Volume 5 No.3
The Speedway Researcher Promoting Research into the History of Speedway and Dirt Track Racing Volume 5 No. 3 December 2002 Edited by Graham Fraser and Jim Henry Subscribers : 160 Who Was The Best Prewar Rider? Don Gray, Old Orchard, Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, CB5 9JU, Telephone: 01223 862279 has posed the question above and set out to answer it in the following article. On becoming aware that I saw my first speedway meeting on Easter Monday 1930, many acquaintances ask, who, in my opinion, was the best rider in the pre-war era? A most difficult question to answer. A number of criteria present themselves from which to reach an opinion and they are viewed from different perspectives by various enthusiasts, many of whom, I might suggest, are biased towards their own particular favourites. I must concentrate on the thirties and ignore the overseas pioneers of the late 1920s when Frank Arthur and Vic Huxley reigned supreme over the inexperienced emergent British riders and when those spectacular showmen like Billy Lamont and Sprouts Elder enthralled a curious and excited public. I choose to ignore the one track specialists who performed brilliantly on their own circuits but indifferently when visiting other tracks. I put men like Jack Barnett and Phil Bishop at High Beech, the Australian Jack Bishop at Exeter, Arthur Jervis at Leicester Super and Len Parker at Bristol. Unlike the modern era, the pre-war decade was notable for the number of riders who experienced purple patches of form and dominated their peer for a few weeks, only to recede back to the category of “good” rather than “outstanding”.
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