Tai up for the fight

The Speedway World Champion was named in the trio for the opening round in Manchester on May 11 alongside Craig Cook and Under-21 reserve Robert Lambert - with Chris Harris and Dan Bewley the other two squad members – and knows that it’s going to be a fiercely contested battle.

GB face off against Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Latvia and USA at the National Speedway Stadium, with the top three nations progressing to the Final in Russia in July.

Woffinden expects a testing qualification round, but feels his side have what it takes to make a strong start to this year’s competition.

He said: “We’ve got a pretty tough round, obviously Denmark and the Aussies look pretty strong but there’s some other good teams out there and we know it’s gunna be hard.

“Last year we put in a pretty good performance at Belle Vue and we’re looking to do the same again, we want to win our round and lay down a bit of a marker to the other countries and head to Russia with a big result.

“We’ve got a strong team again, Cookie knows Manchester inside out and Rob Lambert is improving all the time and I’d say he’s even better now than he was last year so we have no reason to fear anyone.”

Great Britain fell agonisingly short of the gold medal last year when Russia pipped them to victory in the all-or-nothing final race, but the triple world champion has his eyes on the ultimate prize this year.

“We want to go one further than last year, nobody expected us to do what we did last time but this year maybe a few people will look at us and know that we’ve got what it takes to win so our only goal is the gold medal. We only want to win. But first we’ve got to get to Russia!”

Woffy also said he’s looking forward to his first appearance on British shores of 2019, saying “It’s always cool racing for your country in front of your home fans and last year the atmosphere was awesome, I don’t get to race here too often so it’s always special when I do.

“We want to see as many fans there as possible cheering us on and we’ll do the best we can to send them home happy.”