Articles > Ice-Racing in Sweden

By a forest track near the Swedish village of Morgongava, Dr Rod Brooks, cardio-vascular consultant for the NHS and track doctor at Wolverhampton Speedway, was giving me a taste of the sort of exchange that takes place in his speedway circuit's first aid room, thus: "The first question they ask is 'how's the bike?' The second question is 'did I get in to the re-run?' And the third is 'where's my leg?'"

The doctor didn't have time to expand on this because at that moment our conversation was drowned out by the roar of four 500cc chainsaws-with-handlebars, and the grizzled 55 year old Swedish world ice-racing champion came hurtling past just ahead of the 20-something young pretender, the Flying Finn, filling the air with a blizzard of what looked like broken teeth.

In fact those flying white chips were not dental charivari but frozen particles churned up by hundreds of 25mm spikes which studded the tyres of the competitors' motorbikes. Roaring around the circuit of polished ice at speeds of up to 90mph, cranking over on the corners completely without fear - and wholly without brakes - they completed the three laps at Morgongava in well under a minute.

For us, speedway as practised in Wolverhampton et al may be the sport of hard nuts, but for the ice-racers of Sweden, Finland and Russia it is the sport of chickens. Their version, they point out, is practised on a surface so slippery that it is virtually impossible to walk on, and they themselves have to be attached umbilically to their ignition systems so that in the event of an accident their engines are killed instantly - or else the spike-assisted chainsaw effect comes into play and they could get sawn in half by their own wheels.

For a first-time spectator like me ice-racing seems like the creation of delusional Mad Max scriptwriter who's had far too many close encounters with white powder - and we're not talking about the cold, crisp and even variety. But this is one of Sweden's more traditional national sports, born out of long and deeply chilly winter evenings in a country where alcohol costs an arm and a leg and where the television diet is mainly BBC with subtitles. In other words, the sort of conditions under which fanaticism can flourish.

With ice-racing you have to be particularly hard-headed just to turn up and watch. The conversation I was having with Dr Brooks was taking place at a private track in the forest where the temperatures were ten degrees below freezing and where simply spectating necessitated a strong constitution and several pairs of socks. A couple of hundred hardy souls had turned out for the Finno-Swedish clash but there was no sign of anything like press or television; it was, said the bikers, simply too rugged a pastime for the media to take any serious interest.

Ice-racing may have a long tradition - way back to the 1920s - but its following is limited to a dedicated few who are prepared to invest significant amounts of money and time in a sport which could easily bring their lives to a premature end. There are around 60 competitors in Sweden, around 30 in Finland, a handful of Dutch and Germans, a couple of Brits (Mark Uzzel and Graham Houseall from Kent), and 200 Russians. And most, except the Russians who have their own league, descend on the frozen tracks of Sweden for a fortnight of racing in the lead up to the World Championships.

All competitors have the same basic machine: a Czech-made single cylinder four-stroke Jawa with two gears and no brakes which runs on methanol and vegetable oil, producing a very fast burn and a trackside smell reminiscent of frying bacon and fireworks. Just getting it started requires heating up the cylinders with a blow-torch first, and between races the bikes are draped with old duvets to keep them warm, like horses in the stalls.

Apparently the success of an ice-racing bike depends on the correct setting of the tyre pressures and in the numbers and arrangement of the spikes - where more spikes equals more safety but less speed. Meanwhile the success of the rider lies in his (or her, as there is one female ice racer in Sweden) having absolutely no fear, especially during the later races once the ice has become pitted and rutted despite regular re-grading by tractors. If the tyre pressures are wrong and the rider chooses a bad line then he runs the risk of being bucked off into the path of his competitors.

Peter Lundin, a relatively new member of the local Hedemora team, showed me the set-up he'd chosen for his bike - 200 spikes on the back tyre and 130 on the front - and revealed that he'd come fifth in his first ever race the previous day. It'd been a big moment, he agreed, the culmination of two years' practise on frozen lakes, but he would never do better if he kept thinking about safety first. "If you want to win", he said, "there's no room for fear."

Peter showed me the gear you have to wear to protect yourself against your own machine, and fully dressed he looked like a cross between an armour-plated walrus and one of those club-wielding orks from Lord of the Rings. Evidently you need all the protection you can get, for the sport is simply too dangerous for any insurance, and competitors have to take unpaid leave from their jobs to recover from any trackside accidents. Once you've recovered physically then you have to work on regaining the confidence needed to crank the bike over on those icy corners, a process which can take some months.

In that day's racing the Finno-Swedish clash ended in anti-climax. The veteran Swede Posa Serenius got off ahead with Anti Akko in hot pursuit. On the second corner the latter was bounced from his seat, and although he regained it with skill reminiscent of the rodeo tricks of the Wild West , albeit at ten times the speed, his acrobatics sent the rider behind him skidding off into the middle and the Finn had to be disqualified.

Afterwards I had a few words with Posa, who at 55 is something of a national hero even amongst Swedes who've never been to an ice-racing meeting in their lives. He turned out to be quiet-voiced fireman with an unassuming manner that completely belied his record of 26 selections for the world championships in a 35 year career. The Russians are always the most difficult people to beat, he said, simply because of their strength in numbers, which is why he and a lot of the Swedish supporters were keen to see the young Finn do well. Posa himself wasn't thinking of retiring quite yet, but he was taking it one season at a time and there would come a time when the sport needed new blood. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Back at the trackside, the eccentric Dr Brooks -a habitual pilgrim to Sweden during the ice-racing season - was happy to report that the races I'd missed had passed without serious mishap. No-one, he said, had 'got tetleyed'. I think he was referring to the number of perforations on the bag.

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