English translation

Polish athletes succeed in sports that are known all over the world. An example of such sport is football where we have Robert Lewandowski, or tennis, where the Pole, Iga Świątek, has often triumphed recently. The Polish national volleyball team is also doing well, winning the silver medal at the last Olympics.

But there is a sport that is not really known all over the world, and many Poles are interested in it, and I’m talking about speedway here. Many people in Poland are not as interested in football as they are in speedway. They know all the players, and they are true fans of the sport. Although critics of this sport say that it just involves driving around and turning only left.

This video, like other videos on my channel, is recorded entirely in Polish, because it is meant for people who learn this language, and want to increase their exposure to it, using authentic materials that tell about life in Poland, like this one.

Speedway is a motor sport. All the riders race on an oval track. This track consists of straight parts and so-called arcs, i.e. turns. There are a dozen or so races [in a speedway match]. Four riders with specified helmet colors take part in them. The rider closest to the center of the track always has a red helmet. Next is the rider in the blue, white and yellow helmet. The rider who reaches the finish line first scores three points. and the next riders receive two, one and zero points, respectively. This means that the losing rider does not score any points.

Riders race either in pairs, or individually. In the case of pairs competitions, the points of two riders from a given club are added and compared to the points scored by two riders from the other club. So, for example, (such) a race may end with a 5:1 win, which is the highest possible win, given that all four riders reach the finish line… since in this case the first rider scored 3 points, and the second rider 2 points, and these players were from the same team. And the other team only scored one point, which was brought by the player from position no. 3.

At the end of the match, all points from the different races are added up. The team that scores more points throughout the match wins the match.

Speedway is a very exciting sport: you can hear the roar of the engines, so (such) a visit to the speedway stadium is quite an experience. It is a sport that guarantees a lot of adrenaline. Players overtake each other, and you never know which one will finish first.

Interestingly, riders do not turn at the bends, as it happens in normal street traffic, but rather slide – they cause the motorcycle to slide, so the motorcycle turns at the bend at an angle. And unlike a 'normal’ motorcycle, speedway bikes don’t have brakes either, because they are not needed… that’s why speedway is also a very dangerous sport: accidents often occur to excite the audience, although these are not always positive emotions. If a rider drives against the rules, he may be excluded from the race, and the race repeated.

Speedway is a sport that developed in Poland, among other things, due to weather conditions. That is, to be able to slide around the track, it needs to be properly watered. After every few races, the track is watered, so that it has not too much, but also not too little grip. In other climates, such as in the southern Europe, speedway is a completely unknown sport, because the climatic conditions did not allow this type of racing to emerge there.

Polish speedway riders have achieved great successes on the international arena. The former speedway champion was Tomasz Gollob, who was famous for always preferring to ride near the fence, i.e. accelerate on the outside of the track. Currently, Bartosz Zmarzlik is a very successful speedway rider who has won five world titles.

Not only the skills play an important role in the success of a given player or team, but also a team of mechanics: the motorcycle must be properly prepared, there are various settings that are sometimes refined during a speedway match, depending on the conditions in the stadium, but also as a result of its use during the competition. So it happens that some player or some team will start a match poorly, but in the next part they will begin to make up for the losses, because they could adapt better to how the track changes during the competition. All this adds to speedway a dose of unpredictability which excites the fans so much.

I’m not a big fan of speedway myself, but I think it’s good that there are different sports in the world, and different people have different tastes.

Have you ever been to a speedway match? Is this sport watched in your country? Write about it in a comment. And if you like this type of content, you might subscribe, and like this video, so that more people know about this channel… that such materials are available. If you are watching this video, you can also download its full transcript with English translation and lexical exercises, so you can learn Polish at a natural pace, in a natural way.