Ove or Ivan Mauger’s mechanic, I figure that probably I could have won eight finals.“I came up with the theory that you go into a World Final cold. One time I went to Swindon to warm everything up and blew up my best bike. On the way back to Wembley, I ran into the crowd leaving the Newbury Races.“The traffic was bad, and I got to Wembley at about 7.30pm. I saw a copper on the side of the road and shouted ‘hey, can you get me through?’ I wouldn’t have made it without him. Everyone had a laugh when he told his story on my ’This is your Life’ television show.“There was another one in 1962 when my engine wasn’t going, and I borrowed one from a German rider mate, Josef Hofmeister. “In my first race, I dug a big hole with wheelspin, and only got a hard-earned third place. Then I won everything and finished second in the end. Afterwards I found that Hoffy's engine was at a ridiculous 18 to one compression. A normal compression is 13 to one. With the higher compression, you had to be gentle on the throttle at the starts. It was my fault for not testing it.”24-JSAW01188-IgorPlechanovBarryBriggsOveFundin-WorldFinal-1964-atGothenburg (1).jpg 7.41 MB  You nearly didn’t race in the 1959 FIM Speedway World Final. Why was that?“My promoter Ronnie Greene and the Speedway Control Board bought in a rule that the maximum he could pay me for my New Zealand return fare was £250. The cheapest boat fare I could get was £280, so I said, ‘it’s £280 - final offer.’ Their reply was ‘£250 – that’s the maximum.’ My answer was ‘you can stick your speedway, I’m finished.’“My wife Junie and I flew back to New Zealand at a cost of £700, where I didn’t ride. There was a World Final coming up with no world champion. I was a stone and a half overweight and had no bike. I only came back to sell my record shop. I felt that the English part of my life was finished. “I did come back. It cost someone around £1,000 to bring me back to Wembley, where I finished third. Thanks to the SCB and Ronnie G for getting me back to the UK, but unfortunately not as the No.1 prepared speedway rider!“This was stupidity at its best. It cost them £1,000 and I was also stupid for finishing as a speedway rider for a measly £30 pounds, especially as I won the previous two World Finals. At that time, I was above all of the riders, and nobody could realistically beat me.”  You lost a finger at the 1972 World Final – your last World Final. What happened there?“I decided I wanted to be world champion one more time before retiring. My form had slipped a little and I decided that my concentration was being broken due to my role as an agent for Jawa.“When I was at the track to perform, I would be going on to the track to try and beat Ivan Mauger, Ole Olsen or any top rider, and then a rider’s mechanic would come to tell me that my shop manager had only sent them one set of valve springs instead of two – exactly what you don’t need to be a winner. So, for three months, it was ‘I’m Barry the speedway rider, please leave me alone.’“In my first ride at the 1972 Wembley Final, I was against Ivan. We had done this same procedure countless times over the years against each other. I would go straight to the tapes when the marshal dropped his arms. “I was on gate two with Ivan on gate three. I went in quickly, chose where I was going to start and quickly pulled back. Ivan kept digging his place to start but kept looking at me. He didn’t know what to do because I wouldn’t go to the start until he did. I beat Ivan by 20 lengths. “I was on great form and confident. I knew Bernt Persson was in my second race. I made the start and going into the first corner, I should have stuck Persson over the grass. “Stupidly I gave him room and suffered the consequences. Photos show Persson going straight on instead of following the white line. I kind of blame him, but not completely. It was also me. I am supposed to control that situation. But stupidly I gave him something that he certainly in my estimation didn’t deserve. “Persson knocked me off and a Russian ran me over. When Persson came under me, my hand went up his back wheel. My finger was pulled off. It was still on there, but it was hanging. Ivan ran up and told me to tape it up for the rest of the meeting. ‘No good, Sprouts. It’s knackered,’ I said.“They took me to Mount Vernon Hospital. That’s where all the Battle of Britain pilots were looked after. They told me that I could keep the finger, but it would probably be stiff. They said it was better to have it off.”  That’s clearly not your best Wembley moment, but the place must still hold special memories for you …“I think I rode at Wembley about 50 times. A Wembley rider like Freddie Williams would have done more meetings there. But no sportsman or any kind of entertainer has done what I did at Wembley – that’s what I’m told. I raced for 21 consecutive years at Wembley, which I am told is a record. I don’t know. No matter how good a footballer was, they couldn’t have done that. They aren’t going to play there every year.”  You received an MBE for services to sport from the British royal family and finished second in the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year vote in 1964 and again in 1966 – the year England won the FIFA World Cup at Wembley. Was that last one unexpected?“We were a popular sport. In those days, we were virtually filling Wembley for every World Final. We did it all the time with speedway. They would get 50,000 for league matches.“Wembley at the time had the world’s largest supporters’ club with 60,000-odd members. Five to 10 buses went to every Wembley away meeting. Speedway was big-time. Today people have no idea. “How did I get second place in BBC Sports Personality of the Year? Well, in football, a Tottenham fan wouldn’t vote for an Arsenal player or vice versa. But speedway people will vote for an individual like they did for me.“I was thinking, ‘the last thing I want is to win that!’ It would have been ridiculous. We had the FIFA World Cup in England. It was bad enough me being second. I was second to England captain Bobby Moore and ahead of Geoff Hurst, who scored the hat-trick. It just shows that speedway people would vote for me.”26-JSAW01821-AntoniWorynaBarryBriggsSverreHarrfeldt-230966-WorldFinal-atGothenburg.jpg 7.89 MB  Bikes with laydown engines – motors that sit horizontally in the frame – have been commonplace since Speedway GP launched in 1995. You raced with upright engines throughout your career, but you created a very early laydown. How did that go?“I was one of only riders to make a laydown speedway bike. It nearly killed me. I never could get the carburettor sorted.“After finishing in second place in a qualifying meeting the day before at Invercargill, New Zealand, I simply was not winning the starts – the very reason why I made my laydown. “During testing the day after, I was only going from the start to the first corner. I wasn’t even wearing a steel shoe and we precisely timed every start to the first corner. I felt that the laydown's big advantage was its low centre of gravity, giving you more controllable grip. “I had finished for the day and decided to do one last run. All of sudden the throttle jammed flat-out and didn’t shut off. I did what I’d done 100 times in my speedway life – I just threw the bike away. Then the spinning back wheel should take the bike away from you by ten yards or so.“I can’t remember why, but I was wearing this new cut-out string on my wrist. The bike went until the string pulled out, stopping the spark. But when the spark stops, the bike just falls on the top of the fallen rider – me.“Lucky an Aussie surgeon was passing through Invercargill and saved me. But it was tough on my wife Junie, who along with a mate had to try and keep heat in my body as I lay there shaking badly.“American rider Ernie Roccio had a laydown when he was at Wimbledon. It was a JAP one. They did the carburettor in a funny way and he never really got it going right. I don’t remember him racing it in Britain. He said he had it going alright in America, but Britain was a different thing.“I looked at the concept and thought ‘that’s a good idea.’ I was in New Zealand, staying at my mate Tommy’s place. I was in my bedroom going to sleep and I grabbed a book off the shelf. It was called ‘Tuning for Speed.’ “The last Norton was a laydown engine. I also remembered the Italian Aermacchi road racer bike, which was much quicker through the corners than the conventional uprights. I looked at it and thought ‘that could be good for speedway.’“I built the thing. To me, it was brilliant. But the only reason I built it was to make the starts. I rode the bike in New Zealand and that’s when I got hurt. “I only had to do four meetings to get to the World Final and this bike, to me, was going to fly out of the starts. I would have beaten them all no problem at 55. “I feel that I would have definitely been world champion if I had been Polish and lived right next to a track. When something didn’t work, you could just wheel it back into the workshop, fix it and try again. Instead in England, you had to go all the way to Weymouth for testing, which was a full-day task, only to find in five minutes something was wrong, or you simply ran out of time. “Laydowns are great because the weight is low. To me, with the right carburettor, it would have been lethal against all the uprights.“Through the Speedway Star you see crash photos you would have never seen from the JAPs and two-valve Jawas. The laydown bikes when they get unexpected grip just take off in whatever direction they are heading. “Looking back, the authorities should have banned my laydown. To me, they just made speedway more dangerous. All they really did was double the costs of bikes. A £30 carburettor is now over £1,000 I’m told, but boy I would have loved that £1,000 carb just for four meetings to get to another World Final.”  Your youngest son Tony followed you on to the track. He suffered serious injuries and was paralysed while racing for Reading at Coventry in 1981. Obviously, this played a big part in him designing his lifesaving ’No Pain Barrier’ air fences. What was going through your mind at the time of his crash?“When he crashed, I was in the pits, and I was thinking ‘what’s happening? Nobody is touching him or moving him.’ I was really nervous about it. Then I realised they thought it was something serious. It was Dr Peter Kenyon, who saved him.“He was transferred to a specialist spinal unit in Oswestry, with police closing the motorway to take him down there. The hospital in Oswestry was fantastic.“He was paralysed for two to three months. He was only moving his eyes. I couldn’t handle it. I had to get out of there at times. My wife Junie sat there every day, rubbing his hands. Then one day, Tony's little finger moved. It all started from there. Then he had to learn to walk again.“This shattering experience got Tony focused on designing an air fence for speedway. Tony was also involved when we did a Hall of Fame display at Donington Park Museum, and he helped me put together our display ‘Lest we Forget’, a list naming over 120 riders that had given their lives to our sport. That was sad, especially as I knew over 50 percent of the boys.   “He went off motorbikes, but now he is the same as me. We ride all the time. I ride many times in the forests in Poland. Tony comes to California at Christmas, and we get in plenty of riding.“The crash was a tough one for him, his mum and me as well. I was the bloke who set the example for him, and he was such a good rider. Nobody realised quite how good.“But the amount of action Tony's air fences have experienced over the years is unbelievable. I wonder how many riders have been saved from serious injury, or of course even worse.”IMG_9220.jpeg 73.58 KB  You came up with, designed and developed a key safety feature for speedway – the dirt deflector. Who has benefitted most from this?“Firstly, it was to protect the riders from the six-inch wide jet of dirt that previously flew off the back wheel at an amazing velocity into the following rider’s face. If it’s adjusted to the FIM rule book, the stream of dirt only hits the riders below their kneecaps, making things unbelievably so much safer.“The gain to promoters has been amazing. A minimum of at least 80 percent of meetings that would normally have been cancelled now take place after the introduction of the deflector simply because the riders can now see. It showed its importance in this year’s first Speedway GP in Croatia, which would have definitely been cancelled without the use of deflectors.“When I started the designing process of a deflector, my full concern was riders’ safety – for them to be able to see and ride on wet and muddy tracks. “My first thoughts looking back were two-fold, first the riders and then the fans, especially people like the two busloads of supporters from Scotland that had spent their hard-earned cash to come to Swindon and watch one of my Golden Greats meetings, which was rained off while the sun was shining!“To me, the promoters were the biggest winners money-wise, saving them thousands of pounds over the years by not having to cancel meetings due to wet tracks.”  You famously gave Steve McQueen a few lessons on how to slide a speedway bike. How did you meet him and how did he get on?“I bought my house in California from film director Bruce Brown. Bruce made a big hit motorcycle movie called On Any Sunday. McQueen put the money in and starred in it. Bruce became mates with McQueen.“I took Bruce out to a small speedway track for him to try and ride a speedway bike. The track was part of a local motocross park. Bruce was getting ready for his ride when two motocrossers turned up. Low and behold, it was Steve Mc and his mate Roger DeCoster, who was a world-champion motocrosser. I already knew Roger, so we finished up with three new potential speedway riders.“I was dressed in a pair of shorts and trainers. I didn’t even have a steel boot on. Looking back, I hope they didn’t think I was showboating, as it’s like falling off a log for me. It’s like walking. It looks easy, but it’s not unless you know exactly what you are doing. It certainly takes time to learn to do it.“Bruce, McQueen and DeCoster … all three crashed. Steve and Bruce took it well, but Roger was upset. Steve looked up to Roger as God on a motorcycle, but Roger got a shock. Speedway is tough and a completely different kettle of fish to doing amazing things on his motocross bike.“All three were good motorcyclists and could slide their motocross bikes to beat the band. I’m sure with a little more time, they all would have quickly become much better. But we only did it for a day.”  You also got to know legendary ex-Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone. How did the two of you meet and is he a speedway fan?“Bernie is an old speedway supporter. He used to go to Wembley for the Speedway World Finals on his Ariel Square Four bike. I was in his offices with his TV man Alex Whittaker, discussing a cartoon film of the world-famous English dog Fred Bassett, which I was getting drawn in Russia for a half-hour cartoon film through a Finish rider mate, Ila Teromaa. But that’s another story!“Bernie found out that I was with Alex, and he came to visit me. Alex said Bernie had never been into his office, but he came down and spent a couple of hours quizzing me.“I like Bernie. At one stage, he asked me about putting speedway tracks in at the Formula 1 races – so that we could have speedway the night before the F1 as an added attraction. I can’t remember what stopped it.”  Away from the sport, you had a number of business ventures both during and after your racing career …“When I was at Wimbledon, I opened a record shop in Garratt Lane. Rock star Tommy Steele was going to open it, but due to commitments, his brother Colin Hicks, also a rock and roller, opened it for me.“I also started a driving school. I ran that for nine months. I was there to make money and I’d tell my customers the truth, ‘hey, you only need a few lessons to brighten your driving skills up.’ Ridiculously, these were mostly the ones that failed. The ones who were, in my opinion, not so good, passed. I wasn’t built to stand that.“At the time, all driving schools had their name plates on the front and back bumpers. One thing I did for the driving-school world was having the Barry Briggs Driving School name plate double-sided and fitted across the roof. Now everyone does it. It was smart, but I made no money from that little gem!“I’m an inventor of sorts – always looking to improve things around me. I made a golf putter. I sent my new putter to the R&A, and they said, ‘this is wrong and that’s wrong.’ I told them, ‘It’s made exactly to your rulebook.’ They replied, ‘you can only use that as a rough guide.’“I did it again and it passed. Every month, all the manufacturers get a circular letter from the R&A. I may be a one-man band, but I still get one, even though I have only made one putter. “Normally you swing a putter across your body. Mine you simply swung beside your body, just like bowling a ball forward underarm. I didn’t try to sell it. It was just the thrill of the chase.“Two years ago, the USPGA asked a top US top golfer not to produce the very same type of putter because it could cause chaos – just like the long putter did, so I didn’t feel such an idiot then!”  Diamond mining in Liberia was one of your wilder adventures. How did that come about?“While Tony was in hospital in Oswestry, former speedway rider Ray Thackwell came to visit. He was into a gold mine in Wales. It was the Royal Clogau St David’s gold mine. It supplied all the royal gold for wedding rings and crowns. He owed me money and I took part of the shares. Then I was on the board.“As I was in that field, I met people in Australia who had gold mines all over the world. We went to Liberia. Tony was getting over his broken neck and the laydown experiment had cut me open as well. I was also having a few problems. We healed because we were close together.“The plan was to locate diamonds and then sell the site to a company with the resources to extract them.“We got a lot of diamonds. They were hard to get to. The ground consists of different layers of material; one of them being where the diamonds are. Normally old rivers are best. “The machines to get down to them cost a load of money. You need bulldozers and heavy equipment. I figured out we could do it with water. I went down to St Austell to see the pottery people. They do that in the clay pits. I found a speedway fan who really helped to sort me out. “We did it with high pressure water from the adjoining River Loffa. We washed off the top layers of dirt and pumped it out of the way. When you get to the layer of diamondiferous materials, you have to be very careful; that’s where your payoff is.“We were living in the jungle and had made our own mud hut. We were there for four years. We found a load of diamonds and had all the paperwork done with the Liberian Government to go on the stock market in England with our mine. But our luck went sour when the world’s stock market went up the wall on Black Monday in 1987.“Our mine was valued at $43 million, but this market crash just finished our activities in Liberia right there and then. The whole world went upside down and it was virtually worthless. We just washed our hands and moved on to our next adventure. There’s no use crying over spilled milk!”Liberia.jpg 152.64 KB  You have never been afraid of taking chances on or off the track, but what was going through your mind when you decided to drive your 1977 Rookie of the Year, 200-mph Indy car at the famous Indianapolis track in the States at the age of 81?“Your own brain at times is the most negative part of your body, screaming, ‘you’re going to die! You’re going to die.’ My answer is ‘no! I’m going to learn this’, so I just drove on.“I was determined to learn how to do this. I got up to a 150-mph lap. My car qualified in 1977 with a 185-mph lap. I think with another 50 laps, I would have reached the 185-mph qualifying time. I am told that I’m the fastest-ever 81-year-old to have done a 150-mph lap at Indy. Maybe I’m the only 81-year-old with the brains – or lack of – to drive at Indianapolis at that age.“I had a rough idea what I was trying to achieve, and quickly understood that you don’t wrestle with the steering – a sure way to get into massive trouble. It’s just like trying to guide a missile, you have to go softly, softly, guiding it away from any potentially dangerous objects, fences etc.”Indy.jpg 146.35 KB  Even at 88 you still ride motorbikes all over the world. How have you maintained your sense of adventure and what’s the secret to keeping yourself so active?“If you want to do something, there is always a way. I just think, ‘I need to do that, so I have to do this.’ And I do it.“I think age catches up on you gradually. You have to be able to bear a little bit of pain now and then. I have trouble with my leg. My doctor tells me ‘Barry, you don’t walk enough or drink enough water.’ He’s right on both counts. I’ve tried harder over the last couple of years – a big improvement. “It’s all about your want. Some people say ‘oh, I am getting old’ and accept what they are given. You can’t do that. You might have to do something more to do what you want to do. “I still do the same stuff. I don’t know how many miles I rode in the Lake District recently over five days, I did a lot of riding over and around the passes and mountains. I was probably doing four hours a day. I normally do around a three-hour ride twice a week in California. “I normally try to ride off-road, in the mountains with narrow trails, rocks and stuff like that. You must stand up over the rough dirt to ride well. You can be sitting down and then you get a big change in terrain, so you have to stand to be in full control when you’re at speed.“The full movement is like going to the gym – with a normal seat setup I can only last around 20 minutes. My legs have real trouble doing the full movement repeatedly, so I made a pillion seat fitted on to the back of the normal seat, which means while sitting on the pillion, I am only a half an inch from standing. On that system, I can easily ride for three hours. “I have made the bike to suit my body. I mount my bike, held upright by the side prop stand. Then it’s just like a cowboy, when he puts his foot into the stirrup and swings up on to his horse. The only difference is it’s up on the footrest instead of the stirrup to swing over on to my bike. The advancing years have made it harder to lift my leg high enough. “Everything is designed around my body capabilities. My hand with the missing finger has no real strength in it, so I have made something flat for the hand to sit on. I’ve taken flat cycle grips and grafted them on to my originals, so I don’t have to grip as strongly. “I find at times that I have to think completely differently because I want to ride my bike with a worn body. At times I have to think out of the box to find a way of achieving this.”  What a rider and what a life! Thanks very much to Barry for speaking to us and check back soon for our next Stars of the Century interview.P1000578.jpeg 102.06 KB

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FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY | TONY RICKARDSSON

FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY | OLE OLSEN

FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY | TAI WOFFINDEN

FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY: GREG HANCOCK

FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY | BARRY BRIGGS MBE

Stars of the century

26/09/2023

FIM SPEEDWAY STARS OF THE CENTURY | TONY RICKARDSSON

The Speedway GP era has produced some of the sport’s all-time greats, but none of them have won more world titles than Swedish icon and FIM Speedway global ambassador Tony Rickardsson.  The Avesta-born legend raced and innovated his way to a record six FIM Speedway World Championships. His Cardiff wall of death, F1-style motorhome and speedway showmanship took the sport to the next level. And now TR is helping the next generation of stars as the founding father of the brand-new FIM SGP4 project – an entry-level championship aimed at riders aged 11-13 launched alongside global promoter Warner Bros. Discovery Sports and the FIM. PAUL BURBIDGE caught up with him ahead of Saturday’s DeWalt FIM Speedway GP of Poland – Torun … Well Tony, it’s 18 years since you won your sixth and final FIM Speedway World Championship, but your run as Sweden’s most recent world champion could end on Saturday. Polish icon Bartosz Zmarzlik heads into the DeWalt FIM Speedway of Poland – Torun with a six-point advantage over Fredrik Lindgren. Can Freddie end Sweden’s wait for a Speedway GP world champion? “He has nothing to lose really. From Freddie’s point of view, he just has everything to win in Torun. That’s sometimes a lot easier as a rider compared to what Zmarzlik has to do.  “Of course, Zmarzlik is already defending the title, but he had it in the bag and suddenly there was a hole in the bag, the title fell out of it, and they are racing for it again. Who would have thought that a couple of weeks back?! “I am sure Freddie will just go there to put himself in the best position possible and try to win the meeting. That’s what he has to do. Then he just has to hope Zmarzlik doesn’t make the final. “This is the opportunity he has been waiting for and Freddie has had a long, tough career. I think he is just going to go for it. Who knows? I think he has a pretty good chance actually.” How much would a Lindgren Speedway GP world-title win lift Swedish speedway? “It would be just awesome for Swedish speedway if we had Freddie as world champion. It will help to create the interest we need to get speedway kick-started again here in Sweden. In that sense, I am really hoping Freddie can win the title. If we had a world champion like Freddie, I am sure he would be a great ambassador for the sport.” You certainly put speedway in the spotlight during your racing days, but how did it all begin? How did you get interested in speedway? “I come from a motorsport family. My father Stig was a former motocross rider and I have a brother, who is eight years older than me – Kent. He also rode speedway. “I liked all kinds of sport. I played everything – tennis, ice hockey, table tennis, you name it. I was all into sport when I was young. But I always had motorsport around me in the family. “When my father stopped riding motocross, he started to make everything – like speedway frames, speedway engines, ice racing frames and motocross bikes. He loved to invent new stuff. My brother and I became test pilots for some of his crazy projects, so I grew up in a workshop really. “My father built everything in the garage under the house. I rode his frames long into my 500cc times. He just bent up the tubes and welded them together in the workshop. My dad was always heavily involved with my engines. “If I wanted to hang with my dad and my brother when I was younger, it was in the workshop. When Kent started youth speedway, I was there cheering for him, seeing what he was doing, and I learned a lot from him. “During every breakfast at the weekend and during every dinner during the week, we talked speedway. I feel sorry for my mother, who had to sit and listen to us talk about engines, how to ride a speedway bike, what was working and what was not. “That was the environment I grew up in. I had my first bike before I even had a bicycle. When I was eight or nine, I got my first homemade youth bike, which I took along when my brother was riding.  “It was a great environment to grow up in because a lot of the focus was on my brother. Even when I started my youth racing, all the focus was on him because he had just stepped up to the big bikes. My dad unloaded my bike and gave me a can of petrol, and I was looking after myself on the training track on the infield. “I was there waiting and when my brother rode out on the big track, I always started up my bike and I raced him on the small track in the middle. I remember annoying him so much – after every practice, I would say, ‘I beat you!’ because I was quicker around the small infield track than he was around the big track! I have always been really competitive with him, and I think he hated it.  “He taught me how to ride a speedway bike in my younger years, even if I was the kind of boy who thought I knew best. But when I was in trouble, he always taught me new techniques. “My brother was the first one to help me into a club when I was 15 and I moved up to the big bikes. He rode for a club in Stockholm, and he helped me to get a contract with that club. We always travelled together, and we rode in the same team for years. I started off as a reserve and he was in the team. “I have so much to thank my big brother and my father for, for all the help and guidance they gave me early on in my career.” Who were your heroes when you followed speedway as a child? “When we didn’t sit around the dinner table and talk speedway, I watched it on TV. This was around the time when VHS recorders were launched, and we were one of the first in the neighborhood to have one. “I remember we had the 1981 World Final recorded and I watched it every day when I came home from school – every day for I don’t know how many years. I remember every word the commentators said from that World Final, when (American icon) Bruce Penhall won at Wembley. Bruce really was my big idol when I was a kid. “There was so little media at the time. I didn’t have Speedway Star magazine and I couldn’t read English. There were no papers covering speedway at the time. It was only once a year that they showed speedway on Swedish TV – that was the World Final. You could watch speedway on TV for two hours per year in Sweden! “Luckily, we recorded that 1981 World Final, and it was just Bruce’s riding style that I loved. He had two epic races with (Danish stars) Tommy Knudsen and Ole Olsen. In those days, you rarely saw a rider pass someone around the outside. He did it both times – inside and outside. I had never seen a rider do anything like that. It was just unbelievable. He was my hero from that time.” You won your first Swedish Championship at the tender age of 20 in 1990 and then FIM Speedway World Championship silver in Gothenburg in 1991. Did you expect things to progress so quickly in your early years? “To answer that, I need to reverse back a year or two. I went to a training camp in England in 1988 or 1989 with my Swedish club. I was really hoping to make an impact there to try and get a contract in England. “I have been driving ever since I turned 18 and I took the car over with my girlfriend. We lived in the car there for a week or two and I tried to ride in second half meetings to show off and hopefully get a contract, but nobody was interested in me at the time. “I had to go back home again without any contract proposals from any British clubs. In those days, the only chance to turn professional was to ride in Britain, and that’s all I wanted. “When we were taking the boat home from Harwich back to Gothenburg, my old trainer told me: ‘When you come home, I think you should sell all your speedway bikes and start to play ice hockey again because you’re never going to make it in speedway.’ “I was sad about that for a while, but then I thought, ‘No, I am really going to show him what I can do in this sport.’ This is something that followed me throughout my career. I really wanted to prove him wrong. Luckily, I did. That was really the start of things changing.  “It sounds fantastic, winning the Swedish Final in 1990 when I was 20. But to be fair, I wasn’t really a worthy Swedish champion at the time. I was probably the third or fourth best rider at my local club in Stockholm. But I was riding at a very good club. We had Per Jonsson, Jimmy Nilsen, Erik Stenlund etc. “The track conditions for that Swedish Final suited me really well. It was raining and the track was really rough. Per came home as the reigning world champion, but I just had a great meeting. “Up until then, I had never actually ridden for Sweden in a test match. I had never been selected. But after winning the Swedish title that night, I got selected for the Swedish team that went to Australia for a tournament that winter. “These meetings were shown on TV, and I did quite okay in the test matches against Australia. When I came home, I had a call from British clubs Coventry and Ipswich to join them. I opted to go to Ipswich, which was great.  “Ipswich promoter John Louis took really good care of me in my first year in England and obviously I was riding with his son (former world No.3 and now Speedway GP commentator) Chris Louis, who is a great friend of mine. He also helped and looked after me really well. “In those days, you had to choose whether you raced in the qualifiers for the World Under-21 Championship or the World Championship. You couldn’t do both. I opted to try and qualify for the real World Final.  “I made it as the reserve for the semi-final. But then (British rider) Andy Smith got injured and I came into the line-up and qualified for the World Final, which was a little bit of a surprise. “Nobody expected me to win a silver medal in Gothenburg. People were laughing before the meeting about what I was supposed to do. If you look in the history books, it looks fantastic. But to be honest, I was really overperforming at that age on these big occasions.”You won your first FIM Speedway World Championship at Vojens in 1994 – the last-ever FIM Speedway World Final. The Speedway GP series was launched in 1995. How did you feel about the change from one-day World Finals to racing for the sport’s biggest prize over a series of rounds? “I was really excited. It really felt like the sport was growing and there was going to be a change. The one-off World Final was a great night. But it was a great night once a year.  “I was hoping that the Grand Prix would be able to grow the sport. We would have more meetings around the world. I was excited for the Grand Prix. “But if there had been a Grand Prix system in 1994, I would never have been world champion that year. Luckily it was a one-off World Final, and I peaked that night and won it. That was kind of the name of my game at that time. I could be very good on one occasion, but not over a whole year! “I came into that World Final at Vojens with no expectations. It was a year when I had a lot of engine problems. It was just at the beginning of the time when the laydown engines came in. My bike kept blowing up all the time. “Just a week or so before the World Final, I didn’t think I would do any good at all. But the engines stayed together. I was a little bit surprised to end up in the run-off with Craig Boyce and Hans Nielsen.” There has never been a run-off for the Speedway GP World Championship gold medal. You were the last rider to win the world title in a run-off. What do you remember about that battle with Danish icon Hans Nielsen and Aussie ace Craig Boyce in Vojens? “Hans won the toss for the run-off and could pick his favourite gate. I just had the same feeling Freddie Lindgren probably has now, ‘It’s going to be now or never!’ “Hans made the start, and I took a big sweep around the outside. I checked before the start and there was some really soft material right on the inside line coming out of bend four. I saw Hans drifting a little bit wide, so I cut back and hit that little piece of soft material.  “It just launched me past Hans and I won the title. It was unbelievable at the time. It still feels unbelievable. Beating Hans in Vojens was excellent.” It took a few years until you won your first world title of the Speedway GP era, but then you won back-to-back titles in 1998 and 1999. You did it again in 2001 and 2002. Did it take some time for you to adapt to the new Speedway GP format? “It was new to all of us. We had to try to adapt and change our mindsets. I ended up second in 1995 – the first year of Speedway GP. Then I had, in my view, two bad years in 1996 and 1997. I still finished fourth in the championship.  “I think it was mostly mindset. I had a lot of crashes, and I was riding half injured in 1995, 1996 and 1997. In 1995, I broke my collarbone during the first heat of the last round in Hackney.  “I needed to secure a few more points to get the silver medal, so I kept riding with a broken collarbone. I remember laying in the hospital at the end of the year, thinking, ‘Man, I have a great desire to be world champion, but it cannot be this painful to become world champion.’ “Maybe I took a step back for a couple of years – just to get the hunger back. But in 1998, I was so, so prepared. I was really fit. I had upgraded my bikes and the whole organisation. I was ready for it. I was ready to take on the world.” You became a real innovator in the Speedway GP paddock with your famous motorhome, the Formula 1-style headphones and the Rickardsson Racing team clothing all taking the sport to another level. What did you hope it would add to your game? “To be honest, it was not necessary to have the big race truck, the big headphones or the nice teamwear we had. During 1997, I felt I couldn’t push much further with myself, but I felt if I could do something good for the sport, it would also be good for me. “Something I wanted to do was lift the sport and the profile of the sport. It was more of a PR trick to have a big race truck. Trust me – you don’t get the bikes there any quicker with a big race truck! “We had team costumes, and we painted all the toolboxes the same colour as the bikes and teamwear. We made the pits look really nice, and it was really to attract new people and lift the profile of the sport. Up until then, speedway in Sweden had a very low profile. “There was this image of dirty mechanics with the cigarette in their mouths. That’s something I wanted to change and it’s probably something I am most proud of achieving. It lifted the sport, especially in Sweden, to the same profile as sports like ice hockey and football. “I laugh at it now, but at that time, I believed speedway could be as big as Formula 1. I honestly believed that. I was aiming for the stars. I didn’t get there, but at the time, there was a feeling and a sensation that we were really going somewhere with the sport.” Your efforts culminated in that phenomenal 2005 Speedway GP season when you equalled New Zealand great Ivan Mauger’s record of six world titles.  You did it with a record six SGP rounds from a possible nine, scoring 196 championship points – a total only matched by Danish racer Nicki Pedersen from 11 rounds in 2007. What took you to another level that year? “It was a fantastic year, and I didn’t expect what happened. I hadn’t made many changes. I was riding the same bikes as the year before more or less. I was just in the zone. “I had started to feel I was coming towards the end of my career. When it kind of landed in my head that this would be my last year in the sport, it kind of gave me some extra energy to give it a last push. I didn’t tell anybody. It was more for myself – that I knew 2005 would be my last year. “It was just a fantastic year. You talk about the stats, but it could have been even better. I was leading the Swedish GP final in Eskilstuna up until the second or third lap when there was a crash and a re-run. I didn’t win the re-run. If I had won the re-run, it would have been seven Speedway GP wins in a row – going back to the end of 2004. “It was actually Nicki Pedersen who stopped that. He went under Bjarne Pedersen and knocked him off in Eskilstuna. He got excluded and then Crumpy beat me in the re-run. But hey, you can’t complain!” What had prompted you to consider quitting? “I was drained, even if everything looked great with all these big race trucks. I also made a commitment to myself that I would always sit and sign autographs until the last person had got their autograph. I was doing so much media – not only in Sweden, but everywhere I went. “I was tired. I was drained. I was done. I thought, ‘One more year and that will be it.’ I come to what my hero since I was a kid, Bruce Penhall, did. He retired when he was world champion in 1982. That had always been my ambition. I wanted to retire when I was at my best.  “I was having a fantastic year. Riding on the air fence at Cardiff summed it all up for me. That was actually the night when I told my race team that I was going to retire.” Your first turn from the 2005 FIM Speedway GP of Great Britain – Cardiff final lives on in YouTube legend. Talk us through what was going through your mind when you were in the middle of that legendary wall of death in the final? “To make the story short, I was aiming to bounce off the fence. I was planning to hit the fence, but I was only planning to bounce off it. “As soon as I hit the dirt that was laying on the fence, it was just like one-to-one traction. It just pulled my arms so hard. The only thing I was thinking was, ‘If I shut off now, I will die.’ I would have flown over the fence and into the grandstand. “Coming around and getting out of the corner, I was thinking, ‘Don’t get the footrest hooked on the air fence.’ We had an air fence all the way out then. The foot peg was literally millimetres off getting caught up in the air fence. “It was the best feeling in the world when I made it. I was thinking, ‘Now I have done everything I wanted to do in speedway!’ I was so lucky this didn’t happen in a league meeting in front of 200 people – it was at Cardiff, in the final and I couldn’t have picked a better moment! I did it one time and never again!” You did continue racing into 2006 and didn’t hang up your kevlars at the end of 2005 as planned. What prompted that and what finally convinced you to retire halfway through the 2006 campaign? “The only thing I regret from my career was that I wasn’t strong enough to retire at the end of 2005. I got pushed by my Swedish club (Masarna) to continue. They had no replacement.  “But I wasn’t there in 2006. I wasn’t there mentally to ride a speedway bike. The energy had gone. “I had also had some bad crashes over the years. I have had a lot of concussions. I have had 16 concussions. During 2005, I had one. I had a rest for a week or two and came back and raced. I had a great meeting, but the next day, it was like I was concussed again. “Then I realised, ‘Man, I am very close to doing something bad here.’ That’s why I wanted to retire. I didn’t want to leave the sport on a stretcher. I struggled with the after-effects of this for quite a few years after I retired.” One big honour you received away from the track was the 2005 Jerring Award – Sweden’s equivalent of honours like BBC Sports Personality of the Year or the Przeglad Sportowy Polish Athlete of the Year prize. You are the only speedway rider to have won this. How much did that mean? “Of course, I was riding speedway to become world champion and that was my main aim. Coming from motorsport, you hardly get invited into that group of sportspeople – it’s normally ice hockey, football, tennis or golf stars. “Just to get invited to start with was great. Then the whole thing grew up and I became sportsman of the year in 2005. The shortlist is voted for by a committee and then the Jerring Award is voted for by all the Swedish people – they phone in to vote for you. It really is the people’s choice. “I would say it’s the prize Swedish athletes hold the highest. To lift that in 2005 was amazing.” In your final years in the sport, you started to make the move into car racing with the Porsche Carrera Cup in Scandinavia. How did you get involved? “Early on in 2004 or 2005, I got an invitation to drive a VIP car that Porsche had. They were inviting different racing people – everyone from motorcycle guys to F1 legend Mika Hakkinen. “We participated in the Scandinavian Carrera Cup, which was just starting up at the time. There were only eight cars in the field. I went there, drove the car and did one test day. Then I was straight into the races. I finished third and fourth in my races. “The Porsche people said, ‘Wow! When you want to retire from speedway, give us a call. We will give you a works drive. We will get you a car and we will sponsor you.’ “Then I started to think I wanted to try a bit more car racing. During 2005, I told them, ‘I am ready to retire. Do you stick to your promise?’ They said, ‘Yes, absolutely!’ I went straight in to drive for Porsche. I did a three-year contract for them and was their ambassador in Sweden. “The plan was to have a small setup with a car and a trailer. But then I had some other sponsors who came on board like Swedish Match, who sponsored me during my speedway career. I told them I was retiring, but when they heard I was going into the Porsche Carrera Cup, they asked if they could join. I said, ‘Of course!’ Swedish Match joined me as a sponsor together with Porsche. “In the first year, I had a one-car team. Then in the second year, Martin Ohlin joined the team. I had a two-car team. I was looking after Swedish Match customers, catering for them during the weekends – we had between 100 and 150 guests per race event. The Porsche Carrera Cup was growing. We helped them with some TV rights. The class grew for year two and there were 30 cars on the starting line. It was getting televised and getting good media coverage.”  What else have you done with your time since you retired from speedway? “During my time with Porsche, Swedish Match asked me to apply for a position that they had. I didn’t know much about it, but I did what they asked. I went through the whole process of applying for the job as area manager for Eastern Europe. I never thought I would get it. I didn’t understand why they asked me to apply for the job. It turned out there were two people left – me and another one. They chose me. “In my third year as a Porsche driver, I was travelling around the world to see all our factory plants. At that time, Swedish Match was the second largest cigar producer in the world. “On the day after my last race for Porsche, I started to work for Swedish Match on the Monday. I closed down the racing business and went full-on with that job. I stayed with Swedish Match for 14 years. I retired at the end of 2022.” In 2021, you joined Warner Bros. Discovery Sports as global ambassador for FIM Speedway. How did your new role come about? “Surprisingly, I didn’t get many calls about doing anything in speedway for a long time. I think it’s strange. I had just been working and this was really the first time I had got a serious call from a serious player to ask if I wanted to be involved somehow in the sport again. “I said, ‘Yes, absolutely. I would love to.’ By that time, I had been working for a company that was on the stock exchange as an international area manager. This meant I had vast experience of the financial side of big business. It came at the perfect time for me. I took the chance with both hands. I wanted to be part of building something new in speedway. “It was a really nice experience. My official title is that I am an ambassador for FIM Speedway. But obviously I chipped in some ideas and part of that is the youth programme – SGP4 – which I thought was essential for the sport’s long-term future. Warner Bros. Discovery Sports has been so supportive with that project.” You played a key role in launching the FIM SGP4 project – designing a brand-new bike for the FIM Speedway Youth World Cup aimed at riders aged 11-13 to help them take their first steps on to the pyramid.  The first FIM SGP4 event took place at Swedish track Malilla on July 15, featuring riders from 11 different nations and four continents. How proud are you of the bike and the championship you have created for the sport’s youngest stars? “I am more than happy. But it’s absolutely wrong to say the product I created. Of course, I put the bits together, but so many people have been instrumental in helping this project – there are too many names to list really. “It has really been a huge team effort from very wise people – both old and young in different countries. They have all given a lot of input. I have been the one to collect all the data and input and put the product together. That has really been my job.  “What I have been doing with SGP4 is more or less what I have been doing when I was working as an area manager – putting a lot of data and information together, getting something done and making it happen. So many families looked after and tested the bikes. I had five bikes out there at one stage.  “Building the right product involved some important decisions. The parts for it needed to last for a long time, but they needed to be affordable. There needed to be trade-offs to get things to the right level. I could have built a super, super bike, but it would have cost €25,000. “Really the aim was to produce a bike in small quantities, with a high-quality chassis and a strong enough engine that riders could slide it. I was very determined that it should be a four-stroke bike so that it actually rides as a big bike but in a small package. I think we have succeeded in that. I also wanted it to be cheaper than a motocross bike – that was also our aim, and we have succeeded in all these areas. That’s super good. “As for the championship, I think it will continue to be a super nice family event, as we saw in Malilla. As we get more riders into it, the programme can be extended. We can have youth academies in different countries or training schools – and not only for the riders, but also for the parents. We can show them how to maintain bikes and how to help the kids avoid feeling too much pressure at a young age. I am super, super keen on this programme. “And working with kids like we did in Malilla is my favourite part of the work. I just love it. I was just having a ball.” Your legend lives on in FIM Speedway! Thanks for your incredible contribution to the sport, Tony, and thanks for sharing your story. 

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