About the Event

Twentieth-century East Anglia was a vibrant hub for international motorcycle racing. Such sports as speedway, motocross, and motoball brought world champion riders and mysterious teams to the eastern counties. In the process, they embedded the region in a diverse network of provincial heartlands, from outback Australia and rural Scandinavia to Soviet Siberia. UEA’s ‘Racing in the East’ project has explored East Anglia as host for such encounters, but racing also offered rare opportunities for East Anglian-based riders to travel through the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War. What did the pioneering Norwich Stars team make of 1950s’ communist Poland? Which challenges did the region’s riders face when venturing to the outer reaches of the USSR to partake in ice racing? How did a group of motorcycle enthusiasts from Harwich end up in 1980s’ Soviet Ukraine? And why were the Ipswich Witches among the first to witness the seismic impact of communism’s collapse across the former Eastern Bloc? Through archival research, fieldwork, press accounts, and testimony, this lecture sheds light on a two-wheeled Cold War phenomenon.