Dirt Music

On a bitter-cold night in Stockholm, hometown hero Tony Rickardsson - three-time World Speedway Champion - is out to make it number four. The Swedish Grand Prix is the final event on the 2001 racing calendar, and 20,000 Swedish fans are ready to celebrate: though it's barely 2°C they're wearing shorts and t-shirts, and upending plastic cups of lager with such vigour that their Viking-horn hats spill to the ground. Only one thing can spoil their party: the forgotten Australian champions.

Australia has four riders in the top eight of world speedway. The leader of the pack is a man aptly described as a 'pit-bull on a motorbike', the 26-year-old world No 2 from the Gold Coast, Jason Crump. Last year, he spearheaded Australia to victory in the World Cup, where they beat Poland by two points. In the five-day competition, involving 60 riders from 12 countries, Crump finished first in every race he started and, after his wins, as 35,000 irate Polish fans pelted him with anything not tied down, he completed a victory lap standing on the seat of his bike pointing to his backside, where the Australian flag is emblazoned across his leathers.

Another member of that squad was blond-haired Novocastrian and world No 8 Todd Wiltshire. A veteran of the sport at 33, Todd remembers picking up a home newspaper after that triumph to find a double-page spread devoted to all the Australian sporting achievements of the year, right down to canoeing and handball, with not a mention of the Aussie boys aboard these brakeless 500cc beasts who did us proud in a dirty battle of mud and motorbikes two hours south-west of Warsaw.

It's easy to forget: Australia gave this sport to the world. The first ever speedway race was held at the West Maitland Showground in NSW on December 11, 1923. Today the sport is practised in over 40 countries and TV pictures of the new SGP (Speedway Grand Prix) series are beamed to 100 countries. Strange then, given we invented the sport, that Australia seems to have as many riders in the top eight of world speedway as it does spectators who know about them.

For the Aussies, as Crump explains, the price of getting to the top is a costly one. "The time away from home is the worst thing," says the patriotic redhead, but at least his partner and daughter are in the stands tonight. World No 4 from Melbourne, the pocket-sized 'Flying' Ryan Sullivan, hasn't seen his son Callum or partner Hayley for six months, and can tell me in hours and minutes how long to go before the eight-month season ends. At 26, he's been based in England and following the circuit for seven years; this weekend he's parked his $100,000 custom-built motor home-away-from-home next to the caravan of his Australian team-mate and world No 5 from Mildura, Leigh Adams. The two will share a cheap Polish lager (of the official sponsor's variety) after the race.

But in tonight's grand prix, allies from the World Cup are enemies, as the 24 best riders in the world do battle over 24 heats to decide the individual world champion. None can afford to lose two races in a row, or they can head to the showers to scrape off the mud and start thinking about next year's campaign. It's the first time a GP has been held in the Stockholm Olympic Stadium, where around 2000 tonnes of dirt have been laid on the athletics track, much of which will end the night in the eyes and mouths of the crowd, churned up by these furious bikes which suck methanol and spit dirt.

The only brake tonight is the air fence - it too an Australian invention, but one that's come too late for many. A plaque was recently unveiled at the old Sydney Showground, for many years the home of NSW speedway, honouring the 28 riders who, between 1926 and 1973, started their last races there 'but were never greeted with the chequered flag'.

The Vikings cheer the start of the battle as four of the beasts are finally unleashed into the stadium for heat 1. These bikes weigh 80kg and have a hip flask for a fuel tank, as they only need enough juice for four laps of racing. Riders brace their 500cc bullets behind the starter's tapes, ready to shoot from zero to 100 km/h in under three seconds. The starting marshal disappears in a cloud of smoke. The eruption of noise and the biting aroma of burnt methanol are overpowering. You never forget the smell of speedway.

Riders in gates 1 and 2 look left, while those in 3 and 4 look right, all staring at the pole on which the tapes are mounted. The slightest movement across their field of vision will see them drop the clutch and fire the gun. Tapes lift in one-hundredth of a second along with 20,000 spectators and four clutch levers. The bikes pounce into life, front wheels lifting as the back takes all the grip and catapults them toward the first turn. Even if the bikes had gears there wouldn't be enough time to change them.

"It's a blur," says Todd Wiltshire. "The race only lasts 60 seconds, so 80 percent of it is the start and first corner. The race is won and lost there."

Says Ryan Sullivan: "The best start you can get is when the front wheel's about three inches off the dirt. It looks like you're out of control but that's exactly what you need to go as fast as possible."

Without a staggered start, all four riders must compete for the inside line on the first turn. "It's a war," says Wiltshire, with the smile of a protagonist. "You want to be first into the turn and hot onto the quickest line. Speedway is a commitment to go from a straight line through a hairpin curve without brakes. That's a big commitment with full gas, but if you shut off or braked you'd go into the fence, or over it."

Holding a sliding machine on opposite lock in full wheelspin is a racing dynamic considered insane in most forms of motor sport. In speedway it's the only way of getting around the corner. "A speedway bike is designed to turn only to the left," explains Wiltshire, "and you have to keep the throttle on, put the handlebars down left and lean into the corner with body weight and balance, throttle control and opposite lock on the front wheel."

Riders wear a steel boot on their left foot, which they plant on the track for stability as they lay the bike over. Wiltshire rubs alcohol into his forearms before his heats to cool the pain of taming the beasts around the corners, but it's the bikes that behave like drunks. The spray of dirt streaming out behind them adds incentive to be first. "When you get behind and the dirt's flying at you, it hurst like hell," says Crump.

Evidence that the first round (ten heats) of the GP is behind us is floating in our beers. Eight riders have been eliminated, leaving 16 to fight out the main event. Five Swedes have made it through, including main man Rickardsson, and the crowd is making as much noise as the motorbikes. All four Aussies are through, and a half dozen Australian flags are scattered around the stadium, frozen full of the icy breeze whipping in off the Baltic Sea.

Wiltshire, though, is struggling, nursing a shoulder injury from the Polish GP three weeks ago, but this kind of strain won't deter a man who's sporting more than a few metal spare parts himself. In his career he's had 15 major fractures and his pelvis is held together by a screw which casts a shadow. The worst came on Australia Day of '92. At an Adelaide event Todd was shunted off his bike by a young rider keen to upstage the expatriate star. Wiltshire hit the wooden fence at speed, shattering his pelvis and right hip. The doctor who rejoined Todd's pelvis asked the patient how he was.

"I'm in pain," said Todd.

"That's fantastic," replied the Doc.

The initial threat of paralysis had gone, but so too had Wiltshire's riding career. He retired as all sportspeople hate to - horizontally. For the next five years he swore he'd never ride again, the first year because he couldn't and the next four because he knew he shouldn't. Since then, speedway has made a liar out of 'The Freak', as he's nicknamed, and he's won two German Championships, two Australian Championships, an Inter-Continental Championship and a World Cup.

In heat 18, Tony Rickardsson finishes second behind Leigh Adams, guaranteeing the Swede a start in the semi-final and enough GP points to secure him his third world title in four years. Spectators duck for cover, as what goes up must come down - Viking-horn hats no exception. Rickardsson himself rates Leigh Adams the best rider in the world, and says the only thing stopping him from becoming world champion is that Leigh is too nice a bloke.

Twenty-nine-year-old Adams is jockey-sized, weighing all of 65kg and 170cm tall - typical of his colleagues. But this guy's got stamina to burn: tonight's GP is his 16th race meeting in 16 days across three different countries. Like his Australian colleagues, Adams rides up to six meetings a week for his English, Swedish and Polish clubs. Four of his ten bikes, which cost around $15,000 a pop, he keeps in England, two in Sweden, two in Poland, while two gather cobwebs in Australia.

When he's not riding he's flying, winging it to meets where his bikes - fuelled and readied by local mechanics - await him at the starting tapes. "We live well but we don't have a life," complains Adams. "We race too much."

Ryan Sullivan agrees: "The 500cc road racers do 18 meetings a year but we do over 100. We need time to do some testing."

But the crowds across Europe for this new SGP series can't get enough. This year's British GP was moved from Coventry (capacity 8000) to the new Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, where 40,000 sat shoulder-to-shoulder. The success of the GPs is paying off for those in the saddles. Tony Rickardsson and Polish world No 3 Tomasz Gollob (Poland's highest-paid sportsperson), come away at the end of each season with filthy leathers but over $2 million each to contribute to the laundry bill. The other top 30 riders earn anywhere from $300,000 to $1 million a season, and those figures look set to rise as crowds continue to grow. Stadium speedway in Europe looks like motor sport's new force, even eating into the popularity of Formula One.

John Postlethwaite was commercial director of the Benetton F1 team during the period when Schumacher won them two driver's championships. Now he's the chief executive of Benfield Sports International, rights owners of the SGP.

"Four years in F1 and I never got the bug," he reveals. "I used to stay in the office when they raced." Now he doesn't miss the turn of a wheel. "Speedway is all about rider skill and no other motor sport in the world is like that. Kenny Roberts won't win the 500cc road race championship again this year because he hasn't got the equipment - no other reason."

In speedway, the guy who comes first can do so on the bike of the guy who comes last. Could Schumacher win in a Minardi? Rossi on an Aprilia?

After 24 heats in Scandinavia, so much dirt has flown that sponsors might query their branding on these machines. Each of the four riders in a race must wear different coloured helmets to distinguish them to crowds and commentators. But no-one is having any trouble making out the winner of tonight's Swedish Grand Prix. Three days before the event, Jason Crump lost part of a front tooth when an engine ball bearing shot from a bike he was trailing. Whether through fear of the dentist or natural ability on a motorbike, Crump hasn't come second all night. As he slides the final bend and points his front wheel towards the sky, he's the cleanest man in the house. It looks as though the pit-bull has been to a wedding.

'Flying' Ryan Sullivan's third place puts two Aussies on the podium, but again the achievement barely rates a mention back home. The riders agree that speedway will get noticed when either an Australian is crowned world champion or the GP circuit heads Down Under.

As Jason and Ryan hold Swedish silverware above their heads, and rinse mud of their leathers with French champagne, it's clear we're soon going to produce a world champion. What's entirely unclear is which Aussie it will be.

Within days of the win it's announced that the first ever Australian Grand Prix will be held at Stadium Australia in October this year. Speedway is coming home.