On 19 May 1928, just three months after the sport had been launched
in this country at the pioneering High Beech meeting, Fred Mockford
and Cecil Smith introduced speedway racing to Crystal Palace with
the first international match between England and Australia, the
forerunner of the Test matches. It was an immediate success with the
public who flocked in their tens of thousands to witness these latter
day black-clad gladiators hurtling their way round the track on bikes
with no brakes at breakneck speed and flinging their bikes into a slide
at the corners at impossible angles.
This book looks at how speedway came to open at Crystal Palace
and follows its history through the next six years as a league team
operating in the world’s first speedway league until its closure in 1933
and its brief revival in the late 1930s.
Although one of the pioneering tracks little was known about its
history until now as Norman Jacobs provides a comprehensive history
covering the major events at the track, facts and figures, behind the
scenes anecdotes and its larger than life characters including Johnnie
Hoskins, Ron Johnson and Tom Farndon, who became the Star
Riders’ champion in 1933.
235 x 162 mm • paperback • 128 pages • 50 b&w illustrations
Norman Jacobs is the author of 11
published speedway books plus 14
other books. He is a committee
member of the Speedway
Museum, and administrator of
Speedway History Forum web
site.