Coventry Bees Speedway Team have been forced to postpone tomorrow's (Friday) Elite League meeting against Kings Lynn at Brandon.
The meeting is off due to rider shortages caused by the Grand Prix qualifying meetings taking place over the weekend, with the Buildbase Bees having four of their top five riders involved.
Edward Kennett, Ryan Fisher and Kenni Larsen are in Denmark on Friday, whilst Przemyslaw Pawlicki is in the Czech Republic qualifier on Saturday, with practice early that morning.
Bees Co-boss Alun Rossiter explained to the Bees website: “I know people will be asking why this decision wasn’t taken earlier, but we’ve been burning the midnight oil with getting a team together for this meeting.
“At one stage it looked like at least a couple of the riders would be able to still line up for us, but unfortunately they are now under the threat of bans if they do not compete in their World Championship meetings
“It’s not our normal policy to call meetings off, but to run a meeting in those circumstances would make a mockery of things. We know how hard it’s been with being without members of our regular team lately, but this would have been much worse.
“The consolation is that at least it’s only three days after that we have our next home meeting, with the league leaders Eastbourne in town.
“We were planning ahead to race on Friday but once you hear that riders are going to be banned, this was really all we could do.”
Eastbourne are the next visitors to Brandon on Monday.
Meanwhile, Coventry have signed Danish star Peter Kildemand.
21-year-old Kildemand is enjoying a terrific second season in the Premier League with Workington, and he jumped at the chance of gaining Elite League outings with the Buildbase Bees.
Kildemand replaces Richard Sweetman in the Coventry squad, the young Australian having stood down from his position after a disappointing run of scores this season.
Team boss Alun Rossiter said: “It was obvious that this was the area of the team we had to look at, especially after recent results.
“We’ve been keeping an eye on several riders and Peter is one who has really impressed us so far this season, and having spoken to Keith Denham at Workington and to Peter, he was really keen to come here.
“I had a long talk with Richard, and he was very honest about the situation. I do have a lot of belief in him but things just haven’t been happening for him this year so we had to make a change.
“It’s unfortunate for him, but speedway is a business and I do thank him for his honesty. Hopefully we will see him back at some stage in the future.”