POLAND: season’s first match for top internationals

Barring no last minute changes a number of the world’s best riders will finally get to start their 2021 season this weekend.

Friday will see Danish legend, Nicki Pedersen, who was 44 yrs last week, in the starting lineup with his new team, Grudziadz who will travel to his former team, Zielona Góra. Fortunately for the veteran there will be no fans to remind him of his “betrayal”. Joining him in the away depot on Friday will be another Dane in the latter part of his career, 36 year old, Kenneth Bjerre.The team’s success this year will depend on this Danish pairs’ performance so fans will be watching them intently from the get go.

In Friday night’s other match Wroclaw will start their campaign at home to Toruń with English speakers dominating both teams. Britain’s top rider, Tai Woffinden and young star, Daniel Bewley will be at home in a star-studded team along with Maciej Janowski, Artem Laguta and Gleb Chugunov who could go one better than 2019’s second place this year.

In Saturday’s first match for Orzel Łódź, American Luke Becker will start his campaign as the team’s U24 rider. He will be glad to see the back of 2020, which should have been his inaugural season in Europe but never got started due to Corona.

Then in Sunday’s Ekstraliga matches we should see Sweden’s top rider, Fredrik Lindgren (CZE) start his year, as well seeing Denmark’s SEC 2018 and 2019 winners, Leon Madsen (CZE) and Mikkel Michelsen (LUB) take part in their first matches of the season. 

Another Dane, Jonas Jeppesen could also be in the line up with Częstochowa after a blistering season in 2020, whilst Rohan Tungate may also travel to Gorzow with Michelsen as he doubles up in the Ekstraliga.

Finally on Monday the eWinner1 match between Ostrovia and Gniezno will see a host of Swedish and Danish riders get their first glimpse of competitive action for 2021. The teams are not yet announced, but the hosts will almost certainly started Sweden’s SGP rider, Oliver Berntzon and Denmark’s Nicolai Klindt. Meanwhile their opponents are likely to travel with Danes, Peter Kildemand and Fredrik Jacobsen (U24) in their squad as well as flourishing Finn, Timo Lahti at the starting gates.

Klindt and Lahti will be hoping to consolidate and build on a successful 2020, whilst Kildemand needs to find his 2015-6 form that gave him SGP wins. Berntzon starts the most important year of his career as the 28 year old gets to show his talent on the international stage starting in the entire SGP series for the first time in his career. Will that distract or enhance his league performances this year?