Speedway: Brits lose out in qualifier

Britain’s speedway team face a cut-throat meeting if they’re going to make it through to this year’s world team championship final.

The Brits finished second to Australia in their qualifying round at King’s Lynn tonight, meaning they go into another qualifier in Denmark on Thursday. They must win there to claim a place in Saturday night’s final – but they will have to get past speedway superpower Poland if they want to be in the final.

Speedway’s World Cup pits one rider from each of four competing nations against each other in every heat. Former world individual champion Tai Woffinden led the British charge, but the Australian quartet were too strong.

Britain went toe-to-toe with the Aussies in the opening bank of four heats, matching their nine points thanks to wins for individual GP riders Tai Woffinden and Chris Harris, a second place from Danny King and a third for rising teenage star Robert Lambert.

The following chunk of heats started badly for the Brits when 17-year-old Lambert, making his Speedway World Cup debut, made a false start to Heat 5 and the Aussies capitalised to win and open up a three-point gap. They extended that when Nick Morris beat Woffinden to second in Heat 6 and Jason Doyle won Heat 7. Chris Harris pulled a point back by winning Heat 8 to put the Brits four points down.

Lambert made amends for his fluffed start by passing world individual champion Greg Hancock in Heat 9, but Australia’s Nick Morris then passed both to stretch his side’s lead. A classy ride from Woffinden sealed Heat 7 to peg the gap back to three and Danny King took a second place from Troy Batchelor to shrink the deficit to three. Doyle held off a monumental charge from Britain’s Harris to claim Heat 12 and put the Aussies three points clear with each rider having two races left.

Britain stepped it up with three wins and a second from the next bank of races to pull within one point of the Aussies with four heats remaining.

But in the final bank of heats it slipped away from the Brits. First King was headed home by Morris and Latvian Andzejs Lebedevs, then Lambert trailed Batchelor to leave them four points behind with two races left to go. When Doyle passed Harris to take victory in the penultimate heat, their passage to the final was secured and the Brits knew they’d be on their way to Thursday’s race-off in Denmark to chase the last remaining place in Saturday’s final.

“We’ll have to give it everything we’ve got on Thursday,” said Woffinden, riding only his second UK meeting of the season. “The track on Thursday at Vojens [in Denmark] is like an English track so hopefully we’ll have a lot of fun. It’s been fun to be back racing in this country and next week I’ll be back to try and win the British individual championship.”

SPEEDWAY WORLD TEAM CUP QUALIFIER

Monday, June 8. King’s Lynn Norfolk

AUSTRALIA 47: Jason Doyle 13, Nick Morris 12, Chris Holder 11, Troy Batchelor 11.

GREAT BRITAIN 43: Tai Woffinden 13, Chris Harris 13, Danny King 10, Robert Lambert 7.

UNITED STATES 22: Greg Hancock 12, Ryan Fisher 5, Gino Manzares 4, Max Ruml 1.

LATVIA 9: Andzejs Lebedevs 5, Maksims Bogdanovs 3, Kasts Puodzuks 1, Jevgeijs Kostigovs 0.