NEWS: Wroclaw track to be revived thanks to government funding
Great news coming from Poland. Wroclaw, a city of two former World Champions, will have its own Cycle Speedway track. The amazing development has been greeted with delight by both champions Marcin Szymanski and Lukasz Nowacki.
The two started their respective careers at the local club of Sparta Wroclaw at the same time as formal racing begun in Poland in 1995. They had been going to the same SP45 School which was in the district of Sepolno where they lived.
To be fair, most of the riders went to the same school hence the location of the original track. It got built with the help of TMSM Sparta club, which was the original Speedway Club of Wroclaw before it became WTS Wroclaw. The same people that used to run the Speedway club, started helping out those young kids and made their dream come true of a proper track.
The team raced there as soon as the work had finished in the second part of the 1995 season and finished with a Bronze medal. Both Szymanski and Nowacki were influential to that team from the beginning. Unfortunately the club had financial difficulties and could not carry on helping out with running the Cycle Speedway team.
In 2001 they decided not to enter the first team into the league, which prompted Nowacki to leave the club and sign for Pavart Rawicz, Szymanski shortly followed in 2002 with his move over to Szawer Leszno. With the team gone the track started to deteriorate.
The final meeting on the track happened nearly 10 years ago in 2006.
Local racing and trainings were not enough to keep the track in good shape. With Nowacki gone to race in the UK in 2002, it only left Szymanski and a couple of keen youngsters using the facility. Those youngsters soon grew up and became best riders in the World and an unbelievable drive for Marcin to keep up with them.
Maciej Ganczarek, Radek Handke and Dariusz Pilas were his training partners and soon became his teammates in Leszno. During all those years track was only kept safe and good enough to train on, with no racing there was no way back to have it in any state to host racing there. Massively overgrown and practically with no surface, it was a matter of time before the school would decide to get rid of it.
The Wroclaw track in its current condition.
Coincidentally the circuit has now benefited from a public government scheme and will be revived to its former glory and beyond. Wroclaw’s Public Funds Scheme provides local investments and improvements with public funds. All projects are subjected to public voting, and the track was one of the projects for this years campaign.
It was part of a bigger plan of rebuilding all of the sports pitches, along with the running track at the back of the school as well as the Cycle Speedway track. The successful campaign had both Szymanski and Nowacki pitching in with their support, also some great help from local rower, Pawel Randa, Silver Medal winner of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and WTS Betard Sparta Wroclaw’s captain, Tomasz Jedrzejak. Work on the track should begin soon. We will keep you updated with further developments.