European Team Speedway Championship:
team Poland wins the Grand Final on home soil
Pictures copyright: Jarek Pabijan
A large partisan crowd of around 5000 spectators were treated to an excellent afternoons Speedway at the European Team Speedway Championship Grand Final at Grudziądz, in north Poland.
With the Polish home side being seeded through to the Grand Final, they were joined by teams from Denmark, Sweden and the Czech Republic, who qualified through from two Finals the previous weekend at Pardubice in the Czech Republic and Gdańsk in Poland.
In line with the Track Racing rules for this event, each national team was allowed to include a Speedway Grand Prix rider within their line-up, so this was always going to be a close fought event. However, within the first four heats, the Poles had started to build a lead over the second placed favourites Denmark with Sweden in third and the Czech Republic forth.
As the meeting progressed during a warm sunny afternoon, the Poles continued to dominate cheered on by the buoyant crowd, with the team providing 13 out of a possible 20 heat wins. However, the Danes stuck to their guns in the vain hope that they might pick up points with either an engine failure or some other misfortune by the Polish team, but the five Poles remained focused on the job in hand, with the outcome that there were only two races where they didn’t take either a first or second place.
The meeting wasn’t without incident with young Czech rider Adam Bubba Bednar falling off in heat 9. Fortunately, he was uninjured and was quickly back on his feet, but he was excluded from the re-run by the Referee, as being the cause of the stoppage.
The meeting continued to gather pace until heat 18, when the Czech Daniel Kilma was caught out when he touched the starting tapes in anticipation of making a good start, though under the rules this is not allowed, and he too was excluded by the Referee. So, another heat where the Czech team didn’t collect any points.
In the very next heat young Swedish rider Casper Henrikson fell whilst entering the first bend, where he laid on the ground for a few moments. However, the medical team were soon on the scene and after a few minutes he was back on his feet.
By this late stage the Polish team had dominated the score line, much to the pleasure of the home crowd, and was soon to be crowned European Team Speedway Champion for 2024.
FIM Europe President Michal Sikora presented the gold winners medals to the home side, with the silver medals going to Denmark and bronze to Sweden.
Top three
- Poland, 51 points
- Denmark, 35 points
- Sweden, 20 points
(Bartosz Zmarzlik, Patryk Dudek, Przemyslaw Pawlicki, Piotr Pawlicki, Wiktor Prrzyjemski)
(Mikkel Michelsen, Anders Thomsen, Rasmus Hansen, Bastian Pedersen)
(Jacob Thorsell, Antonio Lindback, Fredrik Lindgren, Casper Henrikson)
Links
Visit the Track Racing page
Visit SEC official web site
