Racing in the East

Racing in the East: Motorcycle Speedway, Transnational Encounters, and Provincial Heartlands

Motorcycle speedway. A partially forgotten phenomenon that captivated millions in its heyday.

A sport where riders hurtle around a loose-dirt track at over sixty miles per hour. Without breaks. Races are over in less than a minute, but this exhilarating and often deadly spectacle once packed out such vast arenas as Wembley, Moscow’s Lenin Stadium, and Poland’s cavernous Silesian Stadium where an estimated 130,000 witnessed the 1973 World Final.

Yet, for various reasons, speedway gradually lost its footing in metropolises on either side of the Iron Curtain and took refuge in provincial settings around the globe. As the sport thrived at the so-called margins, speedway nurtured deep and surprising relationships between its ‘entangled peripheries’. In the process, it challenged Cold War binaries and offered unique opportunities for interconnected ‘backwaters’ from rural Britain to Soviet Siberia to be heard on the international stage. Motorcycle sport thrust East Anglia to global attention at the height of the Cold War, as Scandinavian and Eastern Bloc superstars lit up the region’s tracks, and King’s Lynn served as the entry port for communist-built racing machines that dominated international competition.

Through extensive fieldwork and archival research, UEA sport historian Dr Richard Mills is piecing together speedway’s remarkable transnational histories. The sport’s entanglements have led him to communist-built factory towns in Soviet Central Asia, to interview globetrotting riders of the 50s and 60s in rural Sweden, to archives and libraries in Europe, the former USSR, and Latin America, and to surviving speedway clubs in central and eastern Europe. To date, findings have been published Open Access in History Workshop Journal and History, with companion pieces in History Workshop Online and Aspects of Norwich.

In the autumn of 2024, a substantial touring exhibition emerged from the project. Supported by an AHRC IAA award, ‘Racing in the East: Transnational Speedway in Cold War East Anglia’ draws attention to this rich but neglected aspect of the region’s history. It aims to challenge negative stereotypes of a ‘provincial’, ‘parochial’, and ‘isolated’ East Anglia, and to bring to light extensive interactions that thrived despite tight travel restrictions and a fierce ideological divide. The exhibition has been installed in diverse locations, from a medieval city centre church, via Premiership speedway arenas, to the British Motor Museum.

Elsewhere, the exhibition has reached a broad cross-section of the East Anglian public at the Norwich History Festival, transport heritage events, and club meets for motorcycle enthusiasts. In combination, these events have enabled thousands of visitors to interact with this history, sparking numerous conversations, evoking long-forgotten memories, and providing attendees with rare opportunities to share cherished experiences. The project has attracted considerable media attention, with coverage on BBC radio, in the local press, and in the sport’s flagship Speedway Star magazine.

Beyond public-facing installations, the exhibition served to showcase two UEA research centres – East Centre for the Study of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Space and the Centre for East Anglian Studies – at the International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES) World Congress 2025, hosted at UCL’s Institute of Education.

Raising awareness of, and celebrating, such a rich history can contribute to efforts to secure a bright future for the sport, and aid campaigns and initiatives to save embattled clubs. In recent years, some of East Anglia’s historic speedway teams have been made homeless by redevelopment or been forced to pause activities in a challenging economic climate. Whether serving as a focal point for a supporters’ club gathering, or celebrating a specific club’s transnational history in writing, ‘Racing in the East’ has worked to support clubs at the heart of local communities. In autumn 2024, the exhibition formed the centrepiece of a Peterborough Panthers Supporters’ Club evening, as the ‘Save Peterborough Speedway’ campaign battles to return the sport to the city.

In 2025, the project backed a community effort to resurrect another storied team. The ‘Racing in the East Challenge Trophy’, contested between the Mildenhall Fen Tigers and the Isle of Wight Warriors, marked the 50th anniversary of a rural Suffolk club that gained an international reputation during the Cold War. The occasion saw the club return to race action – after a two-year absence – following the establishment of the Mildenhall Speedway Supporters’ Community Trust. In addition to the installation of the touring exhibition at the stadium, Dr Mills underlined the club’s proud past through a feature in the souvenir programme: ‘Cold War, Hot Fen! Fifty International Years of Mildenhall Speedway’.

Mildenhall’s return to the track is a rare success story for a sport which has endured the demise of multiple teams nationwide in the twenty-first century.

To read more on ‘Racing in the East’, please visit the project website.