Tape’s Up, Your Local Paper, Wednesday, March 19, 2025
After what feels like a long winter, speedway has finally returned and I’m looking forward to seeing what the season has in store for the Stars.
The post-season break feels like it has been a positive one for the club.
The Stars have put together an attractive-looking side, one that on paper should be more than capable of challenging for a play-off spot come the end of the season.
The return of Niels-Kristian Iversen, Nicolai Klindt and Jan Kvech from last year’s team is a positive.
Certainly, the arrival of Kvech breathed new life into the team after a difficult start to the season last year.
However, it is the new arrivals for 2025 that arguably provide a new wave of optimism amongst Stars fans. The return of Richard Lawson is a massive coup.
He played a major part in Leicester’s march to the Premiership Grand Final last year and hopefully he can perform the same role for the Stars.
Chris Harris has been a terrific servant to British speedway over the past 25 years and I’m delighted to see him finally sign for the Stars.
Harris is a great entertainer who will surely thrive on the wide-open spaces at Lynn.
The added benefit of having him start the season at reserve should ensure plenty of tactical options to Rob Lyon in the opening matches of the season.
Ben Cook’s arrival from the Belle Vue Aces is also another positive.
He has been a consistent performer as a visiting rider, and he produced a match-winning 14 points as a guest for the Stars against Sheffield last season to show that starting the season at No. 1 should hold no fears for him.
The final new arrival is local lad Ashton Boughen, a prodigious talent who in my eyes is the most talented 17-year-old in British speedway.
Boughen is a former British Youth Champion and finished in third place in British U-21 championship last season. With the experience in the team from the likes of Harris, Iversen and Klindt to guide him, he is surely in the right place to help his career progress to the next level.
For the Stars to make the playoffs, home form and collecting bonus points is going to be key.
We need to turn the Adrian Flux Arena into a fortress. It will also be important to get off to a good start.
Last season we only won once in our opening eight meetings, and it felt like we were on the backfoot from the very start.
We have a good chance to get off to a positive start with a home and away double with Oxford in the Knockout Cup before the Belle Vue come to town at the end of the month.
Progress in the cup and defeating the defending league champions would be a great way to start the season.
It was great to see such a bumper crowd at the Adrian Flux Arena on Sunday to pay tribute to Niels-Kristian Iversen.
The result of the meeting was unimportant and there was some rustiness on show from a few of the riders, but it was good to see encouraging performances from Chris Harris and Iversen himself that promise much for the season ahead.
It was also exciting to see Robert Lambert and Freddie Lindgren back at the Adrian Flux Arena.
Those two, along with Jason Doyle who was making his first return to Lynn since his horrific crash last year, were a cut above the rest of the field.
For Iversen though, it was a fitting tribute to a rider who has provided so much to the Stars over his 10 seasons service.
His first appearances for the Stars came as a raw 19-year-old, when he made three appearances at the end of the 2001 season.
Few in attendance would have anticipated what a stellar career he would go on to have.
Spells with Newport, Oxford, Peterborough and Wolverhampton saw him establish himself as a solid performer.
But it wasn’t until he made the switch back to King’s Lynn that his career really took off.
During his spell with the Stars between 2011 and 2016, Iversen won five Grand Prix’s, finished third in the Grand Prix standings in 2013, won the World Cup twice with Denmark and was one of the top performers in league speedway.
Iversen has scored 2,171 league points for the Stars which puts him fifth on the all-time points scorers list, with only Terry Betts, Tomas Topinka, Michael Lee and Malcolm Simmons ahead of him.
He is only 58 points behind Simmons so is almost certain to go into fourth place in the coming weeks and further cement his place into Stars folklore.
Legend is a word that is often overused in sport, but it’s certainly fitting in the case of the likeable Dane.
We were fortunate enough to be joined by Niels on the podcast last week to discuss his career at length.
This week we will be joined by another Stars legend, Swede Rickard Hellsen to discuss his career, including the Stars legendary Knockout Cup win in 1977.
The Pride of the East podcast is available to listen on Spotify or Amazon for free.
