Speedway Champions

    - 1930s
    There have been a number of phases when the title of European Champion has been raced for, - inter-War, post-War, and present day. The first known period commenced in Paris at the Buffalo Velodrome in the early 1930s in parallel with the staging there of World Championship competitions and using a similar format, involving riders from UK, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Denmark as well as local stars. In 1932 the event was called the European Cup, but in subsequent years became the “Championnat d'Europe de Dirt Track”. Ferdinand Meynier dominated this with 3 successes out of the 4 stagings in the French capital, being runner-up in the last year, 1935.

    The giant Strahov Stadium in Prague, (still the world's largest stadium with a 220,000 capacity,) was the next venue to stage a European championship, this time with FICM ratification, (FIM's forerunner.) The intended 1936 championship meeting had to be downgraded at a late stage, the sand surface track being deemed not up to the standard required for such a high status event, and so was designated merely an Open International race. With improvements made, including a reduction in track length from 700m to 614m, (track widening, presumably, - ?) the European Championship of 1937 went ahead and the 500cc event was won by Austrian Martin Schneeweiss. The following year, because of political reasons, no Austrian or German riders were invited to the competition and UK's Arthur Atkinson bettered his previous third place by taking the title. (Note that at 614m this sand track and this championship would today be considered a Long Track event. The results are therefore duplicated on the Long Track page within the European LT Championship table.)

                European Championship, Strahov, 1935: Start of the 500cc race.

    - Post-War
    In the 1950s the title was re-introduced within qualifying rounds of the FIM World Championship competition, when continental riders could achieve direct entry to the Wembley Final without having to partake in qualifiers against British and Commonwealth participants. (The forerunner to this title had been the Continental Championship but having the same status, progression-wise, as the new European Final.) Ove Fundin took the title 5 times in 5 different countries, (that without having to participate in the year following his 1956 World Championship when seeded direct to Wembley,) and Swedish riders dominated the rostrum positions throughout the 'fifties. When subsequently Poland staged the event in Wroclaw, (5 occasions from 1960 onward,) it was won each time by a native rider!

    Following the introduction of World Finals at venues other than Wembley 'British' riders eventually had to partake in regional finals on the continent. In 1970 when Poland held its first World Final British riders met with Scandinavians and other Europeans in Leningrad, USSR, where Ivan Mauger became European Champion. After Mauger broke the Polish hold on Polish tracks in 1975 at Bydgoszcz the title was discontinued as Australasian rounds and American riders emerged and it was overtaken by 'Overseas Champions' and Intercontinental Finals. (The winners of these latter championships are given in Supplement 4, below. American and Danish riders proved the most successful at this level, taking all but one title in the Intercontinental Championship during its last 10 years of operation.) 

    - 21st Century
    In 2001 the UEM (European Motorcycle Union,) 5 years after its formation, introduced a European Championship in which Final venues and champions have been dominated by former communist states and their riders who are not otherwise involved in the SGP series. (The winner would enter the SGP Qualifier.)
    In 2013, with UEM rebranded as FIME, (FIM Europe,) the SEC ('Speedway European Championship') replaced the European Championship with a Grand Prix-style event, having no links with, e.g. no qualifiers to, the World Championship SGP: riders may partake in both competitions. Russian Emil Sayfutdinov, as a non-SGP participant, took this championship twice, as seen below at the 2015 event. Coming up to date, Denmark's Mikkel Michelsen has won the Championship 3 times in 5 years.

                          Emil Sayfutdinov with SGP-riders Nicki Pedersen and Antonio Lindback, 2015.   

FIM  "SPEEDWAY INTERNATIONALE "

    For the loss of the World Championship Final in 1961 the FIM awarded Britain the staging of a new top level equivalent competition, the "Speedway Internationale" with a prize of the Loughborough Trophy and a brand new Rotrax-JAP (later a Jawa) speedway machine, courtesy of a tobacco company. After the first staging at Harringay the event became the regular fixture for the Whit Bank Holiday event at Plough Lane for the next 20 years.

    There were qualifying rounds in the first year but thereafter participation was by invitation, though few competitors were drawn from outwith the British League, - Czech Anton Kasper in 1968 and Japanese rider Jimmy Ogisu in 1970 being just two but neither took points from any other rider! First Fundin in the initial meetings, and then in the next decade Mauger were each successful in taking a hat-trick of wins, with Nordin, Olsen and Peter Collins winning twice.

 THE BALTIC CUP
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   Click thumbnail for full-size tables.
      
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  - Germany, "Ostseepokal"

     The Baltic Cup was an FIM event initiated for speedway tracks bordering the Baltic Sea, (in German, the Ostsee,) during the communist DDR period and continued on a more limited, single venue basis at Stralsund  until the last few years when the cup has been awarded to the winner or top scorer of the club's big May international meeting, - in 2023 an FIM qualifier for the U23 European Team Championship.
     Though riders from the West participated initially, - first winner was a Swede, and former Wolves and Oxford rider Hasse Holmqvist also stood on the podium in 1971 - , in 1972 the communist authorities forbade any further Western sporting involvement throughout the state. After German unification Martyn Cox in 1992 became the first and only Brit to take the trophy, but Aussie Todd Wiltshire, making a European comeback on the continent had 3 Baltic successes alongside his German national titles at the end of the decade. Sandwiching these 3 wins were 3 by Czech Toni Kasper Jr, which were 15 years apart !

  

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