JOHN EXPLAINS THE ERROR

NEWS Tuesday 28th August 2007, 11:34am

by John Campbell

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Let me explain the circumstances of, probably, my most high profile mistake in twenty-four years of speedway promotion and in case you don't know that was my booking of Jason Lyons as a guest last Friday.

I had left Kaj Laukkanen on the previous Sunday at Glasgow believing that he wouldn't be required for the Latvian Grand Prix. The rider he replaced in the Scandinavian GP, Andreas Jonsson was racing again so why would Kaj be required? But then I saw that Peter Karlsson had crashed out of Wolves meeting on Monday and the prospect of Kaj in Latvia arose again.

Kaj phoned fairly early on Wednesday to tell me that he was required at the GP so I immediately considered a guest. My first thought was Jason Lyons. My second thought was, we've got to be ok with the averages as Jason has already ridden for us as a guest for Kaj and we're in the same month so there can have been no average changes.

Within minutes Jason was booked up and I thought no more about it. With Sam Martin confirmed the previous evening the team was complete for Friday. Sometimes it's easy booking guests, Jason Lyons said yes immediately, sometimes it's difficult, Sam Martin had to contact his daytime employer before he could agree. Sometimes it can take minutes, sometimes it can take hours. It's always a relief when the job is complete.

And so we moved onto Friday. I left my office as normal by mid afternoon and called in at home before going on to the track. I always glance at the emails that have come in during the day.

Just for once I opened an email with the latest averages for guests and reserve replacement just to see who had changed and was horrified to see that it was Kaj and that he had dropped substantially and the new average was already in force! I knew immediately that I had made a mistake. I had overlooked that Kaj had ridden his third home match the week before and having ridden many more away matches than that his three home/three away average would come into force.

It was already after four o'clock and after I had turned Jason around before he got to Carlisle it was then the task of finding a replacement.

With Alex's assistance we tried to contact every rider within travelling time of Armadale. William Lawson, riding at Reading. Christian Henry, average too high. Theo Pijper, not in the country. Josef Franc, not answering his telephone. Stan Burza, not in the country. Jacek Rempala, in the country and willing to do it. Michal Makovsky, at his day job and not contactable until well after five o'clock.

So we talked it over and decided that the hit or miss Jack would be better than rider replacement and so we booked Jack. The rest, as they say, is history.