Kyle Howarth on captaining Sheffield Tigers and life as a speedway rider

When you captain a professional team in this great sporting city, embodying the working class spirit with no-nonsense performances and leadership by example, you quickly become an adopted son.

Howarth first rode for Sheffield Tigers Speedway in 2016 and has made this his professional home ever since.

It was not long before he was made captain of the team, steering them to play-off final wins, a League Cup trophy and to within one victory of the biggest prize in British Speedway last season.

The life of a speedway rider can be a nomadic existence, with many contracts one year in length and riders flying all over Europe to compete, but for the 29-year-old there is nowhere better to ride his bike than Owlerton Stadium.

“As soon as I came here, Sheffield became home,” says Howarth. “I’m a racer, the way the track is - big, fast and wide - people love a racer, you can tell with the Yorkshire fans, they’re very passionate and I’ve always got on with them.

“It’s been a bit like home for me, I get on with the promotion team and with Steady (team manager Simon Stead). They know me as a person and as a rider, I give 100 per cent, I rock up with really good equipment, I don’t give them any hassle.

“And I’ve been quite lucky - well actually it’s not luck - we’ve been quite successful together: we won the championship in 2017, I’ve won the pairs championship here twice, so I’ve brought a bit of silverware here.”

The one thing missing is the Premiership Grand Final title which he and is team-mates missed out on last season in agonising circumstances, refereeing decisions going against them in the first leg against Belle Vue Aces that ultimately saw them defeated.

In a sport in which its riders are effectively self-employed mercenaries, performing for up to four teams a week across different countries, for someone whose professional roots are now laid in Sheffield, that disappointment was something he took into the winter.

“Losing to Belle Vue was hurtful, a bitter pill to swallow,” he tells The Yorkshire Post.

“You get all the way to a final and then you lose, it’s very hard. Sometimes if you don’t make the semis or the final the season’s over and it’s done and you move on. But when you come so far you don’t want to lose.”

It made returning to Sheffield for a seventh season a no-brainer for Howarth, who will also race this year for Plymouth in the second tier.

“Monday I could be at Wolverhampton with Sheffield,” he begins, when asked to describe the working week of a speedway rider. “I’ll go back to Wiltshire, my mechanic will go back to Manchester.

“Plymouth race on a Tuesday, so I’ll drive there and meet the mechanic I have based in the south, then I’ll go back on Wednesday which is my day off.

“Thursday I get up and travel north. I go to Manchester first, stop at my mum and dad’s to get a bit of food, then about 4.30 head over to Sheffield with my mechanic.

“I never really drive home on my own after a meeting in Sheffield, so I just drive back to Manchester and go home the next day.

“Weekends are off for me, but someone like Jack Holder (his Australian team-mate at Sheffield) would leave here on the Thursday night and go to Stansted or Luton Airport, get a hotel for three or four hours, then get a red-eye flight at 5 in the morning to Poland for a weekend race. When you’re doing it for five, six months it’s hard. People think these nice shiny bikes must be a great lifestyle - but there’s a lot to it.”

A speedway rider also rarely practices, such are the demands of racing and travelling. Haworth stays on top of his health and fitness, but there are no training sessions with Stead and his Sheffield team-mates.

The travel, especially for Howarth, is the hard part.

“Sometimes when you’ve had a hard night and you’ve got a four-hour journey home, you don’t want to be eating that caesar salad you want to be eating a double cheeseburger - and sometimes you do need it. This sport can get so busy with the travelling, that’s why I like to go back to the countryside to shut off.”

But then the bike lures him back again. “It’s a buzz, but also it’s a job, it’s an income,” he says. “The atmosphere, winning trophies, when you’ve done it once with a club you want to do it again and again. It’s not a bad job is it?”