Thursday 13th October 2011, 14:28

Australian legend Jason Crump hopes missing out on a record-breaking 11th straight World Championship medal will give him “a kick up the backside” ahead of 2012.

The 36-year-old scored six points in the FIM Enea Gorzow SGP of Poland on Saturday before the action was halted after 16 heats due to heavy rain.

But even if the meeting had run its course and Crump won his last heat race, semi-final and final, it would not have been enough to overhaul Jaroslaw Hampel for the bronze.

Crump won a World Championship medal every year for 10 seasons from 2001 to 2010 – matching a feat achieved by five-time champion Ove Fundin between 1956 and 1965. So the Bristol-born man admits watching this year’s presentations from the sidelines was a bitter pill to swallow.

“It’s hard after 10 years,” he said. “You feel you’ve almost got a right to it. Maybe this year will be a blessing in disguise for me, give me a kick up the backside, get me focused and recharged up again.”

Crump still won two SGP silver medals this term at Danish tracks Copenhagen and Vojens. He also finished fourth in Prague. But the three-time world champion accepts he simply hasn’t been at his best.

He said: “You have to get yourself in as good a mental and physical shape as possible. If you attack the Grand Prix physically and mentally at your best, and someone does it better than you, you accept that.

“This year I can honestly say I probably haven’t attacked it in either sense the best I can. You have to be very, very sharp.”

Crump went to Gorzow 13 points off the medal places and accepts the rostrum was always going to be a stretch too far.

He said: “It wasn’t really a realistic target with the way things have been going. Saturday was about trying to finish the year on a high and maybe the result wasn’t there. But we made a lot of changes to stuff on the bikes in the week leading up to Gorzow. It was definitely better.

“I made some mistakes and I was in the wrong places at the wrong time a couple of times. As I’ve said for most of this year, the results have been down to the rider more so than anything else.

“This year it hasn’t quite clicked for me and I haven’t done the right things enough. I don’t deserve to be in the top three and that’s simple.

“I’ll go back to Australia now and try to work hard. Hopefully I’ll get myself in a position to be in the top three again.”

Tweet

Speedway Grand Prix Speedway Grand Prix