Hammers announce new signing.

The Arena-Essex Promoter, Ronnie Russell, was due to make the announcement of a new signing for the Club during Wednesday's match between the A F Stocktaking Hammers and the Oxford Silver Machine.

However, as the match was called off because of the weather the fans were not able to hear the details directly from the hammers Promoter.

The new signing is Roman Povazhny, who was born in Russia in 1976. At present he rides with the Hammers No.1 Mark Loram for Rybnik in Poland's top League. He now races under a Polish licence.

Roman is no stranger to racing in this Country as he originally came over here in 1999 when he rode in 26 matches for Eastbourne, scoring a total of 131 points and 28 bonus points to give him an average of 5.48.

In 2000 he appeared for both Oxford and Wolverhampton, riding in a total of 29 matches and averaging 5.41. Then in 2001 he rode in just 9 matches for Eastbourne scoring 58 points and increasing his average to 6.29. In 2002 he found himself at Kings Lynn for eight matches but managed an average of just 4.21.

Roman made it through to the 2004 Speedway Grand Prix Final, which was held in Vojens, Denmark on Saturday 14th August. In the qualification races he scored 10 points from his five rides to place him in joint third place behind Hans Andersen and Antonio Lindback. The only riders to beat him in the qualification races were Hans Andersen and Stefan Andersson (apart from Bo Brhel and Damian Balinski who were in the race in which Roman had an exclusion). He beat the likes of Lindback, Niels Kristian Iversen, Niklas Klingberg, Ronnie Pedersen, Peter Karlsson, Kenneth Bjerre, and Tomasz Chrzanowski in the qualification heats.

The top eight then went through to the Semi-Finals, which meant that Roman was just two rides away from qualifying for the 2005 Grand Prix Series. Disaster struck him in his Semi-Final and he was excluded. However, he did have the satisfaction of beating the eventual top three of Lindback, Chrzanowski and Bjerre during the course of the meeting.

He is scheduled to make his debut for the A F Stocktaking Hammers in their next meeting, which will be at Purfleet on Wednesday 25th August, when Wolverhampton will be the visitors.