GRAHAM Hurry has this week called upon Track Racing Committee chairman Tony Steele to hand out ‘more wild cards, not less’ and to scrap the Masters Qualifier as we know it to help safeguard the future of grasstrack.

Two weeks ago, Steele reiterated to Speedway Star his view too many wild cards to the Masters Championship had been handed out in the past, thereby giving rise to a sense of entitlement among elite riders, who despite not being seeded through from the previous year were by-passing the Qualifier in hope or expectation of a wild card from the governing body or an invite to the big day from the host club.

As if to underscore his view, the likes of Paul Hurry, son of Graham, Andrew Appleton and Edward Kennett all swerved last Sunday’s Masters Qualifier at Mid-Cornwall Premier’s Boarded circuit at Roche and therefore require a handout to the Masters itself at GTSA at the end of July.

Hurry senior, whose relationship with grasstrack as rider and now promoter of Astra GTC stretches back more than 50 years, takes issue with Steele’s stance, insisting the above trio should get the necessary invites if they want them.

He could, of course, stand accused of nepotism, bearing in mind his son is one of the hopefuls in the spotlight, but he claims there is far more at play here than parental interest, stating promoters like himself need the top riders if they are to draw sufficient crowds to make national meetings pay and to allow youngsters to catch the racing bug and so follow their heroes into

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Go wild call by Hurry

• Paul Hurry was one of the riders who opted not to contest the Masters Qualifier. Picture: SARAH DAWE

the sport.

“I disagree with what Tony Steele is saying about wild cards and I’ll tell you for why,” he said.

“A club that puts on the Masters, the prizemoney is a hell of a lot. Every rider that takes part, which is 24 solos and 18 sidecars, they all get prizemoney. Even the one who comes 24th gets £50 and the first prize is £1,000.

“To get the spectators through the gate to pay for that scale of prizemoney, plus the trophies and everything else – we usually have three ambulances and two paramedics for a big meeting like that – the only way you can pay for it is to have the top riders there. If that means having wild cards then that is the way it has got to be.

“If we want grasstrack to prosper, you need to have really good meetings with all the razzmatazz, and all the top riders, so that when youngsters go they then think, ‘that’s what I want to do’.

“At the moment, they go, but they just go on to speedway because they don’t look up to many of the current riders. Okay, when you’ve got James Shanes there and one or two others, then they think ‘that’s what I want to do’, but if you had even more top riders, more would think that way.

“When I first went to grasstrack, I wanted to be like Reg Luckhurst, Alf Hagon and Don Godden. My Paul, he didn’t want to be like me, he wanted to be like Simon Wigg.

“If I had my way, we’d be getting Tai Woffinden and people like that into it. When I was racing in the 70s, we had speedway riders come into the British Championships like Peter Collins and Chris Morton.

“We also had grasstrack riders who didn’t race in England basically apart from that meeting because they were riding on the continent, people like Don Godden and Simon Wigg. It didn’t bother me. If they were good enough to be British Champion, then that’s the way it was and if I’d have been good enough to beat them, then I’d have felt even better.

“I know you could bring in top riders who would bring in a lot more people. More top riders would then want to race in it because you could up the prizemoney. Last year, I spent £3,000 on big motorway advertising boards. We’d got some good money from a couple of sponsors, so it went on these boards. We had really nice trophies too, so the money goes back in to try and put on an even bigger meeting and that is how it should be.”

The logical counter-argument to Hurry’s stance is if riders of the quality of Hurry junior, Appleton and Kennett have failed to qualify by right as seeds, why shouldn’t they have to go and qualify like everyone else?

Paul Cooper, reigning 350cc British Champion and a former Masters runner-up, made the long journey to Roche on Sunday and duly qualified comfortably rather than relying on a handout from the governing body.

What was to stop Hurry and co. doing the same? We put it to Hurry senior that riders of the quality he’d cited would probably score enough points to qualify in two rides and could then, if they so wished, pack the bike back in the van and head for home.

And should, they having shown willing, incur some kind of mishap such as an early fall or a blown engine, could they not then approach the governing body and make their wild card request?

Taking the opposite view is surely denying any Masters Qualifier a host of riders who would bring the public through the gate and so asking them to run a meeting with their hands tied behind their back?

For Hurry however, a man never afraid to express an opinion or risk courting controversy, that’s simply the wrong question. He challenged Steele to consider whether the Masters Qualifier had outlived its usefulness and went as far as calling for it to be scrapped from the calendar.

To the accusation that would lead to a closed shop of the elite, Hurry called for the reinstituting of the British Clubman’s Championship, something the TRC returned to the calendar a few years ago, but which proved a brief dalliance, disappearing again in 2019 almost as soon as it had been re-established.

The problem at the time was elite riders who had failed to qualify for the previous year’s Masters were still being required to enter as the Clubman’s was still the vehicle

34 speedway star May 14, 2022