The regular season in Denmark's Speedway Metal League finished on Friday 16 August.
Holsted Tigers finished this phase of the season in first having lost only one match and are therefore favourites to take home the title in the Superfinale in September.
The Danish league is dominated by riders from the country, in contrast to leagues in Sweden or the UK where foreign riders are usually the highest points getters for each team.
Technically, Australia's Jason Doyle is this year's top rider with a match average of 9.67. However, he, and a number of other well known riders have actually only raced two matches in the Danish league. So we're going to discount him, Bartosz Zmarzlik, Kenneth Bjerre and Dawid Lampart who otherwise would be in the top ten in the league.
So the top five riders who have raced 6 matches or more:
1. Niels Kristian Iversen - Esberg - 9.36
2. Nicki Pedersen - Holsted - 9.13
3. Mikkel Michelsen - Slangerup - 8.84
4. Anders Thomsen - Fjelsted - 8.67
5. Michael Jepsen Jensen - Outrup - 8.38
Not surprisingly these are the riders who are active in both the World Championship, GP series (Iversen and Michelsen) or the SEC European championship (Pedersen, Michelsen, Thomsen and Jespen Jensen).
There are also three Danes who rode on home turf in Round 3 of the SEC in Vojens who are also active in the Metal League. They are Peter Kildemand (Fjelsted), Andreas Lyager (Slangerup) and Fredrik Jakobsen (Fjelsted). Jakobsen was also Denmark's U21 representative in the Speedway League of Nations. Whilst not matching the five above, these Danish riders are in the top 20 of riders in Denmark's own league with a match average of between 5.5 and 6.5.
Observant readers may notice that last year's European Champion and one of the contenders for this year's World Championship, Leon Madsen, is not present in the Metal League. He decided to cut back on commitments this year to only focus of riding in the Polish league and international competitions. His results indicate that might have been a good idea, as he is currently leading the world championship after the Scandinavian GP in Målilla, Sweden at the weekend. And injury is probably the only thing that means he is not also leading the SEC, where he can theoretically still win with a good turn out in the last round in Chorzow.
