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Post by Administrator on Oct 14, 2010 15:16:01 GMT
An unknown is chased by Uxbridge Lions' Graham Brown. Either 1970 or 1971 season. Graham - they're ideal shoes for skidding!! Cycle speedway...m Brown JPGAttachments:
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Post by Administrator on Dec 1, 2010 21:28:29 GMT
On 14 Oct 2010, at 00:25, Graham Brown wrote: That’s me in the no.2 body colour and the silly hat, riding for Uxbridge Lions c.1970/1. Sorry, I don’t know who the other guy is or what team he’s from. The Lions were a sort-of second division Uxbridge side (The Pirates were the main team) but we still got around a bit. I rode at Headley, Sutton, Tolworth and Hendon, plus others I’ve long since forgotten. I got into it because I used to go to Wembley speedway a lot around 70-71 (on the Saturdays when my attention wasn’t diverted by cars at Wimbledon of course!) and used to get chatting to Bert Harkins in the bar afterwards.
He was telling me about how he used to ride his cycle speedway bike from one side of Edinburgh to the other in order to race. I said it sounded like fun and that it was a pity it didn’t go on around West London.
He promptly called Bill Punter over (Bill was a pusher at Wembley) and introduced me as a possible new team member! I got a trial one evening the following week and, with no experience whatever (although I had done plenty of informal dirt track racing against my mates) won two out of two races against the existing team members – I was in! Bill Punter was running the Uxbridge teams at that time. But, looking around at old cycle speedway stuff I’ve seen on the net, he was involved in the sport at a high level for years.
What’s more, there’s a pic on the London Speedways-Cycle Speedway section entitled “Unknown Lions”. The team includes Bill and I wouldn’t mind betting it’s an earlier incarnation of the Uxbridge team.
The surroundings could certainly be the old Manor Way track. Incidentally, I found out long after my cycle speedway days were over, that hot rod race car stars, both Dave and Mark Willis, also rode for Uxbridge back in those day – small world, eh? Cheers mate, GB
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