World Speedway Champion Returns Home On Holiday

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27501, 8 November 1954, Page 10

World Speedway Champion Returns Home On Holiday

whh ' ipped to shorts and 'gym shoes, with a record-changer pouring out popular music, the worlds champion speedway rider, 21-year-old 2“ Moore, sat in his home in Christchurch yesterday calculating gear ratios for one of his many motor-cycles. After nine consecutive seasons of racing on A?/?o r c ack l in -hgJand. South Afnca Scandinav a, Australia and New Zealand, i_GOie has come home to rest.

. Th* re was no sport in speedway racs.?Ad - J ust a business,” he added. You do the same sort of thing over and over again three times a week sometimes, once a week at Wimbledon (where he is captain of the first division team). ‘Yes, it is monotonous.”

Yesterday, his third day back in New Zealand, Moore was working on ms machines; his hands were covered with grease and he had a smear on his chest. In England, of course, he does not maintain his machines, but has mechanics. “I got off one machine and take up the next,” he said. For two years Moore has been captain of the Wimbledon team, and for five years he has been riding in England. For seven years before that he was always somewhere near a motorcycle, whether on the wall of death (at the age of 10) with his father, Les Moore, or on the speedway track. And the 12 years of forcing a screaming, lurching piece of machinery around dirty, cinder-covered tracks have left few illusions. “I want a holiday,” he said yesterday. “It gets on your nerves.” The holiday will last until January, when he will leave New Zealand for Australia to race until February. From Australia he will go to South Africa to race until March, when he will return to England to prepare for the opening of the speedway season in April. When he was asked what he would do when he was finished with speedway racing, he replied: “I haven r t the foggiest. I would like to get into car racing—grand prix cars. There’s more money in that than in speedway.” Drivers of international grand prix cars, he explained, were paid handsome royalties by oil, tyre, spark plug. petrol companies, and others, for using

°, duets - .There was little of this for speedway riders. n .° am bitioh to take part in in? pastlm e of stock-car racu .Mostly you go along for a good T?*? h^ he sa J% "There’s no skill f„u him h flndi i someone in front of him he bangs into him, if there is baTk 2 ne £ s *^ hi n d he gets hit in thl oacK. btock-car racing in England was not as much a craze as might be 12°t?§rir« e <r Said ‘ For a J. ime there were 12 tracks going now there were only about three, “feut they are springing Ur^n?£i« losing , down all the time.” 6 in «ee d^ya X. rac hjS, however, continued in popularity. In England it was lowing ° nly tO football for Public fol-