One of the other hats that I have worn for many years has been that of a speedway fanatic and commentator. I have a regular gig calling the races at Nowra Speedway on the south coast, working for the same bunch of guys who I worked with over 25 years ago when I was race caller at the now-closed Kembla Grange Speedway in Wollongong (just a hop-step-and-a-jump from where I now live, how freaky is that?).
This season at the speedway started late as the club had undertaken some major upgrades to safety fencing so that we could run sprintcars. Getting that approved by the speedway authorities and the local council took a deal longer than expected and we didn’t kick off until well into November.
But it’s been a great season so far with most meetings running almost like clockwork, even to the extent of inserting extra races into the programme on-the-fly because we have been running so far ahead of time schedule.
Well, Sod’s Law struck last night with a vengeance. Despite being through the Heat races and ready to run the Features at a bit after 9 o’clock, it suddenly went pear-shaped in the middle of the 30 lap second feature of the night. A melee in T4 led to a spin and a multi-car accident from which it appeared everyone emerged unscathed, albeit with lots of panel damage on many cars. However, after getting out of his car, one of the competitors complained of a sore neck and the paras decided that he needed to be looked at more closely. After a full examination it was decided that he needed to be transported to the local hospital so an ambulance was called and he was taken to town. This took over 40 minutes.
The next Feature race was only 2 laps old when another multi-car accident took place in T2 which resulted in one of the cars taking a vicious rollover. When crash crew arrived the driver was out cold, always a bad sign so once again the paras quickly assessed the situation. The driver recovered almost immediately but was very “shocky” and the paras again decided that evacuation as a precaution was best and the ambulance, fresh from delivering driver #1 to the hospital, returned and did the deed again.
By now we were right on our EPA-imposed 2230 curfew so racing was over for the night. Later reports suggest that both of the drivers were OK, but, as I said to the promoter afterwards, you just can’t win. When things go great, they go great and when they decide to go bad, they go really bad.
sanoptic says
Hi,
Were you ever at the Liverpool Speedway?,our family went there for many years until the louts kept throwing beer cans around.
My youngest daughter was hit in the head by a beer can & we NEVER went again.
These days i imagine there a no alcohol rule but back in the day it was the norm for young & not so young guys to get drunk at the races.
Sydney show ground always put on a good show with the England -Australia speedway bike series,enjoyed it very much.
Strangely enough i have never been to the Granville/Parramatta Speedway ,we lost interest after all the trouble at Liverpool.
cheers
Phil Hall says
Yes, I went to Liverpool once, when it was tar. It was the night of the Marlboro Grand National 100 lap race. I spent some of the time on the infield photographing and then parlayed my way into the commentary box along with the Raymond bothers and did some commentary. Later, when I lived in Sydney, I worked as infield communications at PCR for 3 years and did relief commentary work if either Alan Edworthy or Stu Telfer were away. Before that I did 2 seasons in the box at Tralee in Canberra.
We ran bikes at Tralee, they used to be great. We even had our own team, The Canberra Bulls. But the Test Matches I used to really enjoy were the Australia vs America Sedan Car Tests with Big Ed Wilbur, Rodney Combs, Jackie Hewitt and Mike Klein…they were awesome.