Maksym Drabik
Whilst Bartosz Zmarzlik, Maciej Janowski and Patryk Dudek were the Polish riders who finished in the top eight of the Speedway GP series, I want to highlight another Polish rider who I think had an exceptional season. At 21 years old, Maksym Drabik - with Wroclaw and, above, with Lejonen - has a great future ahead of him and may be the next Pole after Zmarzlik to win the SGP series.
He won the U21 World Championship for the second time this year and came eighth in Elitserien with a heat average of 1.971. That meant he beat Australian former world champions Chris Holder and Jason Doyle as well as doing better than many of the SGP riders including Antonio Lindbäck (SWE), Niels Kristian Iversen (DEN), Patryk Dudek (POL), Robert Lambert (GBR) and Max Fricke (AUS).
And proof that this was no accident can be seen in the even more fiercely competitive environment of the Ekstraliga. He finished as the ninth best rider in his home nation. Again, this put him above world champions of the calibre of Nicki Pedersen and Holder as he collected an outstanding heat average of 2.136 P/H which also placed him above experienced SGP riders such as Janowski, Matej Zagar (SLO) and Fredrik Lindgren (SWE).
Drabik, of course, was part of Poland's Team U21 World Championship who retained Gold in Manchester in July and was the nation's junior representative in the Speedway of Nations competition. Scoring 6 points out of a possible 12 he actually had a better series than either Dudek or Janowski who accompanied the dominant Zmarzlik as the senior riders in the team on each day.
But that was not the only international races the 21 year old was involved in. He also got to taste the magic of the SGP when he rode on the track where he holds the lap record, Wroclaw, as well as an appearance in the SEC in the last round in Chorzow, Poland.
Neither of these performances were outstanding despite the fact that he has been many of the riders he was competing against in the regular season in both Sweden and Poland. But this is probably the only disappointment in an otherwise near perfect season for the Wroclaw rider, who also picked up a Silver medal with the club as they finished second behind Leszno. in the Ekstraliga.
