The 2024 ROWE Motor Oil Premiership media campaign burst into life at the National Speedway Stadium, Belle Vue, Manchester, last Wednesday (20th March), where CEO, Phil Morris, choreographed an ambitious fiesta of fascinating interviews for the press and TV, alongside team building events for the magnificent turn out of riders and management.
As the press conference went live, the first cohort of world champions were expertly eased into the process by elite football commentator Darren Fletcher, who latterly opened up the proceedings for questions from the press. I posed the following: “I want to take us back a few years to Cardiff after a race where Scott Nicholls and Emil got quite intimate – you probably remember that. My understanding is that social media clicks surged as a result. My question is for Tai on this one. Other than encouraging riders to fight, how can we better promote social media engagement?”
I chose our multiple world champion simply because in all the previous interviews I have conducted with him I have been impressed by his capacity to speak from the heart, whilst making no attempt to disguise his love for our sport. He’s an out and out entertainer too – both on and off the track – and let’s not forget, speedway is just as much about putting on a show as it is a serious top-class sport. Furthermore, I’ve been privileged to talk to him about aspects of his life, and seen firsthand how he actively supports other riders, especially those whose first language is not English. In his spontaneous and spectacularly stirring response he uttered an expletive – more than once. The audience was immediately energised – combined reactions of stunned, surprised and delighted. At this juncture, if you haven’t watched the conference, I would recommend that you locate it on one of the several online platforms posted by British Speedway.
Tai’s address was tongue in cheek, outrageous and accurate – a verbal commodity only the most entertaining of orators can master. Yet, in the aftermath of social media dissection, the use of the word in question was debated with vigour. Engagement across several media platforms soared, including a piece in The Sun. Context is vital, and although I wouldn’t deploy certain terms at some family gatherings, the use of this word conveyed emotion – a key ingredient of speedway. And let me put it on record that I am a great advocate of the word. Its versatility is pretty much limitless. Both a verb and a noun. An expression of elation and disappointment. A call to action and a decision to sit it out. In the prevailing circumstances – in my humble opinion – Tai called it right, even if this was not an opinion unanimously held across the speedway fraternity.
Controversy is an important commodity in all sports, both to the seasoned supporters and those yet to be engaged – with this latter group representing the holy grail of speedway promoters’ dreams. In football, the English Premier League has grasped this concept with the incorporation of the virtual assistant referee (VAR), where the main event is suspended in order to unpick, digest, and explore the dispute from various angles, utilising differing speeds and the classic freeze frame. Altercations in ice hockey are another good example of where disagreements are seen as box office moments.
Arguably, in its purest form, speedway is not a contact sport, but when has it ever been that basic? It is guts, adrenalin, and often akin to combat on two wheels. There are inevitably comings together where tensions can peak and racers may suffer from the disorientation of the red mist, making altercations commonplace. Racing is what it’s all about, but these sporadic episodes epitomise the uniqueness of the sport as more than just a spectacle of speed, but also a narrative of riders who risk everything to entertain us as we observe from the safety of the terraces. Capturing these moments – alongside the thrilling racing action – and using them to exploit the global reach of social media has to present more opportunity than threat.
Tai was correct in his assertion that this element of speedway promotion is not rocket science as, to date, the Scott / Emil Grand Prix dance routine has attracted sixteen million views on YouTube. And as a footnote the ‘word’ that caused a tad of a stir in certain quarters is – according to academic research carried out in America – only ranked ninth in terms of vulgarity. Not even a rostrum place! Also, both riders shook hands shortly afterwards, with Scott conceding that Emil is his daughter Maya’s favourite racer.
In the words of rock’s equivalent of the top Sheffield Tiger, Robbie Williams, “So come on, let me entertain you!”
© Ian Kirke 2024 & uncredited photograph.
@ianjkirke
Title image kindly reproduced by kind permission of Mateusz Wójcik / Monster Energy