Simon Stead interview: Sheffield Tigers supremo on his life as a speedway rider, Great Britain success and the sport's future

Having watched the riders in the yellow and blue of Sheffield Tigers from the terraces, before riding for the team for nearly 20 years, to then leading them to two Premiership finals in one month was a hugely significant moment.

Speedway in Sheffield, at the very same Owlerton Stadium that hosted a Grand Final second leg last week and will stage a rearranged League Cup final second leg in the days to come, has been around since the 1920s. And the Stead family, while not part of it for all of those 90-odd years, have certainly played an important role in the latter half.

Stead’s grandfather was a promoter, his dad and uncle riders, and every Thursday night, young Simon would be on the terraces cheering them on, bewitched by the sport that would become his life.

“I’ve always been around it, so it was a natural progression for me,” he says of his integration into speedway.

“My Saturday nights were at Stoke Speedway where my grandad promoted events, I’d have a tin can on my foot pretending to be a rider, and Thursday nights I’d be watching at Sheffield.”

For adrenaline junkie Stead, as a young fan and even now as a 40-year-old team manager, what’s not to love about the sport?

“I’m still a believer that on its day, we have a fantastic product,” he says.

“It’s not, and shouldn’t ever be, over-complicated. It’s motor sport in a stadium, four guys going head-to-head for 60 seconds at phenomenal speeds, with no brakes. That as a concept is brilliant.”

It has certainly given Stead a life he reflects back on proudly. A late bloomer, he started on 125cc bikes on grass tracks, when a lot of his peers began on 50cc bikes. But he made up ground quickly, winning numerous British junior titles before joining the professional teams.

He was a teenager when he first rode for Sheffield Tigers, and was still on the bike for them in his mid-thirties. In between times he lived the life of a speedway rider to the maximum.

And the life of a speedway rider is like no other in professional sport.

Riders are effectively self-employed and can ride for up to three or four teams a week across multiple countries.

“I could be riding in Poland on a Sunday, for Belle Vue on a Monday, in Sweden on a Tuesday, Denmark on a Wednesday and then back to England on a Thursday,” says Stead, in a routine that would be repeated from April to October.

“I’d have a day off on Friday before travelling back to Poland on Saturday and starting again. In the winter, before serious relationships and family, it was November to February in Australia or America, and then the season begins in Europe. For almost 20 years it gave me a great life. I was able to fly around the world and meet great people.”

There was plenty of money to be earned, and won, but the overheads were significant. “You are self-funded, you’re effectively self-employed,” says Stead. “You have different contracts with different teams. In some of those contracts you might have travel expenses. I would have a team around me in the UK; vans, mechanics; and then a team that did the same thing in Europe. The bikes are horrendously expensive to maintain. You could be thinking you’ve had a great week but then throw in an engine failure and you’re in the minus.”

There were successes along the way – league titles in different countries and “lining up in the Grand Prix Series at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff in front of 50-60,000 people was something I will never forget.”

But there were plenty of injuries. “When you race around on a bike that out-accelerates a Formula One car and doesn’t have brakes, inevitably there are going to be crashes,” he rues. “I had some really nasty ones which hampered my career and I didn’t quite get to the levels that a lot of people, including myself, expected.”

A last crash in 2015 that left him with a broken humerus and femur in his leg could have ended his career, but instead precipitated one of his proudest moments.

“At that point given I was mid-30s and coming to the end of my career anyway, it would have been an easy way to hang up the kevlars,” he reflects of the injury.

“But I didn’t want that to be the end, I wanted to go out on my terms. So I put in a lot of hard work into the recovery, working with Sheffield boxing legend Ryan Rhodes who helped me immensely with my physical training and put me in a good frame of mind mentally to challenge myself for one more year.

“And I really enjoyed that last year with Sheffield, I wasn’t riding at the level I was used to, but I was still maintaining a reasonable account of myself.

“I ended up winning the Premier League Riders Championship in 2016. I came out of the start in second position and chased down the rider in first and passed him to be crowned champion. That was my last meeting on a bike. I knew it was time to go out.”

And so began the third phase of Stead’s speedway story – team management. He took over Sheffield Tigers – who else – in 2017, leading his hometown team to the second-tier Championship title in his first season.

Then the Great Britain national team came calling.

“I felt there was an opportunity at national level where I could have a positive influence,” says Stead, who sought to introduce more professionalism to the national operation.

“Being asked to be the manager of your national team whatever the sport or discipline, it’s something that I was very proud of and still am.

“We’ve had a lot of improvement over the last few years with nutritionists, upping our game to ensure our riders are the best version of themselves.”

The tactic has worked, as last year Great Britain under Stead’s stewardship were crowned world champions.

“That was amazing, unforgettable,” he says. “To be crowned world champion is something I strove very hard for as a rider and never achieved, so it has been very rewarding and gives me immense pride that I was able to lead our team to their first world title in many years.

“And we followed it up with a silver medal this year. Once upon a time we were pleased with a medal whatever the colour, but anything other than gold now and we’re disappointed.”

So which does he prefer – riding or managing? “I have loved both. Sometimes I get the urge to have another go, maybe not a full season or a full meeting, I just think it would be nice to have a ride again. But as a rider you have to be 100 per cent committed because it is an unforgiving sport.

“This side of the fence is much safer. Equally, I get the best of both worlds because I have a great bunch of lads to work with and a good rapport with the Sheffield fans, who know how much this season has meant.”

The advantage they take into the rearranged second leg of the League Cup final helped ease the pain of the narrow defeat to Belle Vue in the Premiership Grand Final the week before.

“It’s been a strong season, and that’s where the disappointment stems from,” continues Stead. “I felt we were good enough to be crowned champions.”

Still, not bad for team still going strong in its 10th decade, and a sport surviving in marketplace that only gets busier.

“I think sport in general has found it tough,” offers Stead. “I look at what’s going on in rugby at the moment and it’s frightening, especially with the level of investment they’ve had.

“Speedway at the moment is holding its head above water. Amongst all the bad news stories that grab the headlines, we’ve got a few success stories – Oxford have re-opened, Workington are putting a new track in. Other than the result for us last week, actually as a showcase for British speedway the atmosphere was fantastic, there was lots of travelling fans and there were lots of first-time fans there. The media interest was there as well. It shows what we can achieve together if we go in the same direction.

"And speedway in Sheffield is so special. It’s still the fastest racetrack in the UK, and second to none for facilities. We’re very fortunate to have great landlords.

“Thursday nights are speedway nights in Sheffield, always has been for as long as I’ve known.”

While ever the name of Stead has anything to do with it, that will continue for a long time to come.