The Wimbledon Dons were a professional

motorcycle speedway Motorcycle speedway, usually referred to simply as speedway, is a motorcycle sport involving four and sometimes up to six riders competing over four anti-clockwise laps of an oval circuit. The motorcycles are specialist machines that use only ...

team who operated from the

Wimbledon Stadium Wimbledon Stadium, also known as Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium, was a greyhound racing track located in Wimbledon in southwest London, England. It also hosted stock car and other small circuit motor racing events, and until 2005 hosted motorc ...

, Plough Lane in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

.Jacobs, N. ''Speedway in London'', The track opened in 1928 and the Dons operated there from 1929 until 1991. They were closed during the Second World War but upon their reopening in 1946 there were 42,000 people in attendance with an estimated 10,000 more locked outside. The club were very successful at the highest level of British speedway during the 1950s and 1960s, and attracted numerous famous riders. Having been defunct for eleven years, the team was reopened again in 2002 by Steve Ribbons & David Croucher in the Conference League but were forced to close in 2005, with Ian Perkin, Dingle Brown & Perry Attwood being joint owners of the club, when the stadium owners insisted on dramatically increasing the rent paid by the team to the stadium..

Honours

National League

Champions:

1954 Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The fir ...

1955 Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijian ...

, 1956, 1958,

1959 Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...

1960 It is also known as the "Year of Africa" because of major events—particularly the independence of seventeen African nations—that focused global attention on the continent and intensified feelings of Pan-Africanism. Events January * Ja ...

1961 Events January * January 3 ** United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that the United States has severed diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba ( Cuba–United States relations are restored in 2015). ** Aero Flight 311 ...

National Trophy

Winners:

1938 Events January * January 1 ** The Constitution of Estonia#Third Constitution (de facto 1938–1940, de jure 1938–1992), new constitution of Estonia enters into force, which many consider to be the ending of the Era of Silence and the a ...

, 1950,

1951 Events January * January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950). * January 9 – The Government of the United ...

1953 Events January * January 6 – The Asian Socialist Conference opens in Rangoon, Burma. * January 12 – Estonian émigrés found a Estonian government-in-exile, government-in-exile in Oslo. * January 14 ** Marshal Josip Broz Tito i ...

, 1956,

, 1962

KO Cup (formerly National League Trophy)

Winners: 1968, 1969,

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of X (''Extrem ...

London Cup

Winners: 1938, 1939, 1961, 1964, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1985

RAC Cup

Winners: 1954

Britannia Shield

Winner: 1959

Gauntlet Spring Gold Cup

Winners: 1979

Conference Pairs Champions

Winners: 2004, 2005

Notable riders

* * (World Champion 1957, 1958, 1964, 1966) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (570 most appearances for the club) * * (first England captain) * * * * * * * (World Champion 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1977, 1979) * * (World Champion 1954, 1959) * * * * * * * * * * * * (World Longtrack Champion 1995, 1998, 2000) * * *

Season summary

+2nd when league was suspended

References

{{Reflist Defunct British speedway teams Speedway teams in London