FIM SPEEDWAY GOLDEN MOMENTS | CROATIA

As the bikes warm up for the 2024 season, FIMSpeedway.com editor Paul Burbidge takes a look back at some of the biggest moments that have taken place at our FIM Speedway venues.

We kick off with Donji Kraljevec’s Speedway Stadium Milenium – home of the FIM Speedway GP of Croatia on April 27.

For a nation with only one speedway track, Croatia punches well above its weight when it comes to delivering historic nights.

The Warner Bros. Discovery Sports era was launched at Speedway Stadion Milenium with a Speedway GP won by Bartosz Zmarzlik. Incredibly, the Pole has led the World Championship ever since that night on April 30, 2022, and has doubled his world title tally from two to four.

But we’re winding back the clock to two incredible moments in 2010 and 2011, when American great Greg Hancock told the speedway world he wouldn’t be slipping quietly into retirement.

Hancock arrived in Croatia in August 2010, having reached just one final in the first seven rounds that year. At this point, he needed a strong finish to the season just to retain his spot in the series.

The stakes were high for local organisers as Speedway Stadion Milenium staged its first-ever SGP round – on the weekend of owner Zvonimir Pavlic’s 50th birthday. 

It wasn’t quite the celebration he had hoped to enjoy. Rain struck on the Saturday night, delaying the FIM Croatian Speedway GP to Sunday afternoon. 

But it was worth the wait for Hancock. He revelled on a hot and dusty afternoon to deliver top spot ahead of Great Britain star Chris Harris in second and then world champion Jason Crump in third.

That only told a fraction of the story, though. Behind the scenes, Hancock had been working with motorsport engineers Prodrive, based in Banbury, UK, on a brand-new frame. It was this secret weapon which transformed his season.

The Californian takes up the story of how a chance meeting at a British Elite League match in Reading changed the course of his career. Speaking as part of FIMSpeedway.com’s Stars of the Century series, he said: “This guy called Lars Sexton introduced himself and said, ‘I am sorry to bother you. I work for Prodrive.’ I used to pass that place 150 times a year going to and from airports. Of course, I knew who they were, and I knew who Petter Solberg is and all the rally teams etc that they worked with like Subaru.

“They said, ‘We want to help you. How can we help you?’ I was thinking, ‘Is this another one of those guys who says he can help me? What can he do for me? They are car people. I am a bike guy.’

“We loaded the bike up one day and drove into Prodrive. They took us on a tour of the museum, and we started meeting the engineers. I met this guy called Mick Metcalfe, who was the drivetrain engineer. He was a massive Coventry supporter. He was probably as starstruck as I was being in that facility. When we unloaded the bike and rolled it through the workshop, everyone who was at their machines or workstation stopped and just came over to look at the bike.

“They were all motorcycle nuts working in a car world and every single one of them was so excited, checking this thing out and thinking, ‘What can we do?’ We ended up leaving the bike there for them to hang out with and get a feel for it. They took some drawings and did a load of analysis. They started building frames for me.

“To cut a long story short, after I wrote off a few bikes and banged my head quite a few times trying to test new things, with things breaking and chains snapping, by 2010, they had developed a frame and fork combination. I put it on the bike and the first time I rode, I thought ‘Whoa!’ I was overcome. It was amazing. They had developed a frame that worked for me, trying to help me correct some bad habits I had after all the years of riding small tracks in the States and turning too hard.

“They made a bike I could ride the way I ride, and the bike would do all the work. I said to my mechanics at that point, ‘I can win the World Championship on this.’ My chief mechanic Rafal Haj said, ‘What?!’ I told him again, ‘I can win on this. This is amazing.’

“I went out there at the next GP in Croatia – the first one staged there in 2010 – and I won the GP. Even my mechanic was thinking, ‘What the hell?!’ I told him, ‘Dude, this thing is the business. I have something nobody else has and I am going to live every last moment of it.’ That's where it all turned – right there. Everything came in 2011, it was just bam, bam, bam and I was thinking, ‘Bring it on!’ I turned 41 years old, and I found my mojo.”

Hancock had definitely found his mojo. He ended 2010 fifth in the world and launched a sensational assault on the 2011 Speedway GP World Championship, taking wins in Prague, Cardiff and Vojens – meaning he arrived at the penultimate round in Croatia on September 24, 2011, with the chance to seal the sport’s biggest prize for the first time since his maiden victory in 1997.

Grin was on the verge of no ordinary title win. Hancock stood on the verge of becoming the oldest world champion in history at 41. 

Hancock got the job done – sealing the title with a round to spare. He celebrated with his team and dropped to his knees to kiss the Speedway Stadium Milenium track on which his return to the top of the mountain began a year earlier.

British legend Peter Craven’s seven-year gap between his two FIM Speedway World Final victories in 1955 and 1962 was doubled to 14 years and Hancock went on to smash most records in the Speedway GP book as he added two more world titles in 2014 and 2016, meaning he won three of his four world titles after his 40th birthday – a feat which may never be repeated.

His 2,655 championship points scored from 1,248 heats and 455 race wins all remain series records. The four-time Speedway GP world champion will go down as one of the sport’s all-time greats, and those two nights in Croatia will be forever part of his story.