Peterborough Panthers re-sign six riders from Premiership title team

Skipper Scott Nicholls (right) achieved the heat victory that secured the title

Peterborough Panthers have re-signed six of their title-winning team for the 2022 campaign.

Captain Scott Nicholls, Ulrich Ostergaard, Hans Andersen, Michael Palm Toft, Chris Harris and youngster Jordan Palin will all return.

The only exception is Bjarne Pedersen, who has retired and will be replaced by Danish rider Ben Basso.

"We took our time deciding where to go with the last position," team boss Rob Lyon told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

"Ben is young, exciting, quick - he'll be using the same backroom team that Bjarne used which is a continuity in some respects from what we had this year.

"He's 100% all out action and coming in on a four point average, I think he'll blow that away but there won't be any pressure on him to perform to any particular targets."

Peterborough's 95-85 aggregate win over Belle Vue in October gave them their first title for 15 years.

"The points limit was set and we were quite pleasantly surprised. It gave us the opportunity if we wanted to to retain six out of the seven that rode last year. That was quite a nice situation to be in," Lyon added.

"Everybody wanted to come back and we looked at it quite closely as to whether it was the right thing to do, because our form last year was based on the whole team performance including the reserve. It was quite crucial we made sure we were comfortable with the way we set the team up again."