Wimbledon Dons

The Wimbledon Dons were a professional motorcycle speedway team who operated from the Wimbledon Stadium, Plough Lane 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 re-opening 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 were 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.

Read more about Wimbledon Dons:  Notable Wimbledon Riders

Famous quotes containing the words wimbledon and/or dons:

    New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.
    Jimmy Connors (b. 1952)

    The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
    Samuel Butler (1835–1902)