The Wimbledon Dons were a professional
motorcycle speedway 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 motor ...
, Plough Lane in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, 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 dow ...
.
[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.
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Honours
National League
Champions:
1954,
1955,
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,
1961
National Trophy
Winners:
1938,
1950
Events January
* January 1 – The International Police Association (IPA) – the largest police organization in the world – is formed.
* January 5 – Sverdlovsk plane crash: ''Aeroflot'' Lisunov Li-2 crashes in a snowstorm. All 19 ...
,
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,
1956,
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,
1962
Events January
* January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand.
* January 3 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism.
* January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the wor ...
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 of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and ...
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
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* (World Champion 1957, 1958, 1964, 1966)
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* (570 most appearances for the club)
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* (first England captain)
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* (World Champion 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972, 1977, 1979)
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* (World Champion 1954, 1959)
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* (World Longtrack Champion 1995, 1998, 2000)
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Season summary
+2nd when league was suspended
References
{{Reflist
Defunct British speedway teams
Speedway teams in London