Welcome
Update September 1. 2010
This website is now entering its 4th year, and seen from the webmaster chair (mine) much has happened since I began this work.
It began in a low scale when a couple of foreign speedway historians asked me to help identifying some Danish speedway programmes, they had in their collections. After some research I managed to help them, but at the same time I realized, that even there are numerous websites with different inclinations to the subject, none had the objective to give a comprehensive survey over the tracks in Denmark now and in the past.
This I decided to make my objective. The first job list I received from abroad contained 55 Danish tracks.
From my own files I swiftly could add that number up to 70.
From the very beginning I decided to concentrate around dirt tracks/speedways and long tracks.
Meanwhile the original number has been more than doubled up to 113 tracks. Whether this will be the final figure I don’t know.
Much good information has come from private and local city archives. Meeting programmes, newspaper clips and old stained photos have emerged from cellars, attics, drawers and closets together with leftovers from deceased riders. The amount is immense and many hundred hours have been spent with writing articles about the 83 tracks, which to this date have been uploaded.
Sometimes I am asked if I don’t know this or that track of the current. My answer is: Yes I do know them.
Through more than 25 years as referee, official, mechanic etc. I have been on them all. Plus – in my younger years - a number of the no longer existing like Fangel, Bogense, Snoghoj, Gladsaxe and Naestved Stadium etc.
But priority is given to tracks from the past where the risk of eternal forgetting is imminent.
Motorcycle racing on oval tracks has been a part of Danish culture for 90 years, although not equally beloved everywhere.
Anyhow the Danes in numbers of hundreds of thousands have come to the tracks to enjoy the intensity, the drama, the sound and the fumes, and admire the skill and courage of the riders, which has brought several European and World Championships to Denmark.
An estimate in round figures say that 1, 5 million Danes are interested in some sort of motor sport.
Few tracks have been run commercially. The majority has been initiated by enthusiasts who have sacrified time, money and hard work to establish a track for a handful of riders and get the fans to attend, only to see it all crumble away with consequently great losses.
Through the years from 1934 to 1949 the Tax Revenue was the hardest opponent claiming up to 60 % tax of the entrance fee.
It was bound to go wrong and did so for many tracks. After 1949 the tax got lowered to 20 % and after a couple of years more it got removed.
Then a wave of welfare came rolling with cars, summer cottages and campers, TV and charter travel to draw the public attention away from the tracks. Nevertheless new tracks popped up and some closed again shortly after.
From more than 100 tracks only 16 permanent speedway tracks remain together with 1 -2 one-offs and the Jübeck long track in Schleswig under the umbrella of Danish Motor Union. Add to that some moped tracks run by Youth- & Leisure authorities in some cities.
Money is always a big issue, but even bigger is the environment, which hardly can be called an opponent.
The demands for noise abating means have been strengthened from almost not existing to be dominant. The population has grown and consequently the need for more residential areas has increased. It is next to impossible to find a location in adequate distance from noise sources to neighbour houses.
Talking about new tracks will be very much uphill. Hopefully the current tracks will be allowed to stay where they are, and hopefully they can keep up their fine sporting results.
My working list most likely will grow only if other long forgotten tracks will emerge.
This shall not prevent anybody from sending all the information may they find to me.
Personally I calculate another 1 – 2 years to finish the job as it is now.
Søren Kjær
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