Todd Wiltshire

After losing his NSW crown to Craig Boyce he would only manage 5th in the Australian Championship at the 402 m Arunga Park Speedway in Alice Springs, though he paired with Boyce (who won the individual title) to win the Australian Pairs Championship a night earlier.

Todd Wiltshire (born 26 September 1968 in Bankstown, New South Wales) is a former motorcycle speedway rider from Australia, who competed at the highest level of the sport, finishing a career best third in the 1990 Individual Speedway World Championship at the Odsal Stadium in Bradford, England.

He started racing in 1979 at the Lake Macquarie Mini-Cycle Club, giving his older sister Fiona the credit for getting him started in racing saying she was his inspiration through her own involvement in dirt track racing.

Wiltshire won numerous junior titles before capturing the Australian 500cc championship in his first senior year in 1986.

Seeking a new challenge Wiltshire turned to Speedway in late 1986 and won the ACT Championship in both 1987 and 1988 at the Tralee Speedway in Australia's capital city Canberra and quickly established himself as one of the most promising young riders in Australia, finishing 4th in the 1989 Australian Under-21 Championship in Mildura.

Starting in 1988, Todd Wiltshire rode for the Wimbledon Dons in the National League, helping the Dons to finish runners-up in the Knock-Out Cup in 1988 and second in the league in 1989.

Wiltshire also won the Scottish Open Championship in 1989.

He won his first major senior title in 1990 taking out the New South Wales Championship at his home track, the Newcastle Motordrome, which had become the centre of Solo racing in NSW following the closure of the Liverpool City Raceway in 1989 and with the Sydney Showground Speedway only holding one or two meetings per year.

Due to family commitments he missed the Australian Final but was seeded directly into the 1990 Commonwealth Final at the Belle Vue Stadium in Manchester, England, where he finished a respectable 6th to qualify for the 1990 Overseas Final.

At the Overseaas final he finished 2nd to qualify for the 1990 Intercontinental Final.

Wiltshire finished a surprise 3rd at the 1990 World Final in Bradford, winning 3 of his 5 rides and finishing only one point behind winner Per Jonsson and Shawn Moran (Moran was later stripped of his 2nd place after it was revealed he had failed a drug test at the Overseas Final. The FIM did not upgrade the standings and the official records show no second place rider).

Big things were expected of him during the 1990/91 Australian season but he suffered something of a form slump.

His 1990/91 Australian season did include success in some of the bigger meetings.

On 8 December he captained NSW to a win over the touring Russian team at the Motordrome, being unbeaten in his 5 rides.

It was the Russians first loss on their Australian tour.

He then won the Billy Sanders Australian Open on 28 December, defeating Leigh Adams, Sam Ermolenko and Troy Butler in the final.

On 23 February he became the first Australian rider to win the now defunct "Mr. Melbourne" title at the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds.

A week earlier he had finished second to Australian teammate and local rider Shane Bowes in the "West End Speedway International" at the Wayville Showgrounds.

Wiltshire moved up to the first division in 1990 with Reading Racers where he was voted British speedway rider of the year after finishing third in the World Final at Bradford.

While with Reading where he was teammate to Per Jonsson, Wiltshire would win both the British League and British League Knockout Cup in 1990.

Wiltshire headed back to the United Kingdom but failed to re-capture his previous seasons form and the World #3 failed to make the World Final in 1991.

After finishing third in the 1992 NSW title behind winner Mick Poole and Craig Boyce at the Nepean Speedway, Wiltshire was seeded to ride in the 1992 Australian Championship to be held at the North Arm Speedway in Adelaide.

During his first ride of the meeting (Heat 3), and after leading three-quarters of the race, he was passed on the inside of the back straight by Jason Lyons.

Going into turn 3 Wiltshire fell while attempting to re-pass Lyons on the outside and slid into the safety fence, suffering terrible back injuries and multiple fractures of the Pelvis which forced him to spend a number of days recovering in the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Thankfully his Spinal Cord was not damaged in the crash, however the injuries were bad enough that the 23-year-old Wiltshire decided to retire from racing.

Following his crash at the 1992 Australian Championships which had forced his retirement, Wiltshire made a comeback in 1997, riding in Germany in a bid to gain a place in the Speedway Grand Prix after being denied a licence to race in the United Kingdom.

After making a comeback to racing in Germany during 1997, Wiltshire won his first Australian Solo Championship in 1999 at the Olympic Park Speedway.

Though he won the German Individual Championship in both 1997 and 1998, he failed to qualify for the SGP until 2000.

He had three spells with the Oxford Cheetahs from 1998 to 2001 where he was part of the Elite League title winning team in 2001.

He is also a two time Australian Champion, winning in 1999 and 2001.

Despite being born in Sydney, Todd Wiltshire spent most of his childhood in Newcastle.

He then went on to win the NSW Championship in 2000 and 2001 before winning his second Australian title at the Riverview Speedway in Murray Bridge in 2001.

After finishing 4th at Wayville in 2002, Wiltshire returned to the podium in 2003, finishing second to Leigh Adams in Gosford.

After not racing for Oxford in the 2002 season, due to a rule capping the number of Grand Prix riders in Elite League teams, he returned to the team in 2003 and he also made a short-lived but successful comeback in 2006 for the Cheetahs before retiring for the last time.

He would finish 3rd in 2004 (the first year the Australian Championship was run as a series rather than in the traditional single meeting format), before finishing second again in 2006 (again to Leigh Adams).

Following his second placing in 2006, Wiltshire announced his retirement from racing.

Wiltshire finished 11th in Vojens in Denmark to be the only Australian and final qualifier for the World Final in Bradford

In 2011, the Kurri Kurri Speedway club at the Loxford Park Speedway decided to honour Wiltshire as one of the Hunter Region's former Solo riders by incorporating the Todd Wiltshire Cup for junior solos.

The inaugural meeting was won by NSW rider Jack Holder who scored a perfect 15-point maximum.

Brady Kurtz from Cowra and Max Fricke from Victoria rounded out the podium places with Wiltshire himself on hand to award the winners trophy's.