DANISH LEGEND NIELSEN GOING FOR VOJENS GOLD

Danish team manager Hans Nielsen is hungry for his first FIM Speedway of Nations gold medal as Vojens Speedway Center stages its biggest pairs event since 1979 from July 27-30.

Four-time individual world champion Nielsen joined forces with triple world champion Ole Olsen, who built Vojens and put Denmark on the world speedway map, to win the 1979 FIM World Pairs Championship at the venue.

Nielsen went on to win the World Pairs six years in a row from 1986 until 1991, partnering triple world champion Erik Gundersen for the first four victories, before winning the last two with 1991 world champion Jan O Pedersen.

Nielsen also won a record-breaking 11 FIM World Team Cups as a rider, but the great man is still waiting for his first gold medal since he took over as Danish boss in 2016.

He’s hungry to deliver it when his Danish side lines up in the FIM SON Final on Saturday, July 30 as the legendary Vojens, which has hosted 15 Speedway GPs and four FIM Speedway World Cup Finals, stages its biggest pairs event in 43 years.

Nielsen said: “This is my sixth year as a manager and we haven’t won the SON yet. With it being in Denmark next week, it would be really fitting to win it this year. We want to win it badly.

“It has been a while since we had the World Pairs in Denmark in 1979. We won it here that year and we have had some good teams since.

“It’s great that we have both the SON and the Speedway World Cup, which returns next summer. The World Cup with four riders and a reserve is always great. But the benefit of the SON system is you have more nations involved and it is nice to see other countries becoming quite good like Latvia and France. It means we have more teams and it makes the world of speedway more open.”

While team riding is banned in Speedway GP – an individual world championship – it is encouraged in the FIM SON as team mates work together to ensure their country scores big and avoids last places.

Nielsen admits he perfected the art of pairs racing in the UK, where he competed for clubs like Oxford, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Coventry.

“We were lucky enough to ride in Britain for so many years,” he said. “Ole Olsen, Erik Gundersen and Jan O Pedersen all rode in the UK too and there is a lot more focus there on team riding there – well, there certainly was at the time. You learned that by racing in the British league.

“Not so many of our riders race in the British league now. But most of the Danish boys know how to team ride. When we are training the youngsters, we have it on the agenda – riding in pairs. Most of the guys do ride for a team somewhere, so they pick it up.

“Team riding is a fun part of the SON for the public as well, seeing the riders help each other, and hopefully they will. When you only had one rider from each team on the track at a time in the SWC, you didn’t have that advantage. Now you do with SON and it’s an added attraction I think.”

Vojens Speedway Centre stages four straight nights of epic FIM SON action next week, starting with Semi-Final 1 on Wednesday, July 27, featuring eight-time SWC champions Poland, Australia, Latvia, Germany, USA, Ukraine and Finland.

Reigning champions Great Britain launch their title defence in Semi-Final 2 on Thursday, July 28, taking on Sweden, France, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Italy and Slovakia.

The top three nations from each Semi-Final join hosts Denmark in the FIM SON Final on Saturday, July 30, with the Danish Under-21 team competing in SON2 against Poland, Great Britain, Australia, Sweden, Czech Republic and Latvia on Friday, July 29.

Tickets for all four nights of the FIM SON are available online now. Secure your place at Vojens here: https://www.billetlugen.dk/eventseries/3187803/?affiliate=WW2