EWINNER1: Gdańsk win after Iversen crash

With Bydgoszcz v Ostrovia cancelled due to bad weather, the only speedway in Poland today was Tarnow’s opening match against Gdańsk.

With three crashes in the first two heats, nearly 35 minutes had gone in the tie before two of the popular foreign riders, Rohan Tungate (AUS, Tarnow) and Rasmus Jensen (DEN, Gdansk), got to go head-to-head in heat 3.

The trouble started when Gdansk’s Jakub Jamrog hit the deck in heat 1 but he was able to get back up for the re-run. Then at the second attempt Tarnow’s Niels Kristian Iversen found himself in second place with Jamrog gunning it behind him to get past. The Dane played it hard and took the Pole to the boards twice to prevent his opponent getting past.

But in the final turn Jamrog finally looked like he was going to get around his opponent and the two were involved in a straight sprint for the line. And, as he had done twice before, the former SGP rider moved out towards Jamrog to cut off the angle. But the Pole refused to give up and just squeezed between Iversen and the fence to steal second on the line.

However, Iversen was already committed to fencing out Jamrog and appeared to lean into the younger rider as they passed the finish causing the two of them to collide and go down at high speed and clatter bikes-and-all into the air fence just past the entrance to the depot in a huge pile of dust.

Intentional or not, the Dane lost out on two counts – one, that he was given third place in the heat; two, he took no further part in the meeting going to the hospital to check up on a possible shoulder injury.

Whilst on the one hand you can admire the 38 year old’s competitive attitude, one can’t help wondering if it was a bad idea to challenge Jamrog so hard for just one point in the very first heat in the very first match of the season – especially as he spent much of 2020 sidelined because of injury losing both his SGP and Ekstraliga places. Was that one point worth that risk?

All in all, It seemed that the visitors have had better pre-season training, always ahead of the home team, who, with their top rider on the way to hospital, were always one step behind.

Jamrog (11+2) was racing like a man possessed and Viktor Kulakov (13+2) continued his form from last year and was just one point from a paid maximum.

For the home team, the consolation was that Australian Rohan Tungate (9) made his presence felt in the absence of Iversen. But the team as a whole would have been humiliated if not the practically unknown, 32 year old, Artur Mroczka. He raced the best outing for his entire career with 12+1, including three heat wins in a row in 9-11.
But after that Gdańsk won the remaining four heats to run out convincing winners, 35:55.