This is a companion piece to Richard Mills’ article ‘The Russians are Coming!’ Entangled Peripheries and Cold War Competition in Motorcycle Speedway recently published in History Workshop Journal 97.
In January 2024, Rishi Sunak fielded a rare enquiry on the topic of motorcycle speedway during Prime Minister’s Question Time. The sport had been thrust into the parliamentary spotlight by the latest success in a sustained campaign against plans to develop Coventry Stadium for housing. The Prime Minister described the stadium, which has hosted multiple international events since opening in 1928 and was home to the Coventry Bees Speedway Club between 1948 and 2016, as ‘a historic motorsport venue’. He went on to state that ‘whilst it’s been a shame to see it fall into disrepair, I hope that the decision [of the Planning Inspector to uphold Rugby Council’s rejection of the planning application] enables the possibility of both speedway and stock car racing to return.’ This was a major development in an impressive campaign, but at the time of writing there are no signs that the current owners are willing to welcome the resumption of motorsport at their valuable asset.
In many ways, Coventry’s story encapsulates British speedway’s often precarious boom-and-bust history. The sport enjoyed heydays in the 1930s and 1940s, when the prestigious Wembley World Final proved capable of luring crowds of over 90,000. The loathed Entertainment Tax and the spread of television after the Second World War were seen as major reasons for a 1950s’ downturn. This period witnessed a fire-sale of stadiums against the backdrop of declining public interest. London, once speedway’s national and international metropole, boasted five topflight tracks in 1952 (but has not hosted league speedway since 2005). Yet, despite a retreat to the provinces, nationally the sport enjoyed another boom in the 1970s. For the 1974 season, Britain boasted 38 tracks across two divisions. Fifty years later, and the two leagues are down to just 15 tracks.
While the sport struggled on the domestic front in the ‘50s and ‘60s, internationally it enjoyed a period of rapid expansion. The rise to prominence of riders from Scandinavia and the Eastern Bloc was almost immediately viewed as a direct threat to Commonwealth dominance in a sport that had initially emerged on the British Empire’s fringes, in rural Australia. Yet, British promoters rapidly grasped opportunities to attract new spectators to their venues. Continental stars were contracted to the sport’s elite clubs, while speedway also looked to capitalise on overseas growth by hosting exotic new talent on extensive UK tours. In ‘“The Russians are Coming!” Entangled Peripheries and Cold War Competition in Motorcycle Speedway’, I explore the sport’s rise on the continent, alongside British attempts to profit from the hype of Cold War rivalries. When the UK hosted the up-and-coming Soviet motorcycle speedway team in 1964, spectators flocked to catch a glimpse of this new ‘arms race’, with Coventry Stadium serving as host for one of the highly anticipated Test Matches. Yet, at the end of what was in many respects a successful venture, the venue of the Soviets’ most impressive performance on UK shores – Norwich’s Firs Stadium – was lost forever to a housing development.
Of late, many of speedway’s fleeting appearances in the mainstream media have been prompted by the loss of, or impending threats to their tenancy at, historic tracks. While speedway no longer attracts the bumper crowds it once enjoyed, the sport is primarily undermined by the fact that clubs tend to be tenants at multi-purpose stadiums, sharing venues with greyhound racing, stock cars, and other forms of oval racing. In recent years, some stadium-owning promoters – such as those at Wolverhampton – have come to see speedway as an unnecessary encumbrance, despite a shared history of cohabitation. Such precarity has proved terminal for multiple clubs, while a growing list of venues have also succumbed to the bulldozer of lucrative housing development. Although stadium loss has not been the sole reason for club closures, the twenty-first century has seen the number of available tracks decline at an alarming rate.
At the time of writing, speedway’s clubs, promoters, and supporters are fighting a strong rearguard action on multiple fronts in an effort to halt this worrying trend. The number of active campaigns against planning applications on what are deemed brown-field sites underlines the scale of the challenge. In addition to Coventry speedway, efforts are underway to oppose schemes or find alternative provision in Swindon, Rye House, Thurrock, and Peterborough, among others, where speedway clubs have found themselves homeless in recent years. Developers often present speedway as an unfashionable sport, with an aging fan demographic, and argue there is little demand for these facilities. Instead, some have deemed it sufficient to offer other, supposedly greener and healthier leisure activities. Artificial football pitches and gymnasiums occupy a much smaller footprint, freeing up remaining land for housing. In addition to those clubs already forced to close, several other famous names still in operation face question marks over future access to venues. Evicted clubs often find it impossible to return to the sport, in the face of high land values and strict planning legislation, especially with regards to noise and traffic flow.
Despite considerable hurdles, a growing number of success stories provide a glimmer of hope. The National Speedway Stadium in Manchester opened in 2016. Though small in comparison to its predecessors, this Manchester City Council supported venue provides a secure home for one of the sport’s most famous clubs, the Belle Vue Aces. Five years earlier, the Leicester Lions opened a bespoke new track with approval from Leicester City Council. More recently, the 14-year campaign of Oxford enthusiasts to save their club’s former stadium from development and revive the sport attracted City Council support and culminated with the unlikely return of the Cheetahs team in 2022. Workington Comets also staged an unlikely comeback in 2022, having folded three years earlier due to economic difficulties. Though the track had been removed from their previous home, the club was able to re-emerge at what was formerly a training facility on the outskirts of town. Bradford’s cavernous Odsal Stadium, which hosted league speedway over a number of stints in the twentieth century and staged the sport’s World Final in both 1985 and 1990, has also seen a return of shale motor racing, albeit without speedway for the time being, due to the prohibitive costs of reinstating the sport. More generally, motorcycle speedway’s governing body is doing a remarkable job to regenerate and market the sport in a very tough environment. In addition to competition from numerous other forms of entertainment, UK speedway contends with the financial clout of the slickly-marketed Polish leagues. Nevertheless, the British Premiership enjoys live TV coverage on Eurosport, leading clubs successfully lure top international talent to their line-ups, and the innovative Workington Comets engaged the British leagues’ first professional female rider for the start of the 2024 season.
Given motorcycle speedway’s near-century-long history, and a wealth of popular accounts dedicated to the sport, it has received remarkably little attention from academic historians, especially when compared to football, rugby, and cricket (notable exceptions include articles by Paul Newsham, Matthew Taylor, and Jack Williams, while Barbara Horley defended a PhD on ‘Speedway Racing in England, 1928-1965: Communities, Gender and Modernity’ at De Montfort University in 2024). While many in the present are fighting for the sport’s future, sports historians must ensure speedway’s legacy by shedding light on its complex past.