Cheating
By Steve Haire

In response to 'Slice of lucky pie' and the idea of 'taking out insurance'.

Whether it's legal or not I class paying a rider to lose a race as cheating, it's certainly immoral. Cheating has gone on in most sports whether it's taking performance enhancing drugs, taking a dive in boxing or horse doping etc and speedway was no exception.

There's probably no reason to buy points now except perhaps in the GP challenge but it would certainly have gone on in the days of the one off world final where one bit of bad luck meant you were out. It has been rumoured that a similar sort of thing would have occurred in individual meetings where riders would agree to split prize monies to ensure they win.

At the end of the day it's letting down the supporters and doing an injustice to the other competitors.

Who can forget the Bruce Penhall incident at White City where after four races he had already qualified for the next round of the world championship and he could have gone on to win the meeting, but not only did he let his three compatriots beat him but they all conspired to finish in a specific order so they all got to qualify.

You can watch it on you-tube where you see him on the victory trailer turn his back to the supporters as he's booed out of the stadium. Some would try to justify his actions by saying he was showing support to his fellow countrymen but it was an individual meeting and by fixing a race not only was he letting his supporters down by not trying to win the meeting he was letting the other riders supporters down.

The first qualifying round for British riders for the one off World final was to have three qualifying rounds at various tracks to accumulate points to qualify for the next round, the British semi finals at Leicester and Sheffield and there were a few top riders who if they had enough points to qualify from two rounds would refuse to ride at Newport which was generally considered as a very dangerous track.

If memory serves me right Eric Boocock broke his arm there which I think the only time he suffered serious injury and I think Malcolm Simmons refused to ride there except for the league match where he was contractually obliged to 'race'.

In years passed how many riders would have used oversized engines or taken recreational drugs? and who can forget when the Russians bikes were stolen. Fortunately most sports has ruled out cheating but there will always be someone who will risk doing something illegal to gain an advantage.

This article was first published on 9th November 2025