Tony Rickardsson is one of our greatest athletes.
But it could have been a completely different sport for our speedway hero.
As a teenager, he was a huge talent – and played in the same team as one of our biggest stars in history.
There is only one Tony Rickardsson. With his wonderful personality and winning skull, he became the whole of Sweden’s favorite athlete during the late 90s and a bit into the 00s, and his importance to Swedish speedway cannot be underestimated.
Great talent in other sports
Tony Rickardsson has won the Bragdguldet and WC gold, the Jerring prize and countless other successes. But the fact is that it could have become a completely different sport. Rickardsson was generally interested in sports, and for a long time he was also a great talent in a completely different sport, and was also close friends with one of our biggest stars in history.
When Rickardsson was 16 years old, he was a great talent in ice hockey. As a 16-year-old, he even got the chance to represent Dalarna in the TV puck – together with Nicklas Lidström. They both grew up in Avesta and are childhood friends, and at the age of 16 also teammates in the TV puck.
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“Then I was sad at hockey”
But after the TV puck, interest in Rickardsson waned, who instead invested wholeheartedly in the speedway. And in hindsight, it wasn’t a bad decision.
– After that, I was sad about hockey. The speedway was more fun, Rickardsson has said.
Tony Rickardsson got his first motorcycle already at the age of four, and six years later, at the age of ten, he started with kids speedway. At 12, he started competing, and at 13, he won the average league. This was followed by a few years where the focus was on ice hockey – but after the TV puck, only speedway was relevant. And we are so incredibly grateful for that.
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