Vissing prepares for his second season with Bandits

Vissing, who along with new signing Ben Barker, should provide the Bandits with a powerful spearhead, says that he has been working hard during the winter and has left nothing to chance.

“Speedway is not just about four laps, five times a night from March to October,” he said.

“Speedway for me is a full- time job and during the winter I have been very busy.

“Last season, when the last match was finished, I went straight into the workshop. I stipped my bikes down to be ready for this year.

“My engines had a full service and when the work was finished in the workshop I visited all my sponsors to say thank you. It is a tradition, something I have done every year, because the sponsors mean everything to me.”

After Christmas Vissing started on his paperwork - “I have to get my calendar together and create and design my covers and race suits for my sponsors, because they all have to be ordered,” he said.

Over the past month the Dane has been back in the workshop preparing his bikes for his first outing of the season this weekend, when he attends a practice session at Gorican in Slovenia.

“It is a lot of work to get the bikes and everything else together,” he said.

“My plan is that I will go to Gorican, and after that I will go to Poland the following week and practice some more. When I have done that, about mid-March, I will be back in the workshop to do the last bit of work, so I will be 100 per cent ready for Berwick.”

But it’s not just his bikes that Vissing has been working on - he has also been concentrating on his personal fitness.

“Since January I have been training five times a week,” he said. “For most of that time I am going for a run but sometimes I am going to the gym. I also have to focus on what I am eating and I am on a healthy diet to get my body ready for the season.

“In the pits this year I am happy to have Martin Morris and Jake Slight with me, and I am really happy about that. At the start of the season I will also have my Polish mechanic with me in the UK, I can have him here because our Berwick racing starts before all the other countries. I’ll have a good team behind me and I am sure that they will do a good job”.

“I am really looking forward to the season, looking forward to take Berwick a step further than last year and I think we have a really good chance with the team that’s been assembled.”

Meanwhile, Berwick are awaiting the arrival of new signing Matic Voldrih for the forthcoming campaign, admitting that his inclusion in their starting line-up is a bit of a gamble.

Co-promoter Dennis McCleary has confirmed that none of the Bandits’ management have met the 26 year-old Slovenian before, and they have not seen him ride.

“To be honest, we’ve signed the guy up on the recommendation of Slovenia’s top rider, Grand Prix star Matej Zagar,” admitted McCleary.

“Although we’ve studied his form, and looked at tapes of his racing performances, none of us have yet met Matic, or seen him race – he’s never been in Britain before!”

“There’s another problem in that he doesn’t speak English,” said McCleary. “However, Google Translate is a great tool. He’ll send his bikes over to Berwick next week and then he will fly in on March 12, and will immediately arrange to practice on a British circuit that Saturday.

“Right now, he’s still working at his winter job every day, and going to the gym there three times a week to get in good physical condition.”