Speedway: Grand Prix or grand farce?

Funny thing, that. Except that the Grand Prix isn't fun any more. It certainly isn't funny.

I must confess I never did like the idea in the first place. Call me old fashioned but the world championship finals had a bit of magic about them.

I've seen a few. At Wembley. In the days of Ove Fundin, Barry Briggs and Peter Craven.

I liked the Grand Prix even less when they did away with the basic speedway formula in which every rider had five races and 15 points was a maximum.

Now I know all the arguments about money and television.

But the bottom line is the Grand Prix has become a liability.

It no longer brings together the 16 best riders in the world. Oops, sorry, the best 24. What next? Thirty or 36?

Does it really matter. Because most of them, if you'll pardon the pun, are only there for the ride.

The fact is there are better riders outside the world championship than in it. And there are a lot of riders getting in the Grand Prix who should not be anywhere near a world championship event.

Okay, I might be in the minority. But hands up all those who think the Grand Prix is what speedway racing is really all about.

Of course, it rewards consistency. Like it did when Mark Loram became world champion three years ago. Without winning one of the six Grand Prix meetings.

All power to Loram, who probably ranks as the best signing Eastbourne have made in the modern era. And he might well have been the best rider in the world in 2000.

But am I missing something here? Surely there is something wrong with a system where the world champion does not have to win anything.

In fact, a rider could even become world champion without winning a single race.

Think about it. Second place in a Grand Prix race moves you on every time. You might even get away with the odd third or fourth place if you finish second in a repechage heat.

Second place in every Grand Prix final gets you 20 points. And hey, ho, is anyone going to beat that over a season? Funny thing, that.

Where it becomes serious, and that's where we have got to now, is when it starts to have a detrimental affect on the day-to-day running of the sport and insults the fans who put their hands in their pockets week in and week out to keep it alive.

What happened last weekend, the rescheduling of the Scandinavian Grand Prix after the previous week's farce when the specially laid track was unfit to race on, without any apparent consideration for the knock-on effect on British speedway, was a disgrace.

It does not stop there. The Grand Prix has become a monster with lots of tentacles which are threatening to engulf the sport. Like the world championship. Except it isn't the world championship.

The final was held recently. It was won by Piotr Protasiewicz.

He isn't the world champion, of course.

What he got was a ticket into next year's Grand Prix.

If Britain's promoters have any regard for the future of the sport in this country, they have to tackle the problem head-on. Now.

And the people who are pulling the strings on the international stage would do well to remember where they have come from. And where all this might lead to.