Many volonteery hours is needed to arrange an O-Ringen. This summer the speedway club Dackarna will take care of the parking in Rosenfors for stage 1 and 2.

We met Jon Lindberg (pictured) who works as a non-profit in Dackarna and sits on the board with a focus on finance and some other targeted efforts. The club has approximately 2.5 paid positions in addition to the speedway drivers.

- During a speedway competition in the elite series, there are approximately 100 volunteers who work. During the GP competitions once a year, up to 400 officials are active. We have been organizing the GP for nearly 20 years and the organization is well-trimmed. A good mark of that is that a few years we also went with our entire organization, including machines, to the GP competitions at Friends in Stockholm.

The association is called Målilla Motorklubb, which owns a limited company that runs the elite operations in Dackarna speedway. We have a turnover of approximately 13 million in the company and have owned the entire area with the speedway arena for 10 years. The audience average at the elite series matches was just over 15 years ago, in connection with the SM gold in 2007, over 5,000 but has fallen and fell further during the pandemic. Now we believe and hope that things have turned around and in 2023 we were over 3,000.

Dackarna have won the SM gold seven times, three of which in the "modern era", in 2007, 2021 and 2023, and are thus the reigning Swedish champions. The speedway has existed in Målilla since 1950.

- Today we don't have our own youth team, but organize "try outs" and can from there bring in those who become interested in starting to train and buy their own equipment. We cooperate with other associations around our elite series matches and above all during GP competitions. Now it will be a bit new that we go out and help with another arrangement when O-Ringen comes here. We will be responsible for the parking during the two stages in Rosenfors. In addition, we will serve lunch to the 130 bus drivers in our restaurant at the speedway arena. The similarity for us compared to O-Ringen is that it engages so many people and it has positive effects on business and the region, says Jon Lindberg.

Today, May 7, Dackarna has its elite series premiere - good luck against the Pirates!