SWINDON rider Simon Stead says the tragic death of Lee Richardson was a ‘freak incident’, reiterating that there will always be danger involved in motor sport.

Former Robin Richardson died in Poland on Saturday after suffering a heavy crash in Rzeszow’s meeting at Wroclaw, and Stead, who competed alongside Richardson in Great Britain kevlars, said the incident was a complete shock.

“It just brings home how dangerous what we do actually is,” admitted an emotional Stead.

“You never think anything like this is going to happen, especially to someone so close to us all and so good at what he did.

“There’s always going to be freak accidents in any form of motor sport and unfortunately it’s just one of those things. General safety in speedway is pretty good.

“I’ve heard different people saying the track conditions weren’t very good but I don’t know as I wasn’t there.

“It’s just one of those freak incidents we’ve paid the dearest price for.”

Swindon team manager Alun Rossiter told the Advertiser that safety measures could not be much-improved on what was in place currently.

He said: “We take it for granted because you don’t see it (a serious crash) all the time, it’s not a thing that happens every five minutes.

“I don’t think we can do much more, what happened is just very, very unfortunate.”

Meanwhile, Robins co-owner Gary Patchett called for ‘fairer’ tracks to be a permanent fixture in speedway in the light of comments from Wroclaw’s riders.

He said: “What we need to do is stop doctoring tracks to suit home riders.

“Even the home riders at Wroclaw have gone on Twitter and said they were embarrassed in the knowledge that the track was prepared to suit them.

“At Swindon we’ve always wanted to provide a track that not only gives good racing, but creates fair meetings rather than artificially doctored results.”

Elsewhere, it has been confirmed that Swindon’s Elite League meeting at Lakeside on Friday will go ahead as scheduled.

The Hammers postponed last night’s meeting against Coventry out of respect for Richardson, and will travel to Poole on Wednesday before facing Swindon on Friday.

Scott Nicholls will guest for Eastbourne when they clash with Swindon at Arlington on Saturday.

Nicholls will fill the berth normally occupied by Joonas Kylmakorpi.