THE LAST SHOWMEN: Why Speedway’s Future Depends on Reclaiming Its Soul.

Photo from Barney Kennett at Leicester Marriott.

Interview with Barney Kennett (watch full interview link at the bottom)

There was a time when speedway wasn’t just a race; it was theatre. It was the smell of sweet methanol, the deafening roar of unstructured steel and the magnetism of pure showmanship.

Today, that legacy faces a quiet, generational crisis.

"The sport is declining because the older generations watch it, but they don’t involve the younger generation," says Barney, the newly appointed President of the World Speedway Riders Association (WSRA).

Barney’s perspective isn't born from nostalgia, it is forged from decades of elite experience and achievement at the absolute pinnacle of motorsport. 
From his vantage point at the helm of the WSRA, he sees a sport drifting away from the very magic that made it a global phenomenon. For Barney, saving speedway isn't about looking backward, it is about keeping the tradition of showmanship and storytelling alive for the next generation.

Reflecting on the sport's colourful history, Barney shared some of his favourite missing elements from the classic era: “They even used to have donkeys at speedway, riders riding on donkeys just to entertain the crowd.”

To understand where speedway lost its way, Barney points back to the masters of the craft: legendary pioneers like Johnny Hoskins and Frank Arthur.

Hoskins and Arthur weren’t just administrators, they were visionary businessmen and master storytellers. They understood that a race meeting was fundamentally an entertainment product. They built an ironclad operational structure that kept stadium seats filled across Australia and England for over 60 years, thriving well into the late 1980s. They treated the riders like gladiators and the crowd like partners in the drama, ensuring the competitors put on an unforgettable show, from fierce racing to simple gestures like riders throwing their goggles into the grandstands for local kids to grab.

When that structured showmanship faded, the center of gravity shifted.

"Poland now has what Australia and England had in the '50s and '60s," Barney observes. In Poland, speedway remains a cultural religion, stadiums are packed, television rights are massive and young children dream of riding 500cc bikes with no brakes. Why? Because Poland preserved the structure, the spectacle and the relentless focus on youth integration that the rest of world let slip through its fingers.

Barney’s mission as WSRA President isn't just to preserve history in a museum; it is to actively inject that historic integrity back into the modern grassroots ecosystem. It is an uphill battle against an old guard that has grown defensive, insular, and resistant to modern standards.

It is precisely why Barney has thrown his immense weight and the prestige of the WSRA behind the vision of Nomad Dirt Culture.

He recognises that for the sport to successfully build new facilities, survive long-term and capture the imaginations of a younger demographic, it requires adapting to new technologies and keeping the strategic structure that traditional speedway shown in the past. 

Speedway and grassroots motorsport belong to the young kids learning to master a machine, the parents cheering from the grandstands and the legacy of the showmen who built it. The infrastructure of the future must match the integrity of our history.

The show must go on. But this time, we have to build it to last.

🎥  Want to hear the full, unfiltered history? Watch our exclusive, in-depth interview with WSRA President Barney here

Photo of Barney Kennett (front middle) during his time as a rider in Canterbury Crusaders, 1984.