World speedway for Melbourne!

The 2015 FIM speedway world champion will be crowned at Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium on October 24, it was announced today.

The deal between BSI Speedway, the rights holder of the FIM Speedway Grand Prix (SGP) series, and Etihad Stadium is for five years, which means the event will be held at the state-of-the-art multi-purpose stadium until 2019. The last time world speedway came to Australia was 2002 in Sydney.

Tickets for the event go on sale at 9:00am on Friday, October 10, starting from $49 for adults and $24.50 for children. Visit www.ticketmaster.com.au to get your tickets.

Australia already has two confirmed riders in the 2015 speedway series, Chris Holder and Jason Doyle, with the possibility of four – a quarter of the field – if Darcy Ward and Troy Batchelor also make the cut.

BSI Speedway managing director Paul Bellamy is delighted to be bringing the series home to the country where speedway was born in the early 20th century – 1923 in fact. He said: “Australia is one of the true superpowers of world speedway and it has been a long-term goal of ours to take the FIM Speedway Grand Prix series back Down Under.

“The SGP series has visited some fabulous venues across the globe and Etihad Stadium is up there with the very, very best of them.

“Melbourne lives and breathes motorsport and sport in general. We hope Melburnians, Victorians and fans from all over Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world embrace the event next year.

“Despite the retirement of triple world champion Jason Crump and record 10-time Aussie champ Leigh Adams in recent years, the production line of world-class Australian talent just keeps rolling.

“Their fans spend most of the season getting up in the early hours of the morning to watch them in action live on the Speed channel. I hope they will enjoy the opportunity to support them at Etihad Stadium, and at a far more civilised hour!”

Etihad Stadium is situated in Melbourne’s CBD, surrounded by shops and restaurants and adjacent to Southern Cross Station – the city’s main transport hub.

As well as hosting some of the world’s top music artists, the venue stages everything from AFL and cricket to soccer and darts.

Paul Sergeant, chief executive officer of Melbourne Stadiums Ltd, the owner of Etihad Stadium, looks forward to bringing more world-class sport to a world-class venue. He said: “Bringing FIM Speedway Grand Prix racing to Etihad Stadium has been on our agenda for some time and is a tremendous coup for Melbourne. We’re looking forward to an exciting five years of SGP action and are in no doubt it will become a hugely popular event.

“We’re proud to be staging and promoting the Australian FIM Speedway Grand Prix, which will be privately funded.

“The SGP series is spectacular. It’s in an easy-to-follow format with fast and exciting racing. Here at Etihad Stadium, air horns will be more than welcome, so the noise will be something special under our roof!

“We’re also looking forward to working with Australian Speedway legends Jason Crump and Leigh Adams, who will serve as Australian SGP ambassadors. It’s an honour to have them on board and we hope the event will help the current crop of Aussie stars become legends in their own right.”

Sergeant was the former boss of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, which is now the blue-chip world speedway round.

Crump and Adams were both at Etihad Stadium for today’s launch, and are delighted the championship is returning to Australia.

“I am very excited. Being a Victorian boy this is a dream come true. I always wanted to get a get a grand prix here. We had one in Sydney but it didn’t come off quite right and this place is just made for it – the atmosphere will be unbelievable,” said Adams. “Speedway is such a cool sport and made for a stadium like this.”

Crump, the three-time world champion, said: “Maybe I retired a couple of years too early! I never had any thoughts about riding again, but when I walked in here yesterday it’s the first time the spectre of racing has ever come back to me again. I’m too old, though…

“The event is going to be awesome. Leigh and I raced in stadiums like this, and the atmosphere for the home riders was just unreal. Holder and Doyle will be very fortunate to race in this stadium with their friends, family, sponsors and country all behind them. It stands the hairs up on the back of my neck just thinking about it.”

The confirmation of the Etihad Stadium deal means that two world motorcycle championships will be held locally in the space of six days in 2015, with the Phillip Island MotoGP round slated for October 18.