Poland are through to the World Cup final after a night of high drama at Arlington Stadium last night.

The Poles won an incident-packed meeting which took nearly three hours to complete after a succession of spectacular crashes.

Altogether there were nine reruns, the fence had to be repaired four times and a new starting gate erected when the first one failed.

In the end, Poland triumphed in front of a big crowd with 57 points, ahead of the USA, who pushed them nearly all the way and finished with 49 points.

The Poles now go into Saturday's final at Peterborough with reigning champions Australia and Sweden.

The Americans have a date at the last-chance saloon at Peterborough tomorrow night with Great Britain, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Finland when the other two final places will be decided.

Remarkably, the Poles won without a major contribution from their No. 1 rider, Tomasz Gollob, who provided only one of their 14 race wins and failed to get a place in the four nominated heats.

Instead, one of the key rides came from Krzysztof Cegielski, the rider who Eastbourne Eagles signed and then discarded on the eve of the season.

He produced a sensational effort to foil Greg Hancock when the Americans threw him into the fray as a tactical joker worth double points.

Cegielski was unlucky not to finish as Poland's top scorer. He was leading in another race when his bike packed up.

Poland were in front from the second heat and led by 11 points after ten races, but with 20 of the 24 heats gone the gap was down to two.

America's hopes finally disappeared when Billy Hamill was ex-cluded from the penultimate heat after a three-man pile-up.

While the big guns were fighting it out at the top, Russia and Slovenia were having their own private battle for third place, won ultimately by the Russians with 24 points to Slovenia's 19.

The lesser lights did have their day, none more spectacular than Brent Werner's victory over Gollob which brought the house down.

Poland: Jarek Hampel 14, Piotr Protasiewicz 13, Grzegorz Walasek 12, Krzysztof Cegielski 11, Tomasz Gollob 7.

USA: Greg Hancock 17, Billy Hamill 11, Billy Janniro 11, Brent Werner 7, Ryan Fisher 3.

Russia: Roman Povazhny 8, Sergei Darkin 8, Denis Saifutdinov 5, Sergei Kusin 2, Eduard Shaikhullin 1.

Slovenia: Izak Santej 6, Jernej Kolenko 6, Matwj Zagar 5, Ales Dolinar 1, Denis Stojs 1.