Phil Crump
Philip John "Phil" Crump (born 9 February 1952) in Mildura, Victoria is a retired Australian Motorcycle speedway rider who attained 3rd place in the 1976 World Championship. He also won the 1976 Speedway World Team Cup with Australia in the same year.
Career
Australia
Known universally as Crumpy or The Mildura Marvel, Phil Crump started racing speedway in his late teens at his local Mildura track Olympic Park Speedway in 1970 and would go on to have a stellar career both in Australia and overseas.
Phil Crump first won his first Australian Solo Championship in 1975 at the famous Sydney Showground Speedway. He would go on to win another three national championships in 1979 at his home track (Olympic Park), 1984, again at Olympic Park. He won his last championship in 1988 at the Riverview Speedway in Murray Bridge, South Australia. He would also finish second on five occasions (1976, 1977, 1980, 1981 and 1985) while he would finish third in the championship in 1983.
Crump was in winning form in the 1983 championship at Adelaide's Speedway Park and had easily won his first three races, including setting a new 3 lap track record along the way. In his fourth race he came against three-time defending champion Billy Sanders who was also undefeated but had looked less convincing after only narrowly defeating Gary Guglielmi in his first race (Guglielmi had led for the first 2¾ laps before Sanders passed him in the final turn). The most anticipated race of the night ended early as the pair clashed in turn 2 of the first lap with Sanders going down. In a very unpopular decision with the almost 8,000 strong crowd, meeting referee Sam Bass excluded Crump and Sanders went on to win the re-run race (beating Crump's new track record by 5/100 of a second) and subsequently the championship after also winning his final ride. As a result of finishing 3rd in the championship, Crump missed a place in the Overseas Final.