Cunningham celebrates ten years.

This Friday 24 September sees Somerset Orchard FM Rebel Glenn Cunningham celebrate his 10 Year Testimonial Meeting with a mouth-watering line-up of speedway stars, some of which have never had the enjoyment of riding on the popular Oak Tree Arena raceway.

Looking back over Glenn's career, he began his racing on the grass as a schoolboy of seven years old. He won a few championships even at that tender age, before moving on to speedway. The Bristol-born rider signed up for Oxford on his 16th birthday (10 June 1991) and rode in his first match the week after. He remained at Oxford for two seasons before moving on to Swindon in 1993 with Peter Ansell as promoter.

Swindon had just dropped down to the Second Division, (known as the National League), and he felt he had a good season, and was subsequently offered a contract for 1994, and at that point Peter also paid for Glenn to become his asset. With Martin Yeates and Peter Toogood at the helm, 1995 also saw more progress but 1996 was a bad year for Glenn due to returning from an Australian trip with a bug, which affected his whole season. After making it up to second string he dropped back to reserve, but 1997 saw a big change in fortune.

"I made the switch to Reading in 1997 and I did indeed have a better year. We won the League plus I came second in the Premier League Riders Championship," he said.

Then in 1998 Glenn went even better with Peterborough, where Peter Oakes was the team manager. This year was definitely the best of "Cunny's" career so far. "We not only won the League with me as their number one rider but I also won the Pairs (with Brett Woodifield), the Fours, and I then rode into the history books as the Premier League Riders Champion! From there I progressed to the Overseas Final, finally making it to the Intercontinental Final. I will never forget 1998!"

Glenn had another stint at Swindon in 1999 followed by a couple of torrid seasons for Peterborough and Newport, before joining Somerset in 2002, where he has become a huge favourite with the crowd, and it is at Somerset that he is holding his much-deserved Testimonial.

The speedway meeting being held is as an individual competition of 16 riders over 20 heats, the top four riders on the night going through to the grand final, with a ?1,000 1st prize going to the victor. In addition to the night's racing there is a special guest appearance by ex-World-Finalist and Bristol Bulldog star, Phil Crump, and Page 3 model, Vikki Thomas. After the racing there will be an auction of race jackets and other memorabilia.

Heading the line-up are top Grand Prix stars Jason Crump and Leigh Adams, and the former could so well have gone into this meeting as the 2004 World Champion. Crump leads the Championship from Tony Rickardsson, and the accolade will be settled at the final Grand Prix in Norway in a fortnight's time.

The other 14 riders plus 2 reserves are made up of Glenn's teammates and friends from over his years in the sport. The Somerset crowd will also bid a friendly greeting to 2003 Rebel Stephan Katt, who has not ridden in Britain this season.