PREMIERSHIP PREVIEW: OXFORD

THE glory days at Cowley were in the mid to late 1980s when Oxford teams spearheaded by Hans Nielsen and the late Simon Wigg took the club to three British League titles.

They added a further success in 2001, notable for being the final top-flight championship not to be decided under the play-off format, but after closing some six years later, it appeared the Sandy Lane venue would be confined to the sport’s history books.

It was a 15-year battle to get the sport back, but when it did return in 2022 at Championship level, the impact was immediate, and the second year of the Oxford revival was in many ways even better.

And that has led to the decision that the club will operate at all three levels of the sport this year, with a newly formed Spires team taking their place in the Premiership along with the Cheetahs and Chargers remaining in the Championship and the NDL respectively.

It means Oxford will be staging senior speedway in most weeks of the coming campaign, and the general consensus is they have very much done their job in terms of assembling a competitive side.

There are exciting names right down the Spires’ order, starting at the top with Polish superstar MACIEJ JANOWSKI, and working all the way through to ASHTON BOUGHEN who at the age of 16 is the youngest Rising Star in the Premiership.

Janowski spent his early UK seasons with Swindon, King’s Lynn and Poole before focusing on continental racing for most of the last decade. He became World No.3 in 2022 but lost his place in the Grand Prix series last year, and he clearly feels regular racing this year can help him recover that position.

Elsewhere in the top five, Australian Champion ROHAN TUNGATE comes in for his first full Premiership season since 2019 when he rode for Peterborough, having had a brief spell with Ipswich two years ago, whilst NICOLAI KLINDT makes the move from King’s Lynn having ended last season on the sidelines after a bad crash in Poland.

Captain of the Spires will be GB legend CHRIS HARRIS, who is an asset of the club, always went well at Cowley in their previous era and has supplied some of the most thrilling action since their return. He’s joined in the top five by another former British Champion, CHARLES WRIGHT, who comes in after spending the last three seasons with Belle Vue – and both Wright and Harris have won recent Championship Pairs titles at Oxford.

The Spires managed to retain space in their team building for a powerful reserve, as there’s no doubt LEWIS KERR should score well in that role, and he’s already a popular figure with the club after racing for the Cheetahs last year.

All that means there will be no pressure placed on the young shoulders of Boughen, but his early performances in the sport – he’s only been racing since the summer of 2022 – mark him out as very much one to watch, and he has a great chance of taking some big scalps as he improves further.

There will be plenty going on at Oxford this season, so can they mark their first year back in the Premiership with a place in the play-offs – or even better?

OXFORD SPIRES 2024

Maciej Janowski 8.00

Nicolai Klindt 6.89

Rohan Tungate 6.61

Chris Harris 6.37

Charles Wright 6.15

Lewis Kerr 5.31

Ashton Boughen RS

*Subject to approval