| 1935 Star Riders' Championship | |||
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The 1935 Star Riders' Championship was decided over twenty heats, and the rider with the highest total score was crowned as champion. Tom Farndon and Ron Johnson did not take part after crashing the night before at the New Cross Stadium, an accident that cost Farndon his life the day after the final. Geoff Pymar and Norman Parker replaced them. [1]
Tom Farndon, was a British speedway rider who won the Star Riders' Championship in 1933 whilst with the Crystal Palace Glaziers.
Ron Johnson was a speedway rider who won the London Riders' Championship in 1945 (unattached) and in 1946 whilst with the New Cross Rangers.
New Cross Stadium, Hornshay Street, Old Kent Road, in South East London was opened in the early 1900s as an athletic stadium but was mainly used for greyhound racing and speedway. The ground was adjacent to The Old Den, the then home of Millwall F.C. and was used as a training ground by the club when they did not have facilities of their own. The track was often referred to as 'The Frying Pan'. It was built inside the greyhound track and had banking all the way round. At the time of its closure in 1969 the stadium had a capacity of 26,000. The stadium was demolished in 1975.
1935 was the final running of the Star Riders' Championship. From 1936, Motorcycle speedway would have its own official Speedway World Championship.
The Star Riders' Championship was the forerunner of the Speedway World Championship and was inaugurated in 1929. The competition was sponsored by The Star, which was a London evening newspaper at that time.
The 1936 Individual Speedway World Championship was the first ever Speedway World Championship and was won by Lionel Van Praag of Australia. It was the first of a record 26 times that London's Wembley Stadium would host the World Final with the last being in 1981.
Motorcycle speedway, usually referred to as speedway, is a motorcycle sport involving four and sometimes up to six riders competing over four anti-clockwise laps of an oval circuit. The motorcycles are specialist machines which use only one gear and have no brakes; racing takes place on a flat oval track usually consisting of dirt, loosely packed shale, or crushed rock. Competitors use this surface to slide their machines sideways, powersliding or broadsiding into the bends. On the straight sections of the track the motorcycles reach speeds of up to 70 miles per hour (110 km/h).
