Tony Rickardsson
Jan Tony Soren Rickardsson (born on 17 August 1970) is a Swedish former professional motorcycle speedway rider. He competed in the Speedway World Championships from 1989 to 2006. Rickardsson is notable for winning six Speedway World Championship titles in 15 attempts. In 2011, Rickardsson was named an FIM Legend for his motorcycling achievements. Career summary Promising talent Rickardsson was born in Avesta, Dalarna County, Sweden. In 1989 he became Swedish team champion with the now defunct Stockholm U team. The next year, he won the Swedish Championship, a title he's won six times since, including three times in a row from 1997 to 1999. That year, he also won a bronze medal at the Junior World Championships in Lviv. In 1991, he made his debut at the World Championship in Gothenburg, and surprised many by winning silver behind diminutive Dane Jan O. Pedersen. Rickardsson was lucky to actually make the 1991 World Final after having missed qualifying when he finished 10th in the Nordic Final in Denmark, but got his chance when as first reserve he replaced injured English rider Andy Smith for the World Semi-final in Germany and ended up finishing a strong 5th to qualify for the Final. This promising performance was followed up by two fourteenth-places at the next World Championship, before he won the last single-event World Championships in an extra play-off race against Danish triple World Champion Hans Nielsen and Australian Craig Boyce. In 1993 he won the Speedway World Pairs Championship with Per Jonsson and Henrik Gustafsson. He also won the 1992 and 1994 World Team Cup Championships as a member of the powerful Swedish teams which included 1990 World Champion Per Jonsson, Henrik Gustafsson, 1988 World Under-21 champ Peter Nahlin, Jimmy Nilsen and Mikael Karlsson. World dominance He won the Elite League Riders' Championship, held at the Abbey Stadium on 11 October 1998. Despite being on or near the top of the tables in the new Speedway Grand Prix series, organised as six events where points were tallied at the end, Rickardsson failed to win a single individual Grand Prix event in the next three years, and only won a World Championship silver and a Swedish Championship in that time. However, from 1998 onwards, he was dominant. He won three of six events in 1998, including a home win in Linköping, and ended up beating fellow Swede Jimmy Nilsen by 12 points. Joining Hans Nielsen as the only 2 riders to have won world titles in both the single meeting and grand prix formats. This year, he also won the Elitserien with Valsarna of Hagfors, being the highest averaging rider that season, and he won the British Elite League with Ipswich, averaging the highest for them as well. 1999 was an almost equally stunning season, although it started badly when he got disqualified in the first race at Prague, finishing eleventh. After three races, he was third, 24 points behind Tomasz Gollob, who looked to be cruising to victory. However, Gollob ran into