"Its not as easy as it looks!" I am talking to Peter Wright, father and mechanic to Mat Wright, a young rider on loan to the Wimbledon Dons, as I stand in the pits area of Wimbledon Stadium on a chilly April evening. Along with TRD photographer Mark, Ive come to Plough Lane to watch the Dons take on the Weymouth Wildcats in a Trevor Hedge Racing Cup fixture. As is usual, there will be a return leg at Weymouth the following the night. The Dons are then due to travel to Mildenhall for a Conference League meeting on Sunday, and then return to SW17 for the return leg the following Wednesday. This is nothing special in the world of speedway - its not unusual for a top international rider to have a meeting every night of the week to compete in. That would be a rider like Jason Crump or Tony Rickardson, people who ride in this country's Elite League, and ply their trade in the GP series that is at truly global level. Wimbledon are in the Conference, which is separated from the Elite League by the Premier League, and is in football terms, the equivalent of Division 1.

The bikes are all methanol fuelled, 500cc, single cylinder OHC engines made by Jawa or GM. They deliver about 80 bhp to the rear tyre by means of a huge rear sprocket, which can vary in size depending on the track and conditions. The one I am looking at has 53 teeth, if you want to change gear, you have to change sprocket. As for stopping, there's no brakes, so all you can do is close the throttle or pull in the clutch, its as simple as that.

I ask the Dons Captain, Mark "Buzz" Burrows, what its like in the higher leagues, as he has ridden in both in his career, before coming to Wimbledon.

"Speed" he says, "speed and balls!"

Is it the bikes or the riders who are quicker?

"A little bit of both" he replies.

I wonder how long Buzz has been riding for ?

"25 years" he says. I'm astonished. I look at him again, he doesn't look old enough, but seeing as he is now 40, if he started at 15, it computes. I wonder about the injuries he must have picked up, riding for so long in such a dangerous sport.

" It depends what you want to print in your magazine" he chuckles. "My knackers have had a hammering ! Broken jaw, wrist, ribs, shoulder, loads of bruises. There used to be on average one death a year..."

The advent of air fencing is undoubtedly what has helped the dropping mortality rates, but they are only found in the Elite League where there is more money to spend on safety features. Here in the Conference, the riders are paid a tenner a point, and are to all intents and purposes amateurs. Buzz is a welder by day. The crowds are smaller, although there is a very respectable turnout tonight. There's no TV money, and there's no air fencing. If things go pear shape in the corner, there's just a concrete wall or cast iron fence to stop you.

Speedway riding technique is a question of not only conquering your fear, its also about overcoming your natural instincts. You bomb down the straight, get up to 60 or 70 mph, and then you chuck it on its side and let the tyre spin, while you hold the bars on full opposite lock and keep the throttle pinned to the stop. Its no wonder the riders are nearly all teenagers or in their early twenties. Not only does it help to bounce when you fall off, its also got to be a massive help to train yourself to ride like this from the get go. Otherwise you are going to have unlearn all the usual techniques that come naturally - slow down by using the brakes, change gear and tip into the turn, pointing the bike where you want to go. In Speedway you can forget all that for starters ; there's no brakes, no gears and you don't point where you want to go. It is in fact a brilliant balancing act, done at terrifying speed with next to no margin for error. When you consider this balancing act is tackled with three maniacs alongside, equally battling the bike and rear tyre to break traction as you round the arc, and then getting it to bite and drive at just the right moment, its no wonder it's a young mans game. Most of us have too many thoughts of mortality and pain by the time we've got beyond 25, at the latest!

Speedway is a beautifully simple sport in many ways. You've got two teams of seven riders, each team fields two riders per race, each race lasts 4 laps, and there are 15 races per meeting. The winner of each race or heat scores 3 points, second place gets 2 points, third gets one point, and the last place gets none. Add all the points up, and you usually get a winning team. The racing is fast and furious, with so much depending on the start. If you can get to the turn 1 apex first, you will invariably get out of the turn first, and from then on, its much easier to hold off the chasers, than it is to get past. This is where you get to see some really great riding and action. Race after race, the man with the best start will win the race. Hence all the excavating that goes on at the start line, endless digging with heels and toes to ensure the tyre drives, and doesn't spin. The clutch is constantly under examination; the bikes are tipped over while they wait at the tape, lubing and cooling the plates. The riders fiddle and tweak the cables, in a constant search for the sweetest biting point; that initial tenth of a second, when the tape shoots up and they dump the clutch and drive for the turn, is all important.

But the skill of making a pass is really what Speedway is all about. In one of the early races a Don has hit the front, he's held it for a lap but as they come back to turn 1 once again, a Wildcat manages to turn underneath him, getting the bike to drive out of the turn while the leader has still got the back wheel spinning, instead of driving. Its all over in a split second, the penalty for spending too much time getting round the turn is a lost race for the Dons. In fact, the home side are definitely suffering as the Wildcats take an early lead. It strikes me that the Weymouth no 7, Lewis Bridger, is doing all the damage - unexpectedly as the numbers 6 and 7 are reserve riders. The Dons need a lift and just as I think it, here comes Buzz, the Dons main man. The crowd winds up into quite a din of passionate "Come on Buzz" shouting, and Buzz duly delivers the first win of the night for the home team. But its not to last, and the Dons are hammered 38-55 by the Wildcats. The return leg is even worse, with Weymouth winning the fixture by 57-36. Happily things go better at Mildenhall the following Sunday , where they beat the Fen Tigers by a narrow 6 points, 48-42. That would have been a nail biter.

I finished the interviews by talking to the Dons venerable manager, Dingle Brown. Dingle has been involved in Speedway for almost 50 years, he tells me he raced against John Louis when he was one of the top 3 riders in the world at Ipswich Witches ( he is now the Witches manager, still an Elite team). I ask him who is the best rider he has ever seen. "Peter Craven, for balance, was the best, he rode in 1963 but was killed in an accident " he tells me. When I was looking at the fascinating history section of the Dons website, I notice a picture of a rider called Craven in the 40s, doubtless Peter's father. Going all the way back to 1928, the drawings and photos on the site illustrate how little Speedway has changed over the years.

Dingle wants to get back to the track before the start of the evenings proceedings. He's already watered it once, but wants to check it hasn't dried out too much, which would cause too much dust for riders and spectators. "Its not as easy as it looks !" he tells me as a parting shot. The thing is, I never thought for one minute that it was !

www.wimbledonspeedway.co.uk

Pete Morrison

Big thanks to everyone at Wimbledon Speedway for their hospitality and help