'City speedway helped break Cold War barriers'

Dr Richard Mills said East Anglian speedway forged links with communist nations during the Cold War

The rousing success of a Soviet speedway team at a Norwich track helped create unity at the height of the Cold War, a historian has said.

The USSR test team had toured Britain's speedway clubs in 1964 but achieved legendary status at the Soviet Russia v Norwich Stars meeting that July.

A depleted squad "rode out of their skins", impressing the home crowd and local journalists, Dr Richard Mills said.

Dr Mills, based at the school of history at the University of East Anglia, has explored the sport's links with the Eastern Bloc for the city's inaugural Norwich History Festival.

"It really was a moment where speedway broke through those Cold War divides, broke through the barriers," he added.

"A four-man Soviet team raced in front of a packed Firs stadium [off Cromer Road in Hellesdon], and they won the meeting.

"Publications like the Eastern Daily Press spoke glowingly about these riders and the way they behaved - the miraculous fact they had beaten a Norwich Stars team full of its Swedish legends.

"There was a realisation that many people on the other side of the barrier are just like you and me, and sport was something everyone can unite behind and get together over."

The USSR's team tour of Great Britain hit the headlines in summer 1964

The link between East Anglia and the USSR brought other benefits too.

By the 1970s, Skoda set up its headquarters at the Port of King's Lynn and brought in thousands of vehicles, including speedway bikes and tractors.

"You had an ironic opportunity for communist organisations, state-run factories effectively, to use speedway to market their products," added Dr Mills.

"The first marketing tie-up and the first fully sponsored team in Great Britain was the Peterborough Skoda Panthers in the early 1980s.

"Speedway was the tip of the iceberg but there was a whole raft of relationships -Lowestoft shipbuilders were building fishing trawlers for the Soviet Union in the 1950s, you had Norwich making various bits of machinery for factories in Siberia, and you had east German tractors coming into King's Lynn."

Speedway bikes like this one would have once sent the shale flying at The Firs

Dr Mills said the "human legacy and historic legacy" continues to this day, with the Norwich Stars resurrected as the King's Lynn Stars at the Adrian Flux Arena.

For decades the club has signed multiple riders hailing from the former Eastern Bloc, including the reigning Czech Republic champion Jan Kvěch.

The Norwich History Festival, which runs to Friday, aims to present history as a living topic relevant to our lives.

Its theme is rebels and radicals, with the 1549 Kett's Rebellion and lesser-known uprisings among the numerous subjects in the festival calendar.