Speedway is the discipline that built Mildenhall Stadium. Before the greyhounds and long before the stock cars, the West Row site was a strip of Fenland farmland with a shale oval scratched across it — and the team that grew from it, the Mildenhall Fen Tigers, has carried the stadium's name around the country for fifty years.
Origins on the farmland (1971–1975)
The first track appeared in 1971, a practice circuit laid out on farmland owned by Terry Waters. A central figure in those early days was Bernie Klatt, a former head chef at the RAF Mildenhall officers' club, whose enthusiasm helped turn an informal training strip into a proper venue. In 1973 the track was relocated to its present position, on the south side of the junction where Hayland Drove meets Cooks Drove, and run as a training school.
League racing followed in 1975, when the Fen Tigers joined the New National League — then the second division of British speedway. Their first home league meeting was staged on 18 May 1975 against the Scunthorpe Saints. The facilities were rudimentary: sheds for dressing rooms and a straw-bale safety fence. The racing, however, took hold quickly.
Champions of the Fens
It took only four full seasons for Mildenhall to top the table. In 1979 the Fen Tigers won the second-tier league title, the club's first championship and still one of its proudest. The 1980s brought steady mid-table racing, individual honours and a pair of team competition wins — the Fours in 1984 and again in 1987, and the Pairs in 1987 through Dave Jessup and Melvyn Taylor — before financial trouble and a full team change at the end of the decade forced the club out of the league.
Mildenhall rebuilt from the bottom. Through the late 1990s and 2000s the Fen Tigers raced at third-tier level — first the Conference League, later the National League — and turned it into the most successful era in the club's history. League-and-cup doubles arrived in 2003 and 2004, another league title in 2012 (alongside the Knockout Cup, Fours and Pairs in a clean sweep of a season), and a fourth league championship in 2021.
Honours at a glance
| Competition | Years won |
|---|---|
| League Championship | 1979, 2003, 2004, 2012, 2021 |
| Knockout Cup | 2003, 2004, 2011, 2012, 2023 |
| Fours | 1984, 1987, 2004, 2012 |
| Pairs | 1987, 2012 |
The 260-metre shale oval
Mildenhall's speedway circuit is a tight shale oval of about 260 metres, ringed by an Armco-and-steel safety fence. It is a genuinely technical track — short enough to demand precise gating and clean lines, with the loose Fenland shale rewarding riders who can find grip on the bends. It should not be confused with the larger 325-metre sand circuit used for greyhound racing; the two are different tracks sharing one stadium.
The track record stands at 49.68 seconds, set by Steve Boxall on 14 July 2013. Over the decades the West Row shale has been raced by names including Ray Bales, Mick Hines, Robert Henry, Melvyn Taylor, Dave Jessup and Carl Blackbird, with riders moving on to higher tiers and the club earning a reputation for developing young talent.
Closure, fire and the 50th-anniversary season
The Fen Tigers raced competitively without a long break right through to 2023, when they rounded off the season by winning the Knockout Cup. (The well-documented 2018 closure at Mildenhall affected the greyhound racing, not the speedway, which carried on throughout.) After an ownership change the club sat out the 2024 competitive season, and on 30 July 2024 a major fire closed the whole stadium.
The venue was rebuilt and reopened in March 2025. For speedway, 2025 became a 50th-anniversary season of a different kind: a planned competitive return could not meet the governing body's new safety-fence requirement in time, so the Mildenhall Speedway Supporters' Trust arranged a series of non-competitive 50th-anniversary challenge meetings instead, with the goal of a full league return in 2026. Speedway and stock car racing remain under the stadium's owner, Spedeworth International Ltd, while the Arena Racing Company takes on the greyhound side from 2026.
Race days
In a normal competitive season the Fen Tigers race on Sundays between April and October, the traditional rhythm of British league speedway. Because the programme has been in flux since the fire, anyone planning a visit should confirm the current fixture list and start times before travelling.