EUROPEAN PREVIEW - SGP Wroclaw

Image courtesy of Steve Hone Photography

Brady Kurtz has home advantage as he attempts to chase down Bartosz Zmarzlik for the title, with just three points between the two riders after Kurtz completed a hat-trick of wins in Riga one month ago.

The Australian is looking to make further history in his debut GP campaign by becoming the first rider to win four events in succession, but Zmarzlik has a powerful record at the Olympic Stadium with three wins to his name.

He was successful in 2019 and in both legs of the 2021 double-header, although since then he has never got beyond the Semi-Finals under the old format.

The race for third place sees another Wroclaw rider, Great Britain’s Dan Bewley, looking to score the points required to close the gap on Fredrik Lindgren as he seeks a first-ever medal.

Lindgren finished second in Latvia which leaves him nine points ahead of Bewley, whose second-ever GP victory came at the Polish circuit in 2022.

With Jack Holder and Andzejs Lebedevs holding fifth and sixth places respectively, the battle for seventh is also significant as that carries an automatic place in the 2026 series.

Lebedevs, who has already booked his spot via the GP Challenge, is eight points clear of a tie between Robert Lambert and Max Fricke, who themselves are nine ahead of Dominik Kubera, another Holsted qualifier.

Lambert goes into the meeting in decent form and with a good Wroclaw GP record behind him, with third places in both of the last two events to be staged at the venue in 2022 and 2024.

Wild Card Macej Janowski (2020) and Martin Vaculik (2024) also line up on Saturday having won GPs at Wroclaw in the past.

Four additional points are also available this weekend as the qualifying session culminates in the last Sprint race of the season.

A busy weekend overall in Poland kicks off on Friday with Zielona Gora hosting Rybnik jn the second leg of their Play-Down Semi-Final, with the visitors holding a narrow two-point advantage from the first leg.

But they will be encouraged by the fact that they produced one of their better away performances when they raced at the same venue in the league in late May, only going down by six points.

The other play-down encounter is on Sunday where Gorzow go up against Czestochowa, and this meeting is nicely poised with the visitors holding a six-point lead.

However, they will need to improve on their previous visit in mid-July when they went down 54-36 with Kacper Woryna and Jason Doyle scoring all but nine of their points between them, at a stage when they were badly hit by injuries.

In Metalkas 2. Ekstraliga the scheduled Play-Down fixture between Poznan and Tarnow, which was to take place on Saturday, has already been postponed and re-arranged for September 7.

However, all of the other six teams are due to be in action on Sunday, starting with the play-down second leg between Lodz and Ostrow, with the visitors holding a 12-point lead.

The line-up for the Play-Off Final should also be decided with both second legs taking place, including Tom Brennan with Bydgoszcz as they race at home to Krosno already with a 49-41 advantage from the away meeting, and coincidentally that was also the score in Bydgoszcz’s favour when they met at the league stage in mid-May, with Brennan scoring double figures.

Bydgoszcz will be expected to make it through to what should be a Final against Leszno, although the league leaders do have a job to do after they lost the first leg of their Semi-Final at Rzeszow 44-43. But having defeated the same opponents 55-34 at home earlier in the summer, they start as very heavy favourites.

Sunday also sees action in the National Speedway League Play-Offs with the delayed first leg of the Pila/Gniezno Semi-Final taking place following last week’s track issues.

That did at least give Adam Ellis a further week to recover from his knee injury, and he is named in the Gniezno team for the match against his former club.

The other Semi-Final is at the second leg stage, with Gdansk favourites to progress after a 44-40 win in Latvia last week heading into the home leg of their tie with Daugavpils.