FLINT READY TO LEAD GB
LEON FLINT believes that “concentration” is the key to success for Great Britain on home soil. The Berwick-born star is captain of the side for the Speedway of Nations 2 final at the National Speedway Stadium on Friday night.
Image courtesy of Steve Hone Photography
Flint will lead the line for GB with Dan Thompson and Sam Hagon in Manchester, two years after he was part of the side that secured Bronze in Vojens.
He said: “You need to learn from anything that you can with these type of meetings.
“It’s run at a fast pace and you’ve got to be really concentrated and on the ball with set-ups. It’s not just your typical meeting.
“You need to be going there and making sure your bikes are a million dollars and making sure you’re going to have no faults.
“It’s obviously quite overwhelming when I imagine there’s going to be a big crowd there at Belle Vue.
“We are lucky it’s in Manchester. We’ve all had a fair amount of laps around there. We should all be pretty switched on with the set-up.
“If we turn up with the right mentality and the right preparation, there’s no reason why we can’t go there and get a good job done.”
Former British Under-19 and Under-21 Champ Flint believes this will be the hardest meeting of his career.
He added: “Just because it’s Under-21 doesn’t mean it’s any kind of junior meeting whatsoever.
“It’ll probably be one of the toughest fields for this event in a fair few years. I’m up for it and I’m sure the other boys are as well. It’s definitely going to be tough.
“You can’t even pick one individual guy out because each nation has at least one guy that’s absolutely flying or scoring loads of points in Poland.
“It will be tough but it will make it even better if we get them beat.
“It’s definitely the toughest meeting I’ll be involved in at Under-21 level. It makes it better for me being Captain of my team and country. I’m absolutely buzzing with it.
“I definitely don’t think people have got us down to be favourites.
“The pressure probably isn’t on us. But we are definitely going to do a job.
“But I feel pretty good around Belle Vue and I believe it’s Dan (Thompson) partnered up with me. The way he’s been trapping and he’s been riding real good.
“He was there with Ipswich just last Monday. So it will be good for him to share his knowledge of what he thought the track was like.”