We are right after taking down the emotions of the second round of Speedway Euro Championship in Daugavpils and already in a week, we will be witnessing the third round of the battle to become the Individual European Champion. This time, riders will move East, to Togliatti, situated 985 kilometers from Moscow.
At the Anatolij Stepanov's stadium, the best European riders will compete there for the third time. In 2013, Emil Sayfutdinov got the win and Nicki Pedersen did it one year later. Definitely, these two will have a strong will to repeat this success at the Russian land.
Local's representative, starting with a wild card, will be Andrey Kudriashov. Started his career in Poland from the starts in Wanda Kraków. In the current season, he's been racing great, what was noticed by the national team's coach Andrey Sawin. His good performance led to implementing him into the national team on the Team World Cup. For this young Russian rider, start in Togliatti will be his debut in Speedway Euro Championship. Reserve riders will be: Mikhail Litvinov and Gleb Chugunov.
After two rounds of SEC, situation in the overall classification is extremely interesting. Between the first and fourteenth rider, there is only a 5-point difference. Emil Sayfutdinov will take the Togliatti round, starting as a leader. Russian however, has got the same amount of points as Przemysław Pawlicki from Poland (18), who was slightly worse in Daugavpils and therefore he is currently placed 2nd.
Medal chances are still in many riders' zone. Just to remind, Grigorij Laguta, who skipped the first round, is currenly 12th. Russian is losing only 5 points to the leader. Behind his back, there are Nicki Pedersen and Janusz Kołodziej, who also gathered 13 points (in 2 rounds).