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Photo - Jason Crump:
From - Mauger Motorsports News:
The first of the wildcard entries for this season’s Long Track Speedway World Championship finale has been revealed - a rider who is on the verge of clinching this year’s world short track championship. Australian rider Jason Crump (28), a rider recognised and respected worldwide, even by those outside of the sport of speedway, will now join the star-studded international troupe of riders to contest the fifth and final round of the long track series at New Plymouth’s Pukekura raceway on November 6.
Crump is a three-time world champion runner-up in the short track version of the sport – in 2001, 2002 and 2003. He was runner-up last season behind Denmark’s Nicki Pedersen but leads this year’s series with just one round to go. Crump is 17 points ahead of Sweden’s Tony Rickardsson following the Polish GP, the eighth of nine rounds, a fortnight ago, and he is favourite to collect his first world title at the final round in Norway this weekend.
“I've been associated with Jason pretty well since he started riding school boy speedway on the 125cc bikes. This was mainly because of my association with his father Phil Crump,” said the New Zealand event promoter Ivan Mauger, himself a nine-times former world champion.
“Jason did his first ever international long track meeting at my Australian Long Track Grand Prix in Canberra when he was only 16 years old. Jason has ridden in many of my Australian Long Track Grand Prix and international long track and speedway meetings throughout Australia almost every year since then. “Jason had originally agreed to be a wild card at the 2003 New Zealand Grand Prix but his circumstances in October last year would not allow him to travel here.
“One of the conditions (for Crump to come to New Zealand) was that I needed to persuade the Jawa Factory in the Czech Republic to supply him with one of the latest Jawa long track bikes. That was quite an easy thing for me to do because I was a Jawa Factory rider for 15 years and for about the past 15 years I've also worked closely with their design and technology team both in the design and practical testing of the bikes.
“It was only this week that Jason called me to find out what the Jawa Factory were doing and, when I confirmed that the bike would be prepared for him, he confirmed his acceptance as a wild card,” said Mauger.
