POINTERS FROM THE PROFESSOR FOR MADSEN

Madsen raced to his first SGP final of 2021 at last Saturday’s Betard Wroclaw SGP of Poland round four, finishing third behind Bartosz Zmarzlik and Artem Laguta to cap off an impressive weekend’s work. He is now seventh in the World Championship on 44 points – 22 behind series frontrunners Maciej Janowski and Laguta, who have 66, with Zmarzlik poised on 63 in third.

The Dane topped the heat score chart on 14 points in Wroclaw round three last Friday, but suffered the heartbreak of being excluded from his semi-final following a clash with Emil Sayfutdinov, leaving him with just 11 championship points.

After bouncing back with a podium finish to claim 16 championship points just 24 hours later, Madsen revealed that Danish national team manager Nielsen has been helping him with his starts behind the scenes.

As well as winning four world titles, an astonishing 11 World Team Cups and seven World Pairs gold medals, Nielsen became a hero in Lublin during a four-year stint from 1990 to 1993, leading the club to second place in the 1991 Polish championship – still the greatest season in the club’s history.

Now Madsen hopes some words of wisdom from the man known as the Professor will boost his own chances of making SGP history.

He said: “I have Hans with me and he is helping me a lot with gating. We are improving on that and hopefully we can keep improving.

“I have really been working hard on both my speed and my starts this year. I have been feeling all year that I didn’t have the speed like the top riders, but finally I feel I have the speed again. My starts have started to improve too.”

Asked whether he’s tweaking his bike setup or starting technique to make faster jumps from the tapes, he admitted: “It’s a little bit of everything. There are many things you can change to make a better start.

“Hans and I are working together to improve it. I don’t know if we have taken a huge step, but we have taken a step forward and improved my gating.

“I am very happy. But we still have a long way to go to get it perfect and that’s what we are going to use this year to work very intensely on – improving my starts.

“You have never heard of a speedway world champion who can’t gate, and if you are not a good gater at this level, you will never be world champion. It is so essential in speedway.”

Madsen returns to the Lublin track where he led Denmark to Monster Energy FIM Speedway of Nations bronze last October – the country’s first senior world team medal of any colour since they won 2015 FIM Speedway World Cup silver at Vojens.

The former world No.2 hopes to enjoy more success there this weekend as he bids to improve on seventh place in the standings.

He said: “I am slowly climbing the ladder. There are still a lot of points to fight for and we have seven rounds to go. So that’s 140 points up for grabs. With this points system, things can quickly turn around.

“Obviously there is a big gap to the leader, but I still believe that the top three is within range and possible, so I will still aim for and fight for that – no question about it.

“I like the track in Lublin. It’s a good track. I have had good meetings there in the past and we also raced the SON Final there, which went pretty well.”

Another man keen to star in the Orlen Lublin SGP of Poland is Great Britain racer Robert Lambert, who spent three seasons racing for Lublin from 2017 to 2019. The 2020 European champion played a pivotal role as the club stormed to successive promotions, going from the Polish Second Division in 2017 to the PGE Ekstraliga for 2019.

Lambert can’t wait to return this weekend, but he insists he won’t be taking his track knowledge for granted against the sport’s top stars as he bids to build on two straight semi-final appearances in Wroclaw last weekend.

He said: “Having a couple of years’ experience there is good, but everyone will be there with the setup and dialled in.

“It’s just a matter of making sure I am prepared in the best way and get things spot on with my setup and myself as well.

“I am definitely looking forward to going there. It’s a track I know. We will just take it race by race, try to get to the semis and keep it moving from there.”

SGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS: 1 Maciej Janowski 66, 2 Artem Laguta 66, 3 Bartosz Zmarzlik 63, 4 Emil Sayfutdinov 58, 5 Fredrik Lindgren 50, 6 Tai Woffinden 44, 7 Leon Madsen 44, 8 Martin Vaculik 34, 9 Max Fricke 33, 10 Jason Doyle 28, 11 Robert Lambert 27, 12 Anders Thomsen 24, 13 Matej Zagar 17, 14 Oliver Berntzon 8, 15 Gleb Chugunov 8, 16 Krzysztof Kasprzak 7, 17 Jan Kvech 7.

ORLEN LUBLIN SGP OF POLAND ROUNDS 5&6 LINE-UP (in ranking order with rider numbers): 95 Bartosz Zmarzlik (Poland), 108 Tai Woffinden (Great Britain), 66 Fredrik Lindgren (Sweden), 71 Maciej Janowski (Poland), 30 Leon Madsen (Denmark), 69 Jason Doyle (Australia), 222 Artem Laguta, 89 Emil Sayfutdinov, 54 Martin Vaculik (Slovakia), 46 Max Fricke (Australia), 55 Matej Zagar (Slovenia), 105 Anders Thomsen (Denmark), 93 Oliver Berntzon (Sweden), 187 Krzysztof Kasprzak (Poland), 505 Robert Lambert (Great Britain), 16 Dominik Kubera (wild card – Poland), 17 Wiktor Lampart (first track reserve – Poland), 18 Mateusz Swidnicki (second track reserve – Poland).