Round two of the 2005 FIM Speedway World Championship will be held on Saturday, May 14, in a country which has recently been very amenable to the Australian connection ‰ÛÒ Sweden.
Combined, the Aussie troika of Leigh Adams, Jason Crump and Ryan Sullivan has won four out of the last five Swedish grands prix, which has amounted to the best return from any country since the world championship went multi-round in 1995. Crump, the reigning world champion, was the beacon in 2000-01, while Sullivan and Adams emerged with the spoils in 2003 and 2004 respectively.
Behind Australia, Sweden, via its five-time world champion Tony Rickardsson, is the only other country to have won more than one Swedish GP, with single victories to Poland (Tomasz Gollob), Denmark (Tommy Knudsen), America (Greg Hancock) and Great Britain (Mark Loram).
This Saturday night‰Ûªs GP will be the 11th in Sweden, at a new world championship venue ‰ÛÒ the 15,000-seat Smedstadion in Eskilstuna.
Despite the change of scenery in 2005, 34-year-old Adams will be well aware that last year‰Ûªs Swedish GP represented his last world championship victory, where he led home Crump in only the second antipodean 1-2 since 1995. Since then, the Mildura (Vic) gun has made it to at least the semi-finals of the last nine grands prix without claiming the ultimate prize. Despite the frustrating run, the reigning world No. 4 is still in an ebullient mood, confident that another win is just over the horizon.
‰ÛÏI have often become bogged down in the mental stress of the GPs in the past and I‰Ûªm not letting that happen this year,‰Û
